It’s two weeks into the NFL season and I have not yet watched a single game.
Over the past year, I have wrestled with my position on football. Faced with an increasingly unanimous body of evidence that determines football to have deeply troubling and severe long-term health effects on its participants, it is harder than ever for an individual to support the sport without at least questioning its place in our society. For me, this reflection led to a decision to abstain from watching the NFL. I’m not trying to convince anyone else that my position of football abstinence is the right one, only to detail how I came to this conclusion.
I played football for six years, from seventh grade through the end of my senior year in high school. I loved my time in the sport. Yes, the morning after games were full of pain and headaches, but nothing else has come close to replicating the unadulterated thrill of Friday night lights.
Every Sunday, I’d sit down to watch the Browns game with my dad or, if they played at home, go to the game downtown. This was the bonding time I had with my grandfather, someone who had tickets since the mid-80s. I cherished attending the games together, despite the fact they nearly always ended in frustration or disappointment. Overall, I didn’t have anything close to a tortured relationship to football; I loved it.
However, as the gloss of Friday night lights wore off and the realities of adulthood set in, football seemed to make less and less sense to me. I could no longer make it to every home game with my grandfather. Former teammates who went to other colleges to continue their playing careers quit after getting bad concussions or simply because they fell out of love with the game. My interest in other sports grew once my playing career ended, and my relationship with football suffered as a result. For example, the most memorable experience I had with football within the last year was almost having to walk out of the film Concussion because its upsetting subject matter resonated all too soundly.
This disillusionment reached a crescendo due to the NFL’s increasingly infuriating inability to cope with a myriad of issues, namely player safety and conduct. In addition to feeling uncomfortable with reveling in legalized warfare, it is equally enraging to see the NFL time and time again refuse to commit itself towards solving issues such as domestic assault. Rapists and abusers are not only tolerated, but accepted and supported in the NFL system.
Because of the NFL’s inaction, I made the decision that I would not commit any more of my time to the NFL the way I once did. Whereas I used to watch football from 1 to 11 p.m. on Sundays, I now find that this free time is rather refreshing. There are plenty of sports that, although full of risks, do not carry even a remotely comparable level of danger. And hey, I didn’t even have to sit through the Browns miserable collapse against the Ravens last Sunday.
I don’t mean to be preachy, pedantic or moralistic, but this decision is not one I see myself regretting anytime soon. I shudder to think about what future generations will think of us when they come across our contemporary gladiator matches, a multi-billion-dollar industry predicated on grown men bludgeoning their heads together for our enjoyment at their expense.