Culture shock

Alright, I can't wait. I need to blog about the NFL and how much I despise it. I'm going to do my best to avoid writing this as an angry rant. I'm going to make as many efforts as I can to write a well-constructed set of claims about the culture of the league and how there's no way that it's okay as a sport. As with my previous post, and with any post that I have, my goal is not to impose a belief upon you - it is to get you to think about your own life and why you place value on the things you believe.

My first problem with the NFL is one that can be extrapolated throughout the world of sports, but a problem with which the NFL provides the greatest number of examples. There are things that professional athletes do that they get an equivalent of a slap on the wrist for, a handful of games and a handful of cash as a penalty, that us normal folk would be arrested for. Fired-on-the-spot, don't-bother-packing-up-your-things acts that equate to a suspension of a few games for professional athletes.

The larger issue that I have is regarding the culture of the sport. It shouldn't matter that the sport is predicated on successfully bringing down someone else to the ground. It seems as though very few players in the league have a keen, publicly-stated understanding of what the sport is truly like. There's this incredibly vivid image of what a football player is supposed to be like. Tough. Macho-man. Strong. Warrior. Substitute any synonym for 'masculine' that you want, and you're going to have an accurate description of what people think a football player should be. The problem is that this is what makes the game worse - it's a self-generating loop where the more we see bone-crushing hits, the more we expect the rest of the league to do the same, and the rest of the league reacts in response to what our expectations are. Players, past and current, are blind to this because they're in too deep.

Football is not a good outlet for aggression, either. Go find any study regarding violent video games and school shooting and you're going to find a similar argument. Football is what makes the aggression worse. The culture of the sport trickles into the personal lives of a number of football players, and you see guys doing things that make absolutely no sense for someone to be doing. And I'm done with it. I'm done thinking that the NFL can exist in a positive light in this regard. There are too many people doing too many stupid things, and it's a result of having to live up to the expectations of the fans and everyone in the game. If you're not tough, you don't belong in football, and what we end up with is a group of people who have no idea how to conduct themselves.

I'm not making sweeping generalizations here. I'm not saying that there are no NFL players who should be role models. Some of them are worth paying attention to. There are just more who aren't.