In Defense of Football
I shift my weight from one foot to the other, like a nervous tic, and I swirl my beer around in the bottle. The beer’s not cold enough.
I’d been appalled earlier when I learned that our hosts don’t recycle. The Miller High Life sloshes around in the bottle like water in a flushing toilet, and I wonder to myself, silently, what innocent Orca, or whatever, would wind up with this empty bottle in its belly.
This is fucking Texas. There are no laws here, I don’t think, except those which restrict brown people’s right to vote, and women’s right to control their bodies. A familiar anger needles its way into my chest as I’m reminded that those same laws protect white dudes’ right to stockpile weapons of mass destruction as if those small arsenals are sufficient defense against inevitable demographic shifts.
How, by the way, is it this hot on Memorial Day Weekend?
Fucking Texas.
Still, the heat is less uncomfortable than feeling, as I do, like I’m intruding on this group of men. The men who are pretending, graciously, to care that I’m standing here. Yes, these guys were all in the same fraternity in college. Yes, these guys are all part of the wedding party. No, I’d never met any of these guys before today.
But it’s not exactly their shared history that’s making this awkward. All of these dudes seem blacker than me. From my perspective, anyway. That’s the issue. They’re all former college athletes. They were all born and raised in the American South. They’re part of a culture with which I have practically no experience and of which I’m decidedly not a part, despite the color of my skin.
It’s not comfortable.
For the Hate of Football
The men I met on that far-too-hot afternoon are full-fledged members of the black, male, athlete culture. I’m sure there are many such cultures around the globe. I’m talking here though about the unique, American version. It’s a way of being that fuses jock culture, traditional/religious values, and Southern regional culture with a variant of hip hop culture and fashion. It’s all topped with a generous helping of relentless, quick-witted ribbing.
It’s also one of the few remaining justifications for football—a game that should eventually go extinct for the same reasons ancient Rome-style gladiatorial contests went extinct. It’s all just too barbaric for a civilized society.
There’s a veritable laundry list of reasons to revile football. Football the game, and even more so, football the industry. The football industrial complex, as I like to call it, is rife with brazen toxicity that’s resulted in:
… The Suppression of the Truth About Concussions and CTE
Certainly, injury is baked into the elite athlete experience. Few professional athletes, even among the most genetically gifted, are able to escape their careers without some sort of injury. Those are the grim facts for professional athletes whether their arena is the tennis court, the soccer field, or the hockey rink.
But come on. Who are we kidding?
It took the better part of a century for the NFL to even acknowledge that Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) (and other forms of lasting physical trauma) was a salient issue among ex-players. Only recently, in response to overwhelming public pressure, has the league taken a “hard stance” against CTE by changing the rules slightly, and via the weekly PR stunt popularly known as “concussion protocol.”
Even setting aside concussions and CTE, there is some sort of injury, to at least one athlete, in practically every NFL game. It’s madness.
… The Tolerance of Domestic Violence
Domestic violence is a serious problem in the United States generally. COVID-19, and the associated lockdowns, have exacerbated the problem. Nowhere has this injustice, and society’s lackadaisical approach to redressing it, been so plainly highlighted than in the NFL. It took multiple, ultra-sensational, highly publicized incidents of DV for the NFL to even begin to take that pandemic seriously.
… Structural Racism and an Anti-Worker Environment
If American football culture has a Southern flavor to it (and it does), then its aftertaste is decidedly unpleasant. Football isn’t full on backward like a certain other “sport” which makes so little sense that one wonders whether, like many of its fans, it’s the product of incest.
I kid, I kid. In all seriousness though, football culture bears all the hallmarks of a system of institutional racism fused with under-regulated capitalism. In that way, football is as American as apple pie (and, incidentally, Nascar).
First, the obvious: the disparity between owners and players.
NFL athletes are overwhelmingly people of color while the ultra-rich NFL owners who buy and sell them, and the less rich NFL coaches who drive them, are practically all white. One is hard pressed to be thoughtful about that scenario and escape the plantation analogy. (Remember that awful aftertaste I mentioned before?)
Second, and less obviously, the NFL is a terrible place to work.
Yes, of course, NFL stars make what sounds like a lot of money. But the overwhelming majority of players do not. Moreover, given the amount of time NFL athletes spend developing and maintaining their athletic prowess, and given how few human beings alive are capable of achieving that prowess, and given how much time NFL athletes spend away from their families, and given how much the NFL profits from athletes’ talent and likenesses, and given the inevitable health issues NFL athletes face after their generally short careers, NFL athletes are all grossly underpaid.
