Rick Reilly, of ESPN.com, wrote a column
recently that spoke for countless Americans, myself included. We will watch NFL football. Yet we
no longer feel good about doing so. It’s
almost like being a drug addict. You’re
not watching a beautiful game; you’re simply scratching an itch.
Football has been my favorite spectator sport throughout my
life. Moreover, when I was a kid and it
was time to play a pickup game, football would have been my sport of
choice. During Jewish school, when I was
supposed to be learning the Hebrew language or the Jewish faith, I was instead
day-dreaming about an upcoming NFL game.
If my team lost in an especially painful manner, I would go into my room
and cry. Even as an adult, I once
walked into my closet, threw my butt on the ground, and sat there for 30
minutes. During a trip to the upper Midwest,
when my team was losing at halftime, I walked to the center of town without a
winter coat on and made a phone call in the frigid cold – just to beat myself up
over my team’s poor performance. (Well,
OK, that was my college team, but any NFL addict needs a little passion for
college football, and I have more than a little.)
Only a few years ago, I spent a couple of days at an NFL
training camp in a town that might as well be called Middle-of-Nowhere,
Minnesota. I had a great time watching
the players stand around, run drills, and sign autographs. If they had been looking at a wall watching
paint dry, I might have enjoyed that too.
For each of the past 16 seasons, I have owned the NFL Sunday Ticket,
which entitled me to watch any regular season football game no matter who was
playing. Based on any definition, I have
been a loyal fan to “the shield” (i.e. the NFL insignia).
This year, for the first time, I am starting a season without
the NFL Sunday Ticket. I am no longer
paying a plug nickel to the league. Will
I watch games on TV? Sure. But not nearly as many of them. I can no longer name all the players on any
NFL roster. Nor do I care to.
The way I feel, I haven’t left the league. The league has left me. It left me when it refused to go public
about the full consequences of repeated concussions. It left me when it refused to impose stiff
penalties for players who repeatedly endanger other players’ lives with dirty
hits. It left me when it decided to
impose significant punishments for minor transgressions, but minor punishments
for domestic violence. It left me when
it condoned bullying in NFL locker rooms.
It left me when it fined players for wearing low socks or orange shoes,
but has refused to take a stand against
team names that are racist. (See, e.g.,
my local team, where the billionaire white-skinned owner employs primarily brown-skinned
men to fight for the “Redskins”.)
I realize that there is only so much that the NFL can do to
clean up its sport. The game is
inherently dangerous, and it will always involve more violence than, say,
golf. But this being the 21st
century, the league has an obligation to at least do its best to stay within
the bounds of sanity. Ray Rice is filmed
dragging a woman out of an elevator after knocking her unconscious, and he gets
a two-game suspension. Brandon
Meriweather is filmed spearing another player – his sixth offense for a
dangerous hit – and he gets a two-game suspension. Meanwhile, multiple players have been
suspended for entire seasons for smoking pot.
The NFL talks about getting tough on concussions. But right now, Wes Welker, who has been
concussed three times in the past 10 months, is preparing to go for four. And Darrius Hayward-Bey, whose career has
included five concussions, is heading back to the field as the well. Is the NFL standing in their way? Heck no.
It’s not like they are preparing to violate the league’s uniform
policies by wearing the wrong socks – then the league would step in.
In 2012 and 2013, NFL players suffered a total of roughly
500 concussions. We now have reason to
believe that a number of the men who suffered these blows will ultimately
undergo terrible physical and psychological anguish as a result, and some may
even take their own lives. Does the
league care? Ask the next guy who
Brandon Meriweather spears when he finishes serving his two-game suspension.
Periodically, fans hear rumblings that the league wants to
increase the season from 16 games to 18 games.
That’s two more head-banging balls a year. Just what the gladiators need, right? The fans aren’t clamoring for more
games. The fans like it when the players
can stay healthy for as many seasons as possible before the players finally “give
in to father time” and prepare themselves for a life of such symptoms as: “headache, confusion, memory loss, loss of
consciousness, vision change, hearing change, mood change, fatigue, [and] malaise.”
Those symptoms are taken from the NFL
Player Concussion Pamphlet. And they
only reference the head injuries. As we
all know, many a player has so mangled his knees or his feet that he has had to
retire before he could destroy his brain.
Some can never again walk without a limp, but at least they’re not suffering
from “chronic traumatic encephalopathy” like the players who have had their “bells
rung” a few times too many.
In 2012, when the NFL players suffered over 250 concussions,
Roger Goodell, the league Commissioner, “earned” over $44 million. A tiny fraction of that money came from my
NFL Sunday Ticket revenues. Well, my
fellow addicts, I can’t claim to have clean hands here. I’ll surely watch some games, and because of
folks like me, the league will command higher advertising dollars. But at least I won’t be tossing them the big
bucks any more. I don’t plan on going to
any games. And I don’t plan on buying
any more merchandise. If the league
wants more of my support, it had better change its priorities. And its Commissioner.
I wonder who feels worse – Goodell, for accepting $44
million per year for running his league into the ground, or the player who wakes
up every morning with his ears ringing, eyes blurry, and head aching. I
think I’d rather be the guy with the injured brain but the clear
conscience.
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