JRN 362 - Lecture Twenty-Two

JRN 362/SPS 362 Story of Football
Rich Hanley, Associate Professor
Lecture Twenty-Two

Review
• “DEDICATED TO THE JOY OF
MANLY CONTEST BY THE CLASS
OF 1879” reads the Harvard Stadium
dedication plaque unveiled in June
1904, less than a year after the
stadium opened in November 1903.

Review
• Sports writers in Boston considered
Harvard Stadium to be “sacred
ground” that stood as a rival to
buildings in the “in the ancient world
solely given up to athletic games."

Review
• Sacred ground is an appropriate
description.
• Football is America’s national
religion, celebrated throughout
autumn in rites marked by the
ecstasy and violence of the nation’s
dream life.

Review
• The game emerged when the
disappearing American frontier and
the lack of opportunities for the
educated class to prove its manhood
in front of other men became an
issue.
• From a rough “cross between rugby,
soccer, and a bar fight,“ football
evolved quickly.

Review
• From the 1890s to the 1920s,
football’s popularity soared wherever
it was played.
• From its cradle at Yale, to the West
Coast, to the football crescent
rimming the Great Lakes, and to the
deep South, football ruled autumn.

Review
• Within just a few short years from its
first recognizable, modern shape in
the 1870s, it had even come to
dominate the one national holiday
everyone celebrated – Thanksgiving.

Review
• This Nov. 26, 1949, cover of The
New Yorker magazine illustrates the
connection between football and the
national holiday – and its impact.
• Dad carves the turkey while watching
the game on television with the
family.

Review
• [This Nov. 27, 2023, cover of The
New Yorker magazine illustrates the
connection between football and the
national holiday – and its impact.
• Dad and the family are watching stuff
(football, probably) on phones. ]

Review
• In the 1890s and into the next
century, football on college campuses
became a socially acceptable and
exciting spectacle for both men and
women, who would attend games as
part of their autumnal social
calendars.

Review
• And the sport produced lots of stars
for the emerging electric media age
of radio, film and, after World War II,
television and eventually the internet
(see 2023 New Yorker cover earlier
in the presentation.

Review
• Red Grange of Illinois became the
first immortal star of the electric age,
running for Illinois and the Chicago
Bears.
• His appearance in a NFL game in
1925 gave the professional game the
credibility that it needed to grow.

Review
• Knute Rockne, an immigrant from
Norway, transformed a small college
in Indiana called Notre Dame into a
national football power with his
understanding of publicity and
relentless road trips that took the
team to the West Coast and to the
South.

Review
• Other pro star players and coaches
followed, from Sammy Baugh of
Washington. Johnny Unitas of
Baltimore and Jim Brown of
Cleveland to Joe Namath of the Jets,
Lawrence Taylor of the Giants,
Walter Payton of Chicago, Jerry Rice
of San Francisco, Barry Sanders of
Detroit and Tom Brady.

Review
• Great coaches likewise became
larger-than-life figures who stood for
authority and innovation.
• Paul Brown, Chuck Noll, Vince
Lombardi, Tom Landry, Don Shula,
Bill Walsh and Bill Belichick stand
among the great NFL coaches.

Review
• College players, too, became
immortal athletes, starting with the
All-American from Yale, Pudge
Heffelfinger, in the 19th century on
through the great running back and
two-time Heisman Trophy winner
Archie Griffin and into the21st century
with players such as Charles
Woodson and Kyler Murray.

Review
• College coaches who stand
alongside Rockne include Amos
Alonzo Stagg, Glenn Warner, Fritz
Crisler, Ned Yost, Bud Wilkinson, Ara
Parseghian, Nick Saban and the
great Bear Bryant, joined by LaVell
Edwards, Urban Meyer, Dabo
Swinney and Kirby Smart, among
others.

Review
• Football’s capacity to attract kids who
would become lifelong fans grew in
large measure because of these stars
and coaches and started as soon as
the press started covering games in
the 1880s.

Review
• Fictional heroes such as Frank
Merriwell of Yale created what would
become the dream life of football
stardom achieved through virtuous
means of a moral code and physical
courage.

Review
• And they were conditioned by popular
magazines and game program
covers to dream big to fit into the
defined narrative arc of the underdog
overcoming obstacles to win the
game and date the girl.
• Movies such as The Freshman
popularized that arc.

Review
• Yet football always had a dark side,
one that could not be ignored in the
face of its unyielding violence and
capacity to corrupt academic life.
• Deaths and injuries became
common, so much so that critics
sought to ban the game as early as
the 1890s.

Review
• Mass momentum formations such as
the flying wedge developed by
Harvard’s coach Lorin Deland caused
an untold number of injuries and led
to rioting in the stands and the
temporary cessation of emerging
rivalries between Yale and Harvard
and Army and Navy.

Review
• “The American game of football, as
now played, is unfit for colleges and
schools … As a spectacle football is
more brutalizing than prize fighting,
cock fighting, or bull fighting … “
wrote Charles Eliot, Harvard
president, in 1894, even before the
violent Yale-Harvard game that year.

Review
• “It is to be expected that before the
close of the season other young men
will have sacrificed their lives on the
gridiron …

Review
• “ … arms are being broken daily, legs
are wrenched, faces are disfigured,
scalps are torn, and a thousand and
one other accidents of a more or less
distressing nature are occurring in the
mad rushes of eleven against eleven
…,” wrote the Literary Digest in 1897.

Review
• College football banned the flying
wedge, and by 1905 had transformed
the game in the aftermath of the
death of dozens of players.
• Mass and concentrated momentum
plays gave way to open offenses that
would eventually feature the pass.

