Saturday, August 31, 2013

Farewell to Football

What price entertainment? Violent movies carry a disclaimer that “No animals were hurt in the making,” but now pro football admits to human brain damage and agrees to pay $765 million as an oops to 4500 wrecked plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the NFL.

Sports, we are told, helps society sublimate innate savagery, but few lives are destroyed by baseball, basketball, tennis, golf or even hockey. For one admirer of the skill and grace of quarterbacks and wide receivers, the brutality of the game has reached the tipping point.

This is it.

As the world becomes more violent, one recalls Barack Obama’s statement that, if he had a son, he would “think long and hard” about letting him play football.

"They can make some of these decisions on their own, and most of them are well-compensated for the violence they do to their bodies," he said of NFL players. "You read some of these stories about college players who undergo some of these same problems with concussions and so forth and then have nothing to fall back on. That's something that I'd like to see the NCAA think about."

But no amount of money can ease a conscience over watching a game in which hurting people is one of the aims.

There is enough of that going on in the real world to shame one over being part of a crowd cheering it on.

Count me out while planning the next Super Bowl party.

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