To the extent that NFL players are able to negotiate favorable contracts, those contracts are generally inferior to those of NBA players. NFL contracts, even for star players, are less lucrative on average than those of their NBA counterparts. While NBA players enjoy guaranteed contracts, the terms of NFL contracts are typically guaranteed only for one year. After the expiration of those one year periods, teams are generally able to change the contracts’ terms.
The NFL is a shitty place to be a professional athlete.
… Finally, the Colin Fucking Kaepernick Saga
You know what …
I’m not even going to get into this. I trust my readership is smart enough, and sufficiently tuned in to the realities of life on planet earth, that no explanation is necessary on this point. If this issue is unclear …
… I suggest that you review some of what I’ve written, and said, and posted over the last decade.
You’ll get a sense.
For the Love of Football
Those are just a few of the myriad reasons to hate football. Still, there are some damn good reasons to love the game. It’s both awe inspiring and entertaining to watch athletes perform physical feats of which just a small minority of human beings are physically and mentally capable. Beyond that, football:
… Satisfies An Evolutionary Itch That’s, Arguably, A Manifestation of Human Nature
I’m hesitant to declare, even anecdotally, that athletic competition is inherent to human nature. I’m comfortable claiming however that athletic competition, including the raucous spectacles we call sporting events, are inevitable wherever more than few human beings cohabitate.
Consider that cave paintings dating back to the Neolithic age (7000 BCE) depict wrestling matches surrounded by crowds. In fact, every major human society in recorded history has fielded athletes, and hosted athletic competitions viewed by spectators.
That history suggests that sports, and sporting events, stem from some underlying evolutionary impulse. Athletic competitions may have evolved from our ancient ancestors’ desire that able bodied young men develop and maintain fighting prowess under relatively safe conditions. Mammalian species, ranging from wolf pups to kittens express this kind of play-fighting behavior. It seems only natural that under pressure from an exceptionally brainy and social species of great ape like Homo Sapien, practical play-fighting behavior would evolve into highly ritualized dramas of human expression.
Even if spectator sports really are inherent to human culture—that is to say that they’re a natural occurrence—it surely doesn’t follow that spectator sports necessarily confer a net benefit on human culture. Natural is certainly not the same thing as good.
Still, we just might have established here a viable hypothesis that sports and sporting events scratch an evolutionary itch. Call it the “Gladiator Impulse.” It stands to reason that violent sports like American football, rugby, and ice hockey may better satiate that desire for controlled conflict than the U.S. Open or Olympic gymnastic competitions. (This hypothesis includes, as satiation of the Gladiator Impulse, the raucous, and frequently violent, spectating associated with sporting events regardless of the underlying sports’ violent or non-violent natures.)
If there is a Gladiator Impulse at work in the human psyche, which drives humans to crave violent spectacle, then there’s likely something valuable about that impulse from the perspective of evolutionary psychology. Certainly, hashing it out at sporting events—on the fields and in the stands—is a more sustainable, if imperfect, outlet than pogroms and lynchings.
… Is a Safe Way To Indulge Humanity’s Tribalism Impulse
New York Yankee fans tend to hate Boston Red Socks fans for the same reasons that San Francisco 49’ers fans tend to hate Seattle Seahawks fans: largely manufactured rivalry premised on little substance.
The lack of substance doesn’t make those rivalries any less significant. Or even dangerous. I think though that on balance, those manufactured rivalries benefit more than they injure human culture.
The Tribalism Problem
To say that tribalism is a fundamental part of human nature is a gargantuan understatement. Homo Sapien is so driven to form in-group/out-group allegiances in fact, that left to his own devices, he manufactures warring factions based on entirely random criteria.
The fact that the tribalism instinct is so intrinsic to human nature makes sense from the perspective of evolutionary psychology. Humanity evolved in small hunter-gatherer bands, on African savannahs, about 2.6 million years ago. In that enviroment—the ancestral environment—prolonged separation from the group was tantamount to a death sentence. Concomitantly, an individual’s survival in that environment, depended directly on the tribe’s ability to defend itself against rival bands. In both cases, a group’s cohesiveness was central to individuals’ and the group’s continued existence.
