Carson Palmer’s short “retirement” showed how hollow all of football’s war metaphors really are.
There are a lot of dumb sports clichés that are passed from generation to generation, through sports sections and ESPN programming. Carson Palmer managed to avoid nearly all of them when he opted for semi-retirement in lieu of another soul-crushing season in Cincinnati. Palmer wasn’t ridiculed by the national media with war-like metaphors for him “quitting on his teammates”, “giving up when the going got tough” or being “selfish,” like dozens of other players are every year. The fact is he exercised his right to no longer play football, nothing more.
There are plenty of possible reasons Palmer was spared the onslaught of dimwitted criticism. Perhaps it’s because he’s white, no one cares about Cincinnati (and was traded to this “Oakland” I’ve heard very little about, other than the late Al Davis), he’s a quarterback, and he’s not a “diva.” But, none of these pass the sniff test. Jay Culter is also a white quarterback, and he was victimized by these clichés during the NFC championship game, and Chad Ochocinco certainly heard the same criticism while he played for the lowly Bengals. Maybe the real reason is that Palmer forced us to come to terms with how stupid these criticisms truly are.
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Tom Ley wrote a piece I really admired, about how athletes have been made larger than life and militarized for marketing purposes. But, the militarization and “technofetishism” (Ley’s phrase) of athletes goes beyond marketing presentations. Athletes embrace these parallels. To wit, the famous Saints pregame chant—which is intense, yet coordinated—was introduced to the team by quarterback Drew Brees after training with Marines at Guantanamo Bay.
Next time you watch a primetime football game, take a drink every time you hear the following phrases from the commentators (most of whom are former players or coaches): in the trenches, battle, blitz (the term is an homage to the German military’s concentrated “lightning attack” strategy employed from 1939-1942), bullet pass, kill, destroy, rifle (as in “rifled that pass”), blew up (“he blew up that play”), or just the word “war”. I would wager your speech will be as incoherent as Tim McCarver’s by halftime.
The militarization of football terminology extends to the team mentality as well. A player might be described as someone you would “want to be in a foxhole with” or who you’d “want to go to war with”. Players are supposed to “put the team first”, which is a distant cousin of the oath soldiers must make to put the country’s best interests ahead of their own. Likewise, when a starter is injured, you often hear players speak about the “next man in line,” which is an homage to replacing the forward-most soldiers in battle.
Of course, I don’t have to convince you these comparisons are dramatized. Sure, football is dangerous from a civilian perspective, but it’s much less harmful—and much better compensated—than being a soldier. Football coaches and players know they can’t compare to soldiers, but the mentality is a useful motivator.
Palmer avoided these clichés because he opted out of the whole affair. Usually, these terms are employed when referring to the game itself, or a troublemaker who is still collecting paychecks and attending practices. Palmer took part in none of these activities, gave up his lucrative paychecks, and decided he would rather tailgate with USC fans. In a sense, he overcame the ridiculous metaphors by exemplifying how silly they are; you can always walk away from football, but you can’t quit war.
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Football isn’t war, and Carson Palmer didn’t fail to uphold any oath. He simply didn’t want to play football for a specific team anymore, and exercised his very reasonable right to labor for whatever enterprise he desires. Not only that, but his actions served as a reminder to everyone that players have no obligations to their fellow teammates, and certainly not to their organizations. The hybrid football-war clichés fell apart before they could ever be written.
Unlike war, players have no obligations to anyone other than themselves. Professional sports are inherently selfish, since the current model rewards individual accomplishments much more than collective accomplishments, as contracts are offered almost entirely based on individual player performance. Athletes are simply employees for a medium-sized, for-profit enterprise (like many of you, I would imagine). Anything else you, the athletes, or the media glean from their on-field performance is a metaphor waiting to be blown up in the backfield.
—Photo army.arch/Flickr
Totally agree about too many war metaphors in sports, though I’m not sure how today compares with earlier eras. I suspect that you heard a lot more boxing and brawling metaphors which have been replaced by conventional military metaphors. (You will notice there are not any “unconventional” warfare metaphors – no insurgency or guerrillas or terrorists or suicide bombers. What was the old wedgebuster but a suicide bomber??) I worry much more about the flip side, the use of sports metaphors in military affairs, referring to the “ground game” and the “nuclear football” and the idea of operations being like… Read more »