Football

Is Football Destroying America?

/ Matthew Clemente / Leave a comment

Is Football Destroying America?

Okay, that is not quite a fair title.  However, a recent episode of The Diane Rehm Show really hammers football.  A lot has been written recently about the concussion crisis in football. This episode of The Diane Rehm Show not only discusses concussions but also how tax payers subsidize the NFL, since it is currently operated as a nonprofit (i.e. no taxes).  I must admit as a football fan there were aspects of the interview (of Gregg Easterbrook, author of “The King of Sports: Football’s Impact on America“) that made me think, “What did you expect an NPR show would think of football?” However, on the whole, it is worth a listen. For anyone interest in the intersection between sports and public policy, this show discusses all of the major policy issues surrounding football on all levels. 

Here is a description of the interview: 

Monday Night Football. Super Bowl Sunday. The big homecoming day game. New Year’s college bowls. It’s hard to imagine a sport more American than football. The game hasn’t been embraced anywhere in the world quite like it has in the United States. Gregg Easterbrook, author of the new book, “King of Sports,” says without football “there would still be 50 stars on the flag … but America wouldn’t be quite the same.” But Easterbrook argues the game is in serious need of reform at all levels. Diane discusses football’s impact on America and what it will take to clean up the sport.

Guests

Gregg Easterbrook 

author, “The King of Sports: Football’s Impact on America”. He is a contributing editor of “The Atlantic Monthly” and “The Washington Monthly”, and a columnist for ESPN.com.

“League of Denial: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis”

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Recently, PBS’s Frontline ran a powerful documentary about concussions in the NFL.

The full video is available for free from the Frontline website.

Here is a description of the program:

From PBS and Frontline: The National Football League, a multibillion-dollar commercial juggernaut, presides over America’s indisputable national pastime. But the NFL is under assault as thousands of former players and a host of scientists claim the league has covered up how football inflicted long-term brain injuries on many players. In this special investigation, FRONTLINE and prize-winning journalists Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada of ESPN reveal the hidden story of the NFL and brain injuries, drawn from their forthcoming book League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions and the Battle for Truth (Crown Archetype, October 2013). What did the NFL know and when did it know it? What’s the truth about the risks to players? What can be done? The FRONTLINE investigation details how, for years, the league denied and worked to refute scientific evidence that the violent collisions at the heart of the game are linked to an alarming incidence of early onset dementia, catastrophic brain damage, death, and other devastating consequences for some of football’s all-time greats.

Malcolm Gladwell: College Football Should Be Banned

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-HNvZUIFU4]

Sunday on Fareed Zakaria GPS, Fareed interviewed author Malcolm Gladwell about his campaign to ban college football.

Here is an excerpt from the interview:

You compare football to dog fighting. Why?
Yes, I did a piece for The New Yorker a couple of years ago where I said it. This was at the time when, remember, Michael Vick, was convicted of dog fighting. And to me, that was such a kind of, and the whole world got up in arms about this. How could he use dogs in a violent manner, in a way that compromised their health and integrity?
And I was just struck at the time by the unbelievable hypocrisy of people in football, for goodness sake, getting up in arms about someone who chose to fight dogs, to pit one dog against each other.
In what way is dog fighting any different from football on a certain level, right? I mean you take a young, vulnerable dog who was made vulnerable because of his allegiance to the owner and you ask him to engage in serious sustained physical combat with another dog under the control of another owner, right?
Well, what’s football? We take young boys, essentially, and we have them repeatedly, over the course of the season, smash each other in the head, with known neurological consequences.
And why do they do that? Out of an allegiance to their owners and their coaches and a feeling they’re participating in some grand American spectacle.
They’re the same thing. And the idea that as a culture we would be absolutely quick and sure about coming to the moral boiling point over the notion that you would do this to dogs and yet completely blind to the notion you would do this to young men is, to my mind, astonishing.
I mean there’s a certain point where I just said, you know, we have to say enough is enough.