Football is a tough sport, and there are some who are questioning the ethics of playing the sport at all. Writing for the New York Times, William C. Rhoden denounced football as “evidence of erosion in the American soul.” Now, the knee-jerk reaction to a statement like this, especially in the South, is to merely dismiss this statement, as quite bluntly, “sissy.” However, if we are to win the argument for football, and I believe that we can and should, we must argue effectively, winsomely and wisely.
First, we must squarely acknowledge that football is a sport, like all sports, in which participants can be injured. I have been hurt playing high school football, like all high school football players; I have, by playing the sport, participated in injuring other players, and I have had friends and teammates seriously hurt in playing the sport. I remember my coach telling us that TSSAA required him to tell us that if we hit with our heads down or speared another player we could snap our spinal cords and spend the rest of our lives watching football from a wheelchair. We all laughed it off, but it happens: it is not a joke, but I still believe in football. Besides, all good things contain risk: swimming, loving, driving, and eating a rare steak.
Football, and sports in general, is one of the last safe havens for masculinity in a sea of emasculation. Our culture is systematically neutering our sons, but football rewards controlled, disciplined aggression and brotherly sacrifice. Some may point out that some football players are everything except humble, but have you ever seen a guard brag about a block on camera? I have not. Plus, I’ve never seen a player, even Johnny Football, win a game alone. Football teaches teamwork in a very special and very needed way.
Football is an aggressive, violent game; I realize for some this automatically disqualifies the sport, but why should it? All the violence in the sport is secondary to the final goal, which is to score points. There are no points awarded for tackles, no points awarded for shedding a block, and no points awarded for trucking a corner. Football, in its essence, does not glorify injuring another player, and if you contend that it does, then why would we make it harder to hurt an opponent by giving him pads and a helmet with a facemask? Why would there be rules about who can be hit and when they can be hit? Additionally, the aggression and violence in football are not inherently wicked. Watch two little boys play cowboys and tell me that aggression is not hardwired into them, part of their DNA. The solution is not to take the aggression out of little boys; instead, we teach them to channel it for good purposes, using tools like football.
