A sport I know little about--but here goes

[Thats my opinion]

If George Will can write an occasional piece about baseball, why shouldn’t I get by writing an occasional piece about football? To be perfectly honest, beyond the sixth grade I have never put on a football uniform, made a tackle or caught a pass—except in sandlot pickup games. And I admit to being incapable of staying awake during the rare TV games I have tried to watch.

When in Australia I was a fan of Aussie Rules Football, and was on the cheer squad of the St. Kilda Saints. There are two hours of action without pads or time outs. I have even seen injured players carried off the field while the game goes on. The field is about twice the size of our football layout and players will run a half marathon during the game. There are only four substitutes on each side. Aussie Rules is a combination of football, soccer, rugby and mayhem. The squad able to field enough uninjured players at the end of the season will probably win the “Grand Final.” They call American football, “gridiron,” and poke fun at our eight seconds of action followed by a committee meeting, and then time out for a commercial.

A while back the New York Times ran a slide show depicting football history at the University of Chicago. Once the “Monsters of the Midway,” the U of C fielded a football powerhouse and in 1903 won the national championship. In the 30s they gave up the game as beneath scholarly contempt, only to reconstitute it as a club sport some years ater. I lived directly across from Stagg Field—there was no stadium by the 70’s—and I would go to the games Saturday afternoons when the Uof C played small colleges—mostly just for fun.

The band consisted of a brass quintet, which played music from Gabrieli, a 16th century classical composer, during the breaks. At halftime I was part of the mighty marching kazoo band. We had a large kayak, which looked something like a giant kazoo, and we would follow it around the field tooting on our own tin instruments. The cheers were ordinarily about the life of the mind. It was all a spoof and somehow represented the intellectual snobbery of that great institution.

I was reminded of all of this after reading a long article in last month’s Atlantic
detailing the ongoing malaise of college sports. The author held that the players are in reality unpaid workers who are taken advantage of by institutions which make millions from their labor, and who turn them back into the world most often with an inferior, even useless education. Always held out is the promise of a lucrative career in professional sports, but the statistics indicate that only a tiny minority ever invade that rarified atmosphere. Many leave school—if they graduate at all—broken in body and bereft of useable skills.

One Autumn I taught a section of English 101, which included a few freshmen football recruits. Attendance was spotty and class participation almost nonexistent. But the three assigned papers were Bs. Yet in the class discussion it became obvious that they were written, or at least substantially supported, by whoever in the athlete’s dorm served as tutors. When I raised this with the dean, the response was a smile.

Perhaps all of his is but a symptom of a disease, which has ensnarled almost all of American life. Everything has been commodified. We and all we do are now subject to the dynamics of the marketplace. No longer is a sport played for the joy of the competition, but for the market value. The recent movie, “Money Ball,” is a solid case in point. It’s all a matter of big bucks, and the end product of a culture in which capitalism has become the reason for being of practically everything. Players’ contracts are bought and sold just like pork bellies. And every ticket we buy, game we watch and commercial we sit through makes us all part of that commodification.

If that is not depressing enough, consider the plight of the Red Sox, Braves , Yankees and alas, my Los Angeles Angels.