Why I hate American Football

This article:
Boston Globe article on head trauma to football players, along with the annual Superbowl Celebration leads me to trace my personal distaste for one of our most beloved national pastimes.

My hometown was fully engorged with football fever when I was a kid. The community was united in its love of "midget football" (for young boys) and its strong desire to start a varsity program in the high school. The local county school system had funded a beautiful new school because the small town had grown over the years. One of the biggest activists in town to make varsity high school football a reality was my Dad. Dad was known to most of my friends and schoolmates as "Coach". It was the mid 1970s.

Dad coached every sport he could get his hands on, as he loved athletics. He had an especially strong attraction to support football because he was not able to play it when he was a kid. He admired the strength and the camaraderie of the great grunting team sport of football. He loved the weekly event of the big game. Dad coached the youngest of the midget teams, was active in the association that sponsored all the kid sports, and worked hard to get a team for the high school.

My two brothers shared Dad's obsession, while I did not. They reveled in the group machismo of it, I did not enjoy the violence. I didn't like hitting people, and I didn't like getting hit. One year (I think I was 9 or 10), I relented to the family pressures and played one season as a back-up halfback. I shuttled the plays into the quarterback and played every other play on offense. They didn't give me the ball much, but I did give it my all for the whole season. I did not enjoy it, but I stuck it out for fear of being scorned for being a "quitter". At the end of the season, I told Dad that I didn't want to play again. His disappointment was obvious in his pouting. It was not the first or the last time I would disappoint my father.

My older brother was on the first junior varsity team at the local high school, and he excelled as a varsity defensive end despite his small size for that position. Dad was VERY proud, and when my brother tried to ride the athletic glory and fatherly pride into college his size was an issue that could not be overcome. Again, Dad was disappointed. I didn't really like my brother very much, so that gave me some satisfaction.

As I passed through high school, Friday night football was the social event for the community. A large portion of the boys in the small school were on the team. I was not, which made me fairly outcast with my peers and my family. That was OK for me, being outside the culture made it easier to just hang out and socialize. I even enjoyed being called a 'pussy' by the players. They seemed so thick when they did that, it made me feel superior.

When I left high school, my younger brother came up through the system. I had watched him play since he was on my Dad's team as my younger brother took great joy in the game. He also took joy in his father's pride. Pride that he did not see in Dad for anything else he did. My kid brother would have driven his head through a wall to get his father's approval, and that was his style of play. He was a fullback, of average height and a very powerful body. His nickname was Moose, and he lived to play the role. He went into every play with his head. Practice and games from the age of 7 through 17. He lost teeth and was knocked silly on more than one occasion. The especially violent collisions earned him the admiration of coaches, peers and his father.

Moose was not a good student. Girls did not chase him. He did not excel at other sports. He could not sing. But he was a local star on the football field. He was below standards in his classwork, but the high school coach (who Moose worshipped) made sure that his grades were good enough so that he could play. The coach cajoled other teachers to give out better grades than Moose deserved. Of course, my parents were supportive of this as they also loved the community standing bestowed on their boy.

Early 1980s - One weekend I came home from college to see Moose play a high school game and he was knocked unconscious on the field and hauled off to visit with the paramedics on the sidelines. He was diagnosed with a concussion. He had probably received several such injuries earlier in his career, but this was the worst. He spent a few days in bed, fairly loopy.

Moose had no chance of playing ball in college, his high school had pushed him through to graduate but his test scores were not good enough for any school. He tried Community College, but was frustrated by the fact that that he essentially had to repeat the last two years of high school there before he could start college coursework. He drank heavily, but was still 'the Moose' to his old high school friends. Only now he was receiving a similar but different kind of adulation for it. A very destructive one.

I enjoyed the game as a spectator when I was very young. The strategy and violent machismo of it appealed to me then. But my distaste for the game grew as I got older. The militaristic nature of it became more distasteful as my worldview changed. I suppose I became more of a hippie, socialist, elitist pansy. My brothers and my father still love it.

Today I read the above story about damage done to young brains for the glory of football. I picture my kid brother knocked out on that football field all those years ago, having nearly smashed his skull trying to please his father and the community. I picture the tremors he still has in his hands from time to time, the times he seems to kind of space out and the way his temper can flare up (even though he is a very sweet man). I think about the dementia I saw in my 80-year-old mother in law. I wonder what is in Moose's future. I wonder if it could have been different. I wonder if Dad could have found some way to show pride off the athletic field. I wonder if my old hometown is still infected with the same stupidity it was when I was there.

And I hate football. Happy Superbowl, America.
I look forward to April, when Major League Baseball gets underway.