When UNnecessity is the Mother of Invention

I want to discuss something very politically incorrect for a minute. I’m risking pissing some people off…like my husband and anyone else who looks forward to autumn for more than cooler temperatures and colorful foliage…but I think it needs to be said.

Football is barbaric.

Now before you shut me down and move onto the Bleacher Report, there are some things you need to know:

(1)    I love football too.

(2)    I spent about 15 hours this weekend watching 4 different games.

(3)    At one time in the not-too-distant past, our family held season tickets to two college football programs and season tickets to an NFL franchise team over 1000 miles away.

So I’m not out to cut down something I just don’t like or don’t understand. I’ve never personally known anyone who was seriously injured playing football. I don’t have a child who currently plays football.

I don’t really have a dog in this fight.

It’s just that I came to a realization (during my 15 hours of football spectatorship) this weekend that football is pretty violent and incredibly dangerous – even with all the training and precautions that are taken. It hit me during a timeout when one of the on-field commentators was oohing and ahhing over this contraption that was developed by someone on the football team’s training staff.  It was a pop-up tent – kind of like a pop-up camper – that was a mobile medical examination room on the sidelines.

The trainer who developed it did so to minimize the time it took between when a player was injured on the field and when someone could examine the damage. It drew the commentator’s attention after a particularly disturbing knee injury that had taken place on the field and instead of whisking the player off to the locker room, he was whisked over to this popup tent where we has attended to by medical staff.

The commentator thought it was really cool and gushed about what a great idea it was…and she was right. I’m all in favor of people receiving urgent medical care through the quickest means possible, so in terms of patient care, this was pretty revolutionary. I’m sure it was appreciated by all of the injured players who had to utilize it during the game – of which there were several. I’m sure it was also appreciated by those players’ mothers.

But, is anyone else bothered by the fact that there are so many injuries in this sport that this mobile training unit is necessary? During my hours-long football viewing this weekend, I would estimate that I saw no fewer than 25 moderate to serious injuries which resulted in someone being assisted onto the sidelines or into the locker room. Four games – 25 injuries. That’s not a great track record – especially when you consider how much padding they are wearing.

Concussions, torn muscles and damaged connective tissue, broken bones, hyperextended joints…I’ve seen it all. My most vivid football watching memory is from back in 1985 when Lawrence Taylor sacked Joe Theisman causing a career-ending compound leg fracture. There was visible bone and the instant replay made it possible to see it numerous times from every angle imaginable.  It’s the closest I’ve ever come to throwing up from something I saw on TV. Gruesome. But none of it keeps me (or anyone else) from watching.

We just accept that it’s part of the game.

It’s part of a game where both teams are trying to take a ball away from one another and they are expected to risk life and limb (both their own and that of their opponent) to stop the other team’s progress. We expect to see men sliding across the grass, tumbling over one another, and diving over piles of peers to land on their shoulders in the end zone. It’s similar to what we expect of our military…laying it all on the line for the greater good…only in this case, the greater good is 6 points on the scoreboard and a chance at a 7^th.

But I wonder about 200 or 500 or 1000 years from now…how will this be viewed?

When I studied the Roman Empire in school, the gladiator games were taught as an example of exploitation of power and excessive cruelty by public officials. Early on, slaves and criminals were sentenced to gladiator schools where they were trained in combat for the purposes of entertaining the people of a city in the public arena.

Fight well or die well – and if you died, it was all ok because you deserved it for being either poor, alien, or criminal.

But in the late republic, almost half of the gladiators were paid volunteers. For poor citizens or foreigners, enrolling in gladiator school was a potential fast track to social acceptance. You learned a trade; they fed you; they housed you. It was a fighting chance (literally) at fame and fortune for those who would had otherwise eluded the good life because of the station into which they were born. In addition, gladiator games offered cheap and exciting entertainment to the masses while offering sponsors highly effective opportunities for self-promotion. Gladiator schools were owned by the state and in some cases by private individuals to whom these gladiators were sworn and contracted. Their trade was subject to official oversight.

Does this sound at all familiar? Shall I describe for you the public spaces that were appropriated for larger arenas with more and more seating as the popularity of gladiator games grew?

The eventual decline of gladiator games occurred with the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire. In one failed attempt at imperial legislation to end them for good (failed, because he ignored his own law), Constantine declared the following:

In times in which peace and peace relating to domestic affairs prevail, bloody demonstrations displease us. Therefore, we order that there may be no more gladiator combats. Those who were condemned to become gladiators for their crimes are to work from now on in the mines. Thus they pay for their crimes without having to pour their blood.

That’s pretty progressive when you consider that we don’t even take a football break for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  In fact, these days, football is often part of the celebration.

Thankfully, we don’t force a fight to the death on the football field. I’d like to believe that we wouldn’t celebrate that on the level they did in ancient Rome. Instead of Fight Well or Die Well, it’s more like Fight Well and Pray You Don’t Get Hurt, but if you do, we have the best medical available for you…in this tent over here on the sidelines. And you get free Gatorade during timeouts.

Most historical accounts agree that gladiator games existed in one form or fashion for around 1000 years, so if football does go the way of the do-do, it won’t likely be in my lifetime. I don’t know ya’ll…it just seems to me that our descendants 10 generations from now may look back at football someday with disdain. I’m sure they’ll do it while celebrating some other equally dangerous form of sport or entertainment, but they will criticize us nonetheless.

In the meantime, I’m sure I’ll continue to watch those who battle it out on the gridiron each week. When my teams take the field…and up until the first 280-pound player is carried off the field by 4 trainers…I’ll be screaming like those barbaric Romans did early in the first millennium CE. But after that injury…when the tent pops up on the sideline, or the golf cart speeds toward the locker room… I’ll remember for a moment that I won’t even let my own son play this sport because I think it’s too dangerous and I’ll probably start counting injuries again instead of touchdowns.

Just something to think about.