It’s funny how we look at history. We sneer at the barbarians and stick our
noses up in the air as if the present moment in time is far superior. How brutal those ancients were! Naked wrestling matches? Gladiators dueling in the Coliseum? Fights to-the-death against lions and
bears? It is amazing how people actually
found these gruesome competitions entertaining.
Or is it?
We think so highly of ourselves, proudly applauding the
“progress” of the human race. We call our
society “civilized” and “cultured” without even knowing what these terms really
mean or who exactly we are comparing ourselves to. We think we have tamed our
society, overcoming the barbarism of the past.
Such foolish pride.
“Plus ça
change, plus c'est la même chose,” my high school English teacher used to say. The more things change, the more they stay
the same.
This simple
phrase reveals the grim reality of human sport.
Two thousand years after naked wrestling and gladiator duels, we remain
captivated by the fierce, barbaric passions of athletic competition. Admittedly, we no longer strangle each other
with bare hands or stab opponents with swords.
With rulebooks, penalties, jerseys, and instituted leagues, our
passionate desire for combat is more concealed than in the past. We show occasional expressions of
sportsmanship for the sake of civility.
Yet, these
regulations remain nothing but a mask. At
the heart of athletics, a brutal viciousness dwells. We scream for hard hits and filthy
I-just-destroyed-you facials. Even
baseball, one of the most passive sports ever invented, is dominated by a
superbly violent act: a ball whizzing through the air like a missile, flying at
you at speeds up to one hundred miles per hour.
Talk about scary.
But of all
sports, nothing better demonstrates the dynamic of violence than football. The players are today’s equivalent of gladiators. They perform in giant coliseums in front of
thousands of wild fans. Jacked 250-pound
giants run at each other at full speed, armed with metal helmets that transform
the players themselves into weapons.
Their goal is a fiercely carnal one: to force the opponent onto the
ground against his will, by any means necessary. They tear at arms, trip legs, and smash into
each other like battering rams for three straight hours.
It is a brutal
war of attrition. There are no
intermediaries; it is man against man, and his only instrument is himself.
Physical trauma
naturally follows. They may not be
fighting to the death, but they get awfully close. Concussions, broken bones, torn ligaments,
and even paralysis are the price that our gladiators pay. All of this, for the sake of advancing a
leather ball a few yards at a time.
Does not sound
very civilized, does it? It is only a
matter of time before someone is actually killed on the field of play. Players are getting faster and stronger every
year, and despite new rules that seek to prevent helmet-to-helmet contact and
other dangerous plays, it is impossible to completely eliminate risk on the
gridiron. The sport is just too fast and
unpredictable. Some players get caught
in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The inherent
danger of football is jeopardizing the future of the sport. While we love watching players get “jacked
up,” we also cringe at the rawness of the violence. It becomes less entertaining and more
revolting. Parents are more hesitant about
letting their children play football, encouraging relatively safer sports like
baseball and basketball. In addition,
more than 2,000 former players filed a massive lawsuit against the league this
summer, arguing that the NFL “exacerbated the
health risk by promoting the game's violence” and misled players about the
long-term effects of concussions. Bad
public relations threaten the reputability of the league.
Fearing a
generational decrease in interest, the NFL recently launched an effort to
rebuild interest in the sport from the bottom up. Commissioner Roger Goodell visited a youth
league practice this October to preach about changing the culture of the
game. He spoke to players and coaches
about proper tackling techniques and safety concerns. The NFL also released a thirty-second
commercial featuring Tom Brady and Ray Lewis, in which they stress new on-the-field
rules that encourage safety, as well as the off-the-field initiatives like new
medical research and better equipment.
However, there are questions about how
effective the new initiatives will be.
The league can tweak how the game is played, but it can never change the
nature of the sport itself. It will
always be physical and violent game, and the NFL can only do so much before
football no longer resembles football.
It may suffer a decrease in popularity at the grass-roots level, but
there will always be people crazy enough to pick up the brutal sport.
Our gladiators march on, and we remain
transfixed by our secret love of barbarity.