Tribalism served humanity incredibly well during humanity’s evolution from the ancestral environment through to the agricultural revolution and beyond. Today however, that same life-preserving instinct threatens to destroy the very civilization it helped spawn.
We can’t just erase the instinct toward tribalism from the genome or the psyche. And I doubt that any thoughtful person should want to eradicate it even if they could. Humanity’s tribal instinct is fundamental to how we develop and define non-kin-based associations. Associations like political parties, civic groups, and yes, football franchises.
So while the tribalism instinct is dangerous, especially in the modern context, it remains nonetheless an important part of any well-functioning human being. Since our species is stuck with tribalism in any event, we ought to, as a culture:
Consciously and explicitly acknowledge—and teach to our children—the existence of tribalism in human beings and in human culture, including the dangerous potential of the instinct.
Identify clearly the link between the tribalism instinct and humans’ most destructive impulses, such as bigotry and nationalism.
Find constructive—or at least not socially destructive—outlets for the tribalism instinct.
In my estimation, football satisfies the third proposition.
In Defense of Football
I’m still uncomfortable standing here—in Fort Worth, in front of this McGarage, that’s attached to this McMansion, in this half completed McDevelopment, on this far-too-hot-for-May evening. My High Life is warmer now—even less palatable, than it was an hour ago.
It’s still not the heat that’s bothering me most. (It really is wild though that it’s already this hot. It’s only Memorial Day. Fucking Texas.)
I’m more concerned with the yawning chasm between my life experience and that of the black men with whom I’m trying, mostly in vain, to pal around. It’s a gulf far more uncomfortable than the heat. But it’s discomfort that I find myself, as the far-too-hot-for-May minutes grind on, increasingly able to tolerate. Even appreciate. Even enjoy.
The cadence of the good natured taunts with which they assail each other. The rhythm of their quick witted clapbacks. The fervent, and often theatrical, recreations of this guy’s epic success and that guy’s monumental fuck up. Each is like a note in a song. Or a stitch in a tapestry. They celebrate and they eulogize an experience of youth that these guys had loved, had endured, had ultimately, shared.
It occurs to me also that these men are, perhaps unknowingly, conduits for a tradition that harks back to negro spirituals. It’s a connection evident to me now in a way it wasn’t fully when I landed at DFW earlier today.
Neo Negro Spirituals
Modern football is linked inextricably, like every element of American society, to slavery and racism. Unbeknownst to far too many Americans: history exists, and our present is the inevitable outcome of that history. Ideas, and the actions that they inspire, have consequences.
American history is, in large part, a tale of wealthy, white men buying and selling, to and from other wealthy, white men, the bodies and the labor of disempowered black and brown people (and their poor, white compatriots).
Much has changed, of course, for all American workers, including professional athletes. Star NFL athletes (and only star NFL athletes) may earn tens of millions of dollars over the course of their careers. Their enslaved ancestors, on the other hand, spent their entire lives toiling without anything like just compensation.
That sounds like a tremendous upgrade, and it is. Still, the value of that upgrade diminishes once one considers the disparity in outcomes (both financial and physical) that exists among members of the overwhelmingly white NFL owner and coaching classes versus members of the mostly black and brown NFL athlete class. From that perspective, modern football very much reflects the United States’ racist, anti-worker roots.
Negro spirituals evolved among enslaved black folks to be coping mechanisms, structures for storytelling, and sometimes, instruments of rebellion. In all cases, they were part of a covert system for preserving dignity, and expressing unique identity, in defiance of white enslavers whose hegemony depended on extinguishing the light of humanity burning within each enslaved individual.
Like their historical antecedents, the black men with whom I’m standing here tonight have spent their lives navigating environments designed to keep them subservient. American culture—especially Southern culture—demands, sometimes explicitly, but always implicitly, that they recognize their place in the social hierarchy and behave accordingly. The football industrial complex regards men like them as chattel. Millions of fans demand men like them be grateful for their opportunity to entertain white America, and otherwise, “shut up and dribble.”
Yet these men resist. They maybe don’t throw up as many black power fists as I do, or write as many scathing essays. They transmit their stories, and they broadcast their distinctiveness, and they express their experience in a torrent of dialogue, and through a love and a comradery that’s vibrant and emotional and badass. Like a perfect piece of music.
I’ll never be fully part of these guys’ culture. I can’t be black in precisely the same way they are. But our common experience is that of being black in America, and of expressing that experience in a way that’s authentic, practical, beautiful.
Neo negro spirituals.
