O.K. I know that grown men have cried when their super ball team lost on Sunday. Millions of Americans watched this gladiator blood sport. I don't get it.
Many years ago I would be so judgmental about this particular sport. Why would anyone want to watch people hurting one another?? Years pass and I learned to shut up and just observe this weird thing we know of as football. Of course, I would never have let my own kids play this sport. I was O.K. with soccer, baseball, basketball, tennis and swimming.
Now we know for sure that football damages the players. They have injuries that will be in their bodies and brains forever. We select the athletically best of our young men to spend themselves on the altar of football.
For many of our young men, almost always African Americans, football seems the best way out of poverty. I think that in doing this we may as well have been putting those muscled young men on the slavery block to be bought by the big business of professional sports. We send them to college first, and everyone knows that this is a farce because they are so ill prepared. Then they are bought by big business- the business of football. We pay them exorbitant amounts to play (and wreck their futures!).
But this is big business! All those ads! All the hype! Hotels and car rentals get big returns from the Super Bowl. Why are we surprised when our 'favorite quarterbacks' get into deep trouble with sexual assaults and domestic violence? Why are we surprised when we hear so often about our pro players cannot keep their financial lives together? Why are we surprised that such a large proportion of retired players have some kind of dementia from having their heads bashed again and again?
This so called sport is crazy and inhuman.
