LIFE IS NOT FOOTBALL

It is September again. Cool weather. Beautiful leaf colors. Picnics in the autumn. Football season. In autumn, not one in five men I know can talk about anything other than their work, girls, sex, or the religion of the oblong pigskin ball.

The other day I noted on my Facebook account that

"My favorite definition of football -- a game where you hurt guys, and people cheer.

"My favorite quote about college football -- college football is about as central to college academics as bullfighting is to horticulture. (Paraphrasing from Frank deFord editorial)"


Someone I accepted as a Facebook friend wrote me this

(brace yourself)

“One of my favorite quotes,

Elder Boyd K. Packer: “You are mistaken. There is a great purpose in it. You have not understood.

He tells you that this is not a spectator sport—it is for the participants. It is for their sake that he permits the game to continue. Great benefit may come to them because of the challenges they face.

He points to players sitting on the bench, suited up, eager to enter the game. “When each one of them has been in, when each has met the day for which he has prepared so long and trained so hard, then, and only then, will I call the game.”

Until then, it may not matter which team seems to be ahead. The present score is really not crucial. There are games within games, you know. Whatever is happening to the team, each player will have his day.” -- Mystery of Life

(Football is a great metaphor, a brutal one, but this is life!)”


RIGHT ASCENSION COMMENTARY

I do not know where to begin with this.

These comments may be the most idiotic things I have ever seen printed in my Facebook account.

For starters: Life is not football or a football metaphor.

Aside from the patronizing tone of both quotations involved, we should not make the mistake of believing life is supposed to be vicious just because it happens to be vicious. That makes as much sense as believing the Republican Party is stupid because it has people in it believing stupid ideas.

Football is primarily masochism versus sadism. The teams come and go. ULCA vs Stanford. BYU vs. Utah. Sodom vs. Gomorrah. Sadism represents the viewers and coaches. Masochism represents the players. If guys want to test their manhood, they should do it the way men have always tested their manhood – get married, make money, or go to war.

Football is a bu$ine$$. That is true in professional sport, but it is even true in college football. Consider all the money generated by football. Consider the money donated to schools by wealthy alumni attracted by the game. Consider the money first; consider the money foremost. Salaries aside the point, most in college football get some sort of financial take from the bu$ine$$. They might lose interest in the game if it weren’t for money – both over and under the table.

Betting represents the most important part of football finance This also means the most important part of the game is how it is set and fixed.

I find it hard to take seriously the contention that America suffers a financial crisis when the money continues to flow so completely into football.


REAL MANHOOD

Too many fathers think of football as a rite of passage to manhood. If guys want to prove their manhood, they should prove it the old fashioned ways – warfare or marriage.

Frank deFord spoke this on National Public Radio, 30 December 2009. Although he discusses professional football, I quote it at length because he could have just as easily said roughly the same things about college and high school ball:

“Only now, at last, are the people in the sport beginning to acknowledge what has been obvious: Football is a gladiator entertainment. Indeed, let us give credit to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. Yes, it took him long enough — but in the past month, he has finally begun to take the league out of the same kind of denial that baseball suffered so long vis-a-vis steroids.

“Goodell has issued new, more stringent rules with regard to concussions and has urged former players to will their brains to a study at Boston University, which is seeking to determine how much the sport scrambles brains.

“Invariably, however, when any attempts to improve football safety are suggested, a cry goes up that the spoilsports are out to destroy the very essence of the game. Hey, it's supposed to be a cruel sport. And, yes, it not only is, but as the players get bigger and faster, the collisions increase in their raw manpower.

“Moreover, in a real way, the focus of the action has moved, inexorably, up the body. What was originally football became more legball, then armball and now, essentially, headball.

“Don't worry, fans — none of this is going to endanger the spectator sport. Indeed, if anything, football becomes more popular, more vicariously exciting, as it becomes more dangerous. No, the greater cultural question is at the American grass roots: whether the new enlightenment — which will include yet another congressional hearing Monday — will affect the way the sport is viewed for our children.

“I can remember when educated, middle-class parents let their children smoke — and that's simply not accepted today. Will the same sort of people now conclude that they don't want their sons going out for football?

“Far more boys play football in high school than any other sport — well more than a million each autumn. For many Americans, it's a rite of passage for their sons to be on the football team.

“Nobody says that you learn to be a man playing baseball, say, or basketball. But that has always been a romantic part of the attraction of American football.

“But as the risks of football injury and long-term disability become more exposed, will many parents decide that it's better for their boys to play a safer but less glamorous sport? What price manly?"


RIGHT ASCENSION CALL TO ACTION

Well, readers – it may be too much to urge people to take a football free autumn. But we would all feel better.

At most, we should allow our children to play touch football in the park. Anything beyond that is dangerous to their health and character.