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For high schoolers, football can be a proud badge of being human. So how do we keep that and yet acknowledge the toll of brain injuries in the NFL? Jessicah Lahitou explores the issues.
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I had seen the movie Friday Night Lights when I first moved to teach in rural Texas from Denver.
To know that such small town football devotion existed was one thing; to experience the phenomenon in the humid black night of central Texas in September was something akin to revelation.
In a town whose population numbered in the hundreds, it looked plausible that every resident showed up to the on game I attended, either seated on a steely bleacher or sipping a (banned) beer in the dirt “parking lot” behind the field. The parents of players, and grandparents, and godparents, and uncles, and aunts, and cousins, and neighbors.
Somewhere, too, were all the students I taught. Suited up on the field or cheering on the sideline or huddled with friends, like so many human satellites orbiting the green’s periphery.
I had shown up strictly out of curiosity. I’m not an avid sports follower, no true fan of any one sport or team. And the suburbs where I grew up did not elevate high school football to local deity status. But that night was the Homecoming game, and several students had impressed upon me the great import of this event.
Given the previous week, I suppose I had also pre-passed judgment on Texas small town culture. Singular to the Lone Star State, high school girls traditionally wear something called a “Mum” on Homecoming. I had seen many of these elaborate crafts already, as female students trotted them around from class to class, eager to show off their personal Mum in the making.
The Mum likely began as an elaborate corsage, but somewhere along the line, things got rather out of hand. Around an outrageously large bloom, girls attach floor-length ribbons, bedazzled by hand with sequins, bells and ruffles. At the start of halftime, the elected Homecoming royalty was announced. Of the honored ladies, only one side of their dresses were visible. The gown’s other half was obscured completely by their Mums, billowing, hand-sewn testaments to kitsch.
Whether by exhaustion from teaching all day, or the heat, or the mosquitos, or the loneliness of so clearly not belonging, I stayed only through halftime. Our team was losing; I was informed by many spectators that they never won any games. I felt I had nothing much to gain from suffering it out until the end.
But on the drive home, I had a change of heart. I felt suddenly a warmth towards these Friday Night Lights true believers. They had allowed me a small glimpse through the gauze of mystery surrounding any foreign culture, and what I saw was real community. That elusive interweaving of souls so obviously absent from many 21st century lives.
And all it took was eleven helmeted teenage boys fighting for control of a football.
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The NFL is no small town. Among other things, it is big business. Forbes reports that the NFL made over 9 billion dollars last year. Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner, has set a goal to reach 25 billions dollars by 2027.
Interestingly: the NFL recently admitted that approximately one-third of its players will experience “long term cognitive problems.”
In case you breezed over it: that’s one out of every three players. Will experience serious brain trauma in the course of playing football.
Adults have a right to engage in risky activities, and NFL players are compensated handsomely for their athletic talents. Whether or not it is justified to trade the final few decades of life for a young adulthood of cash, prestige, and playing a game you love ought to be a decision left to the player himself.
What I wonder about is the fan base. How many of us can truly feel at ease with watching someone suffer a potentially life-altering injury? In real time? Many current fans are no doubt inoculated to the reality, and many more would argue the physical stakes of play are what make football so exciting.
But football’s future will depend on new generations of fans. There is evidence those numbers are already shrinking. A growing number of parents understandably prohibit their sons from playing. A Missouri district recently banned football outright.
Fewer boys who play and fewer schools with teams will mean fewer future fans.
And yet, it is at the high school level where football is least dangerous. These are not 350-lb grown men hurling themselves at one another. For the most part, high school players are beginners, often quite literally lightweights, and their motivation for joining the team is not mega paychecks. It is often camaraderie.
This is not something I have regularly thought about, given that football has often seemed, to me, as frivolous and odd as those Mums my first students wore to Homecoming. All that work and effort into a fleeting flash of something creative, something momentarily pretty.
To an outsider, the fanaticism appears ridiculous.
But to those young people who love it, who know it – it is so much more. It is history, it is belonging. It is a way of honoring your family. It is a symbol of where you come from.
It is, at some fundamental level, a proud badge of being human. And as such, I hope there is a way to preserve Friday Night Lights without ignoring the terrible toll of NFL play.
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Photo credit: Getty Images