opinion@dailylobo.com
In the Education Amendments of 1972, Title IX requires gender equality in the hiring and employment practices of all federally financed institutions, including universities that receive federal funds and their athletic programs. To meet these requirements and still be able to field football teams, schools across the country dropped many men’s sports programs in track, cross country, golf, tennis, rowing, swimming and wrestling.
Football is now labeled America’s No. 1 sport, presumably because it produces the greatest revenue from TV advertising. But with the exception of the NFL, semi-pro and a few city leagues, you rarely see men older than 30 — or women of any age — playing football. We are the most out-of-shape Americans in history, and our favorite sport is one that is actually played, for all practical purposes, exclusively by young males. Let’s examine the consequences of our infatuation with football from a national health and fitness standpoint.
Football holds the dubious distinction of being the highest contributor to sports-related concussions, with nearly 70,000 diagnosed every year from high school football alone. Jim McMahon, age 53, quarterback of the Super Bowl Champion ‘86 Bears, has been diagnosed with early-onset dementia, attributable to the four concussions he suffered while playing. He now wishes he had pursued a promising career in baseball instead. The sad decade-long demise and recent death of Alex Karras is another reminder that one out of three pro football players experience mental deterioration when their careers are over. The NFL is finally being forced to address the Players Association’s concerns with the health risks of chronic head injuries.
The great open-field runs, pin-point passes and ballet-like receptions are juxtaposed with scenes of yet another player lying immobile on the ground. Even if he leaves the field under his own power, the true repercussions of that impact may not be known for decades. The NFL’s slow recognition of the tragic consequences of multiple concussions is reminiscent of the long struggle by veterans to get the military to acknowledge, accurately diagnose and treat PTSD. And football reaps zero national health benefits, outside entertainment for fans.
This hardly looks like a successful model for what we should be emphasizing as our national waistline expands. The habit of lifelong fitness is most easily acquired at an early age, and it should be obvious to all that such habits are not what our culture promotes. Physical activity is a fundamental ingredient of a healthy lifestyle. Emphasizing spectator sports, at the expense of supporting activities that can be enjoyed by people past the age of 30, has proven to be a recipe for what we have become.
The NFL has been enjoying tax-exempt status as a nonprofit organization, thanks to the infinite wisdom of our good-old-boy Congress. Instead of promoting participant sports — like those that have been eliminated by college athletic departments — we enthrone a sport that provides a vicarious outlet for the violent fantasies of a minority of our population. Because let’s face it: Most women probably revile football culture, and many men could care less about it. That leaves those who appreciate the beauty of the sport, and those who love the violence.
There is a link between the glorification of gladiator sports, which produce brain injuries at an alarming rate (including the latest rage, cage fighting), and the fact that we are overmedicated and increasingly detached and incapable of activity ourselves. We have become desensitized to the pain and suffering of others, and are devolving into a nation of couch warriors.
It is hard to believe that we are the same country that sacrificed a generation to fighting the good war against fascism 70 years ago. Today, our military is hard pressed to recruit sufficiently qualified manpower, because most applicants are physically or otherwise unfit. We may soon be forced to outsource armies to fight our battles, numerous as they have become.
Since the end of WWII, the U.S. has incarcerated and executed more of its own citizens and killed more foreigners than any other Western nation. As males, we have been trained to suppress our feelings from early childhood. We remain conveniently insensitive to the fact that we as a nation were responsible, directly and indirectly, for the deaths of more than 100,000 entirely innocent Iraqi civilians. That’s not even counting the much larger number of people who have died as a result of our economic sanctions against Saddam Hussein.
Is it surprising that we are obsessed with viewing brutal, debilitating sports rather than actively cycling, hiking, swimming, walking, climbing, caving, playing nonviolent sports or dancing?
I suspect the citizens of Rome had grown uncomfortably numb, gluttonously stuffing themselves at feasts and cheering the deaths of colosseum combatants as their empire collapsed around them. A nation increasingly perceived as a soft and vulnerable bully, we seem unaware of what we have become and of what we now represent to many people in the rest of the world.
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The NFL is attempting to expand to an international market, but countries are growing wary of what they choose to adopt from our culture. They would be wise to consider the costs of embracing a sport that so callously disregards the well-being of those who participate in it, and thatat times disconcertingly mirrors the more belligerent aspects of our foreign and domestic policy.
Congress passed Title IX, but it has itself been violating the intent of that law by granting exclusive privileges to a business which is strictly male-oriented and results in such large numbers of life-changing injuries.
So let’s be clear: There is nothing macho about brain damage, it should not be a source of national entertainment and tax payers should not be forced to supplement the NFL’s $10 billion annual profit margin.
Our traditional ways of thinking could do with some rethinking now in the 21st century. For starters, we need to enlighten and improve ourselves, rather than exploiting and annihilating others.
