With a week to go until the Super Bowl and news headlines filled with stories of saggy balls, this seems like a good time to take a departure from my normal travel blogging and write about an excellent football-related book I read recently. If you don't live in Boston or Seattle, you probably don't care about this year's matchup, so you might as well read this instead.
Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto by Steve Almond was recommended to me by, coincidentally, a Seattle friend when I saw him and his wife over the summer on my west coast tour. The book was written by a friend of his and was just about to be published when I was passing through town last August. I added it to my books-to-read list and finally got around to it a couple weeks ago.
In short, the book is well-written, intelligent, and funny. It's also efficient: it cleverly contains a lot of information and convincing opinion even though it's a relatively small amount of text. I was reading it very casually, usually just during meals, and I still finished it in about three days.
Beyond having an impressive vocabulary - I honestly lost count of the number of times I had to consult the dictionary - and engrossing writing style, Almond does the country (the world?) a service by assimilating all of football's current controversies and moral quandaries into a compact, easy read. This is quite possibly the best prose I've read in a while and it's not lost on me that, of all possible topics, it's about football, hardly a subject worthy of literary supremacy.
A number of issues are covered, but the majority of the book deals with the inherent, encouraged, and life-altering violence in the sport. There's an enlightening comparison of modern football players to ancient gladiators, something that has crossed my mind before. Just as with Roman spectators thousands of years ago, we cheer for our gladiators, watch them compete - to the detriment of their own health - in violent displays of strength and brutality in massive arenas, then discard and ignore them when they're finished and no longer of entertainment value to us.
And those arenas? Football stadiums - massive, expensive, rarely-used complexes with corporate names, wall-to-wall advertisements, and overpriced parking, concessions, and souvenirs - are the modern day coliseums. One of those stadiums is even named after the real Coliseum and is appropriately home to some of the most violent and neanderthal football fans in the country. (Raiders slam!)
Though I'm sure there are many to choose from, this op-ed piece that I stumbled upon while researching this post makes some more good points while proving the NFL qualifies as a toxic workplace. Among those points is the mind-boggling fact that one-third of NFL players will suffer brain trauma at some point in their lives, which is even more ridiculous considering that the average NFL career is only a few years. The result is thousands of players putting in decades of hard work and sacrifice so they can be rewarded with life-altering medical problems and minimal, if any, fanfare. I'm no mathematician, but I'm pretty sure that adds up to a shitty deal.
And the rotten cherry on the top of that shit sundae? The NFL maliciously covered up the dangers and health risks to its players to protect its own image and profits. Meanwhile, significant numbers of former players are suffering from CTE, memory loss, suicidal thoughts, and a bevy of other cognitive problems.
Not surprisingly, the American public has taken notice. I've seen many articles recently about how more than half of Americans wouldn't let their children play football. Even some players and coaches who have dedicated their lives to football, like Mike Ditka, agree.
Though a discussion of violence and affliction makes up most of the book, Almond also covers corporate greed, a culture of misogyny and homophobia, and the negative impacts on American universities. If I had to select one line that summarized the entire book, it would be this one:
Will I stop watching football entirely? Probably not. (I haven't watched a single game during the last two seasons, but that's really due to the fact that I'm on the other side of the planet.) Will I reduce the amount I watch? Yes. After reading Almond's eloquent and well-constructed arguments, I will now think twice about watching games on TV, let alone going to one in person.
I don't expect anyone reading this to change their minds overnight or even at all, but I think it's important that all football fans know exactly what they are tacitly supporting.
Enjoy the Super Bowl everyone. I'll be happily catching up on my sleep.
Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto by Steve Almond was recommended to me by, coincidentally, a Seattle friend when I saw him and his wife over the summer on my west coast tour. The book was written by a friend of his and was just about to be published when I was passing through town last August. I added it to my books-to-read list and finally got around to it a couple weeks ago.
In short, the book is well-written, intelligent, and funny. It's also efficient: it cleverly contains a lot of information and convincing opinion even though it's a relatively small amount of text. I was reading it very casually, usually just during meals, and I still finished it in about three days.
Beyond having an impressive vocabulary - I honestly lost count of the number of times I had to consult the dictionary - and engrossing writing style, Almond does the country (the world?) a service by assimilating all of football's current controversies and moral quandaries into a compact, easy read. This is quite possibly the best prose I've read in a while and it's not lost on me that, of all possible topics, it's about football, hardly a subject worthy of literary supremacy.
A number of issues are covered, but the majority of the book deals with the inherent, encouraged, and life-altering violence in the sport. There's an enlightening comparison of modern football players to ancient gladiators, something that has crossed my mind before. Just as with Roman spectators thousands of years ago, we cheer for our gladiators, watch them compete - to the detriment of their own health - in violent displays of strength and brutality in massive arenas, then discard and ignore them when they're finished and no longer of entertainment value to us.
And those arenas? Football stadiums - massive, expensive, rarely-used complexes with corporate names, wall-to-wall advertisements, and overpriced parking, concessions, and souvenirs - are the modern day coliseums. One of those stadiums is even named after the real Coliseum and is appropriately home to some of the most violent and neanderthal football fans in the country. (Raiders slam!)
Though I'm sure there are many to choose from, this op-ed piece that I stumbled upon while researching this post makes some more good points while proving the NFL qualifies as a toxic workplace. Among those points is the mind-boggling fact that one-third of NFL players will suffer brain trauma at some point in their lives, which is even more ridiculous considering that the average NFL career is only a few years. The result is thousands of players putting in decades of hard work and sacrifice so they can be rewarded with life-altering medical problems and minimal, if any, fanfare. I'm no mathematician, but I'm pretty sure that adds up to a shitty deal.
And the rotten cherry on the top of that shit sundae? The NFL maliciously covered up the dangers and health risks to its players to protect its own image and profits. Meanwhile, significant numbers of former players are suffering from CTE, memory loss, suicidal thoughts, and a bevy of other cognitive problems.
Not surprisingly, the American public has taken notice. I've seen many articles recently about how more than half of Americans wouldn't let their children play football. Even some players and coaches who have dedicated their lives to football, like Mike Ditka, agree.
Though a discussion of violence and affliction makes up most of the book, Almond also covers corporate greed, a culture of misogyny and homophobia, and the negative impacts on American universities. If I had to select one line that summarized the entire book, it would be this one:
"Are we really so spoiled as a nation, in 2014, that we can’t curb our appetite for an unnecessarily violent game that degrades our educational system, injures its practitioners, and fattens a pack of gluttonous corporations?"I can relate to this book and to Almond as a tortured spectator because I also come from a football-loving family, have watched football since I was 9 years old, and have also recently grappled with the morality of the sport. And I also say all of this as someone who had an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Super Bowl two years ago with my father and brother.
Will I stop watching football entirely? Probably not. (I haven't watched a single game during the last two seasons, but that's really due to the fact that I'm on the other side of the planet.) Will I reduce the amount I watch? Yes. After reading Almond's eloquent and well-constructed arguments, I will now think twice about watching games on TV, let alone going to one in person.
I don't expect anyone reading this to change their minds overnight or even at all, but I think it's important that all football fans know exactly what they are tacitly supporting.
Enjoy the Super Bowl everyone. I'll be happily catching up on my sleep.
