Very often, necessity forces us to learn. I was forced to adopt debit cards when a local bank had trouble coming up with cash to provide me one day. Surely the Tiger football opener is coming up soon. Sometimes in the past I have consulted the "Minnesota Scores" website for schedule and background info. Probably I'll check there to see if the new schedules are posted. I believe the old "Pheasant Country Sports" site has been discontinued.
The fact that sports is gone from our "on paper" school calendar is a signal, I feel, that the whole paper calendar is on the way out. You're probably looking at the last one. School can save money by skipping this. The yanking of the sports info was sort of a mean trick to pull on the businesses that buy advertising in the school calendar.
So, is the 2019 football opener home or away? I don't buy game tickets. I'll pass by Big Cat Stadium on home opener night out of curiosity to see the amount of community interest. Brace yourselves, because I'm about to say that I hope community interest diminishes. If you've ever sampled my writing before, you know why. The primary reason is student safety, the safety of the students who choose to play the dangerous game of football.
Knowledge builds
There is an August 20 article on the Minnpost site by Susan Perry, that adds to the constant disturbing flow of news about football. The headline is "Routine hits to the head, not just concussions, may cause brain damage in football players, study finds."
Information of this type began rolling out long ago. The sensible reaction would be for us to put aside football in our lives and seek a replacement.
Put aside football? It seems a rather shocking suggestion. Surely we'd have a void on weekends, wouldn't we? We feed the beast of football with our interest. The sport can only become diminished when we discontinue our interest. Locally that means we should stop supporting the high school and college programs. UMM has well-developed soccer programs to fill any void. High school has volleyball which is for the girls. Well congratulations to the girls. They're engaged in a safe sport, one that leaves them unscathed by the time they're done.
We used to talk about girls being disadvantaged when it came to sports. I mean, disadvantaged to the extent they didn't have any! And then when it got going, it had to proceed through developmental steps. The law helped ensure that this development would go the whole way, and it has.
We depend on Democratic politicians for this sort of thing, not Republicans. Republicans are happy once it's all over. They are happy that their own daughters benefit. But society can never depend on Republicans to get the ball rolling with this sort of fundamental change.
We are left with the old football model for boys. They are treated like gladiators. We suggest to them that football is a badge of manhood. Boys must show how "tough" they are. I doubt that today's young people are much impressed by these notions.
There have been halting steps away from the old "macho" model, such as less contact in practice. The halting steps forward are not nearly enough of course. Enlightenment will not have been gained until we take the obviously needed stop of eliminating the sport. Surely the sport is not essential.
Susan Perry's August 20 article was prompted by a study in the journal "Science Advances." She quotes the author saying "public perception is that the big hits are the only ones that matter." Author Brad Mahon advises a closer look. He writes that "the public is missing what's likely causing the long-term damage in players' brains. It's not just the concussions. It's everyday hits too."
Mahon is adding to the research but the findings are nothing really new. We have heard a lot about "sub-concussive hits." I don't know how many more times I'll have to write about this. I'd love to be surprised as I stop at Big Cat Stadium early in the fall, surprised to see greatly diminished interest. Wouldn't it be wonderful if no fans at all showed up? That's only a dream at this point. The phasing out of football will be like turning a barge around in a river.
The fans are safe from the injuries. We have spent so much of our lives enjoying football. In theory it would be easy erasing this entertainment and finding something else. Surely it would be easy for the boys to find other outlets. And that's a problem too: a sport associated totally with "boys." It seems outdated. Too dangerous for girls? Well it's too dangerous for boys too.
Other considerations too
And there's more than the health angle, as I see it. There is the general cultural angle, the whole idea that our towns need to compete with each other. We live in an increasingly mobile society. We don't draw lines between communities anymore, or see them as isolated islands. High school kids of a particular town ought to see their peers in nearby towns as friends and compatriots as they prepare to embark on adult life. Not as rivals.
What does it prove when a team of athletes can overwhelm a sports rival? I remember watching a Tiger game at Big Cat, on one of those occasions where we lost, and it was clear we were just being worn down toward the end. I thought it was sad. There was no need for our boys' self-esteem to be chafed at.
The physical prowess involved in football says nothing about your character or intelligence - nothing. The helmet you wear provides only the illusion of protection. A helmet! How stupid.
I could suggest another reason why I feel football ought to fade, to disappear. And here I'll quote from an unlikely source. It's not just an online comment, it's a response to a comment! You never know where you'll find wisdom. The comments are below an article on the decline of football participation in California.
The article suggests that parents' fears of injury are a main factor. But a response supplies some sage additional perspective. Please heed: "It's not that they are not playing for fear of injury. They're not playing because technology has given more things to do with less work. They don't want to work that hard, goes for all sports."
One could expound much further on the point made here, how it permeates many areas of our general lifestyle. Football might be seen as a relic from a time when "labor" was generally unpleasant. Such jobs are still with us of course. But tech enables us to get from point 'A' to 'B' so much more efficiently. We grasp work differently. Hours of sweating away on the football practice field just doesn't seem as admirable anymore. It's just a questionable way of spending one's time.
For what it is worth I will plea: Stay home from the MACA football opener. Send a message with your absence. The school administration will listen, I assure you. I think they'd be happier in a world without football than with it. Let them know it's OK to think like this.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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