The OLD Philosopher – John M. Miller
Why do Americans, and almost only Americans of all the world’s nationalities, play football? To answer that question, let us first note that while Americans call our relatively new Number One Pastime “football,” the rest of the world does not use that nomenclature. And what the rest of the world properly calls “football,” Americans call “soccer,” in the linguistic peculiarities which so often characterizes American English.
“Soccer” is the only genuine football, because feet are the body parts which connect with the round (not spherical) ball most frequently. Under certain conditions, heads or chests may also smite the ball, but hands are forbidden to be used to propel the football (which to us looks like a volleyball) in a particular direction.
In American football, on the other --- you should pardon the expression --- hand, hands are the primary appendages which are used to direct the ball through the air (a forward pass) or “on the ground” (in the arm and hand, or arms and hands, of a “runner.”) Thus American football should more appropriately be called “handball,” except that there is already another game called handball. (It’s all quite complicated.)
Again we ask, why do Americans play American football? It is a violent sport. Anyone who denies that denies reality. Such people are only kidding themselves.
But why would anyone thus try deceive themselves? It is because they want to avoid the obvious truth that young boys and teenage boys and college young men and post-college Really Big Men go onto football fields every autumn and early winter and deliberately smash one another onto somewhat forgiving artificial turf or the immovable and solid actual turf.
In real football (soccer), nobody is supposed to trip anyone else onto the turf. In American football, however, most of the players specifically try to hurl one another to the ground, while a few other players are trying to advance the ball without being summarily so smitten. If they emerge from the play without having their legs or their torsos touch the turf, they might score a touchdown, unless they trip over their own feet, which sometimes happens.
If it sounds like I am making fun of American football, it is because in a way I am. Our brand of sphereoidball is dangerously ridiculous. But millions of us love it.
Why? Why has football replaced baseball as the national sport? At the most fundamental level, it is because our type of football is so violent.
Violence is written into every chapter of American history. Violence was perpetrated upon the indigenous peoples when the Thirteen Colonies were established. It continued unabated against the natives all the way west until our nation stretched from sea to shining sea. Violence was employed to make us an independent nation from our original British masters. Violence resulted in six or seven hundred thousand people being killed in our Civil War. America was a belated resorter to violence in World Wars I and II. Our military and foreign policies since 1945 have thrust us into shooting wars throughout the world. “V” doesn’t stand for “Victory!” in America; it stands for “Violence.”
Now for the primary and very serious purpose in the writing of this essay.
Vincent Jackson is the latest NFL player to die from CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy. He played in the NFL for twelve years, and he died from having his brain battered too many times. He was hardly the first to die from this entirely human-caused condition, nor shall he be the last. His death, like all the others, is a tragedy, because it did not have to happen. There was and is no reason for it, because American football is a highly unreasonable game. That males deliberately try to knock each down is the epitome of senselessness. Furthermore, it leaves a fortunately small but significant percentage of them temporarily or permanently senseless.
Would “flag” football fly in America? Flag football is where anyone the rules allow to advance the ball has two flags (somewhat like tea towels, except that they are much lighter and more slippery) stuffed into each side of their football uniforms at the waist. When someone snatches the flag from the side of a player who is moving the ball forward in any fashion, he is considered “tackled,” and the play is over.
In flag football, almost no one ever gets hurt. Would flag football fly in America? Almost certainly it would not. And why? Because there is no intended violence as the integral rationale of the game. However, we would be better off if flags were out tackles.
Americans, perhaps more than most other ethnicities, and likely as much as any of the most warlike ethnicities, love their violence. We kill more people with guns than anyone else on earth, except those who are actually at war with one another.
For us, our football is the equivalent of a bullfight. It is running before the bulls at Pamplona. It is hockey players smashing one another into the boards, except that unlike the Canadians, we have never had enough natural ice to make hockey a widely popular American sport throughout this great land of ours.
Years ago, the NFL had what was called the Pro Bowl after the Super Bowl. In it, the best players at all the positions in the two conferences (the NFC and the AFC) came together to play what was a serious, and seriously violent, game.
For decades the Pro Bowl was held after the Super Bowl. Then it was decided that the best players on the two Super Bowl teams were at a disadvantage, because they tended not to play in the Pro Bowl. They might get hurt and be unable to play in the Super Bowl. (Injuries have become a growing problem for every high school, college, or professional football team. The players keep getting bigger, and thus more powerful, and thus more prone to put one another into the ER and the operating room.)
There was no Pro Bowl in the 2020 season because of COVID. There may be none for the 2021 season for the same reason. Besides, the Pro Bowl has become a stylized version of flag football anyway, and the “fun” (i.e., the banging, bruising, and bashing) has been taken out of it. It is a veritable walk in the park on a very pleasant day.
Could flag football ever fly? Probably not. If there are no thunderous tackles, if extraordinarily strong men are not flattened before our very eyes, what’s the point of watching anyway?
Thus there will be many more Vincent Jacksons who die early, many more men who are crippled for life, many more men who, while able to navigate upright for the remainder of their lives, will hurt every day in every way, for the remainder of their unnatural lives.
God, help us. – December 17, 2021
John Miller is Pastor of The Chapel Without Walls on Hilton Head Island, SC. More of his writings may be viewed at www.chapelwithoutwalls.org.