Football

[Elle]

Do we still care about football? I love football and watch it every Saturday, but many aspects of the game bother me. I really don't like pro football so I'm just talking college here. Most of these players do not go on to the pros. They are asked to risk their physical health in order to play a game that gives them both joy and, in some (???) cases, a free ride to college they would not otherwise have obtained. Yet I have my doubts about the latter because many of them would have been able to get a free ride to college anyway, or the financial benefit isn't that great - I can only judge by where I live and I don't know enough about other places to generalize. So this is giving SOME people free access to college and, I suspect, a powerful job network after college if they choose to utilize it. The latter might be just as important - where I live there's definitely a currency in having been a former player. It generates respect or at least intrigue, and probably causes employers to hire or interview you more often.

Anyway, they receive those benefits, and in return the schools generate revenue to support other athletic programs and inspire donations to the university generally. A lot of people are employed, a lot of people make money off the whole venture, but the athletes do not. Most universities don't make enough money to break even on athletics, all things considered - they end up pumping money into it, or there's some kind of symbiosis that has hidden costs even when they do seem to make money. The stimulus to alumni and other donations is harder to measure, but when people try to measure, it's not clear that schools are better off with football than they would be without it. Well, many of us love football and other sports, and we think there's something valuable about the scholar-athlete experience that is worth preserving. But in football it seems we increasingly demand a level of commitment and physical risk that is hard to support.

This becomes even more obvious when you consider all the efforts that happen before college in order to produce those college players. There is very little justification for letting younger kids play tackle football, given what we now know about injuries and the long-term consequences. And in those situations you have an even greater tendency for injury, given what I've read about this, because of the frequent mismatch between different players during their developmental process, and in far lower-stakes leagues where more casual players participate. Basically we've got a lot of guys out there who have permanently injured their spines and brains and joints because they wanted to participate in something they would never take past 12th grade. Is that a public health risk worth investing in? I'm not saying they shouldn't do it; I'm just asking why we are investing in it the way we do. We could be spending the same money on lots of other things. Rich parents are already voting on this with their wallets, so I wonder how we'll see that play out over time, as people lose interest in football relative to other sports. What will the NFL do to sustain its financial interest in this sport, given these trends?

[Ronster]

[poorpete]

I really cut away from football around 2005, except for the occasional game and I don't miss the Super Bowl. For me it probably comes down to these three reasons:

Serious injuries and CTE.
I don't want to see people ruining their bodies and minds for a few years of glory or not even glory. But really it's probably because...

My team has been awful
It's easier to ignore physical and societal issues with football if my team is no longer winning. But they are not. But it's really not just about that, it's that...

My wife doesn't like it.
We started dating in 2005 and I'd rather watch something she likes.

[Phoebe]

In Minnesota, after either "having consensual sex with" or "gang raping" a female student or some other more accurate characterization I know not what, various members of football team were suspended for violating various university policies, and then the whole team decided to boycott their bowl game. After this, some facts they may not have been aware of were presented to them and they changed their minds. 2016. That is all.

[poorpete]

Good, I think. Thus begins The Wokening of America.

[Phoebe]

Could be. Due process concerns are real. Def something I'd talk to my kids about before sending them off to a college. However, they seem to have confused being suspended from college with being sentenced to prison, and seem to think a prison term is the only thing that gets you kicked out of college or off a team. Um, skipping a practice can get you kicked off teams.