Every Christmas, there is a unique sociology experiment that I think everybody should partake in. Go to a Wal-Mart, stand outside, and watch the creative ways in which people try to ignore the Salvation Army workers. Some will pull out their cell phones, acting like they are checking a message. Some will spark up a conversation with whoever is accompanying them. We all have our strategies.Yet, if confronted individually, every one of them would say that they cared about charities, and the Salvation Army specifically. And in their heart of hearts, they would truly believe that. Even if shown a video of them blowing off a SA volunteer, most people would make up some kind of excuse, and go on believing they are a caring person.
This is pretty much the behavior of the average NFL fan.
Joe Sports Fan would lead you to believe that he cares about football players. He'll tell you that he's against helmet-to-helmet contact and "illegal hits". He'll tell you that the players need more protection. And in his heart of hearts, he believes this. But Joe Sports Fan has been blowing off the brutality of the NFL for years.
Every football fan knows, and had always known, that the game ruins its players. We've heard story after story about Player X being diagnosed with dementia at age 45, or how the every day blows an offensive linemen endures takes twenty years off his life. This is not news. Anyone who watched just one football game in their life could understand the severity of the violence taking place.
Yet, we all watched. And we paid. And we cheered. While news leaked out about how the NFL basically discards its former players and their health, we screamed about how something should be done, and then continued to tune in to watch current players getting their brains mashed in. When a player went down with his third concussion in six weeks, knowing that those injuries will haunt him for the rest of his life, we responded with concern and teary eyes - that is, until the medical staff scraped him off the field and the next play began.
Fact is, football fans rank entertainment over the well-being of the players. 99% of fans kept paying the NFL and supporting the game even as guys got bigger, stronger and faster. The violence was never bloody enough for us to put down our foam fingers or sell off our fantasy teams.
But now Roger Goodell and the NFL say that the game needs to be safer; that it's worth taking away some of the most exciting plays of the game to help the players. Just about everybody is in agreement with this. They care about safety too, they say. They care about the players.
Because if they really did care, what they are admitting is that their own trivial entertainment is more important then something they feel deeply and emotionally about. And this might be true for some. Some people might actually wince and get a sick feeling in their stomach when there's a brutal hit. At best, these people just have extremely screwed up priorities. The kind that put their car or boat ahead of their own children, which we usually agree is a type of horrible human being.
I feel that most fans fall into a different group. Most people never think about injuries or overall health of athletes until it is presented to them. They are the Salvation Army ignorers. They watch with tunnel-vision; never able to see past what is on their screen or what they are already looking for. Football is always about the game, nothing more. Injuries are a part of that game.
To sit there watching and holding the knowledge that what it is you are seeing will eventually end the lives of the athletes, is in and of itself an unmoral, primitive thing. To enjoy something that is so violent is nearly evil. And to say afterwards that you care about the lives being ruined on the field is wholly dishonest, and in a way more unmoral and evil than admitting that you are unmoved at all.
If video of me at Wal-Mart ever surfaces, you'll see this: someone who just walks past the volunteer like he doesn't exist. If presented with a documentary or still photos of those in need, the human emotion in me would probably break down and give a little something. But that isn't the real me. That is a version of me reacting to guilt.
I don't feel guilty about liking big hits, because I don't pretend to care about those who suffer the blows. And for three hours (or six, or nine) on Sundays, I walk right pass the sad reality to enjoy some cheap entertainment. I'm okay with this, because I never concern myself with issues like morality, or more accurately, what definition of morality society has designed for me.
But you do. So you care. At least, you care when someone is watching. I say let us that truly enjoy the game for what it is have the game that we grew up watching. If you want safety, you need to move on to a safer form of entertainment. Don't let your guilt drag the rest of us down with you.