Review
• The 1905 rule changes also showed
football’s governing committee that it
could neutralize criticisms by
modifying rules.
• And the rules changed for more than
a century after that to the point where
the old game faded over time.

The Foot in Football
• We do know that what former Giants’
coach Bill Parcells said remains true
about the old game, despite modern
attempts to eliminate it as dull:
• You can’t take the foot out of football.

• In 1982, Washington kicker Mark
Moseley won the NFL’s Most
Valuable Player award for, among
other things, kicking a then-record 21
consecutive field goals in a strike-
shortened season.
• Washington won the Super Bowl that
season, beating Don Shula’s Miami
Dolphins 27-17.

• And in 1991, Buffalo kicker Scott
Norwood suffered the agony of defeat
when his game-winning attempt at
the end of the Super Bowl against the
Giants faded wide right.

• Tom Dempsey, born with a club foot,
set a record with a 63-yard field goal
in 1970.
• In 2013, Matt Prater, then of the
Broncos, beat it by a yard.

• Justin Tucker of the Ravens hit a 66-
yard field goal in September 2021 to
move the record close to 70 yards.
• The NCAA Division I record stands at
67 yards, a mark achieved by three
kickers in the 1970s.

• NFL kickers became so proficient at
extra points by 2014 (99.4 percent
made) that the NFL moved its
effective distance from 20 yards out
to 33 yards out.

• The NFL wants to take the foot out on
kickoffs, but it retains its importance
on the field, a vestige of the old-time
game when kicks counted for more
points than a TD.

• Punting likewise is in a diminished
state relative to its historical role.
• “People say. ‘it’s a third of the game,”
said Mike Westhoff, a retired special
teams coach. “It used to be, but it’s
not right now.”

• Modern analytics pointed to the value
of trying for a first down rather than
surrendering possession via a punt.
• Blame the Eagles for this.

• During his run to the Super Bowl in
the 2017 season, coach Doug
Pederson often ordered his offense to
stay on the field on fourth down to
make the line of gain.
• The number of punts dropped by 230
in the NFL after that to 2,214. By
2021, that figured fell to 2,077.

• Now, punters are valued for accuracy
more than raw distance.
• Punter Michael Dickson is typical.
He’s from Australia and has a variety
of punts, pinning opponents inside
the 20 with 51 percent of his punts in
2018, his first year in the NFL with
Seattle.

• Distance still matters. As of
November 29, 2023, six NFL punters
– three more than at the same point
in the 2022 season – averaged more
than 50 yards per kick, led by Ryan
Stonehouse of Tennessee with 52.9-
yard average. Dickson was eighth
with a 49.1-yard average.

• Still, critics contend that teams with
good punters who routinely insert the
ball inside the 20 may be making bad
decisions.
• “ … when you’re pinning teams deep,
you shouldn’t be punting in the first
place,” said Aaron Schatz of Football
Outsiders in October 2021.

• Running the football – the only way to
advance on offense until the forward
pass was legalized for the 1906
season – may also become an
endangered act, and not only
because of pass-first offenses.

• “The NFL is not for running backs,”
wrote Adam Kilgore in the November
30, 2021, edition of The Washington
Post. “Every NFL player is vulnerable
to injury but running backs have
essentially no chance at longevity.”

• Kilgore cited the case of Todd Gurley.
He was the NFL’s offensive player of
the year in 2017 but was out of the
game by 2021.

• “The NFL has engineered the rule
book so quarterbacks can thrive into
their late 30s or longer ,” Kilgore
wrote. “Nothing could make playing
running back a humane profession,
let alone safe from injury.”

• The career active leader is Derrick
Henry of the Titans, who ranks 39th
all-time with 9,074 yards, 9,281 yards
behind career leader Emmitt Smith.

• There still is a taste of the old game
in 2023, ironically, courtesy of the
same Philadelphia Eagles that rode
analytics to the Lombardi Trophy.
• The team’s “tush push” resembles
both the old block game and wedge
plays of the 19th century.

End of Football?
• Two other pieces that never
disappeared from Camp’s old game?
Injuries and pain.
• As the 20th century deepened, it
became clear that despite advances
in equipment and rules to make a
violent game safer, it would always
be accompanied by physical trauma.

End of Football?
• As the game celebrated its 150th
anniversary of the 1869 contest
between Princeton and Rutgers in
2019, its future was questioned as it
had been in the past.
• The pathologies now evident from the
game have turned the dream life into
something else altogether.

End of Football?
• The pathologies extend into the
stands and into the homes of fans.

End of Football?
• Officials at large state universities are
increasingly describing game-day
drinking as a major public health
issue.
• Some 20 percent of student fans
were legally drunk before the game
started at a large university in the
Midwest during a typical game,

End of Football?
• One study found a nine percent
increase in assaults and an 18
percent increase in vandalism during
home games at a southern college.
• An upset loss at home increased
assaults by 112 percent while an
upset win at home increased assaults
by 36 percent.

End of Football?
• Upset losses lead to a 10 percent
increase in violence by men against
women in the home.
• Game days overall are associated
with higher rates of violence by men
against women in the home.

End of Football?
• Research shows the emotional
attachment between teams and fans
is real and can be measured by
increases in blood pressure.

End of Football?
• According to the NFL, up to 68
percent of NFL players may be
injured in a season.
• That leads to “consequences from an
increased risk for more serious injury
and pain,” reported by researcher Dr.
Linda Cottler.

End of Football?
• The Cottler survey of 644 players
who retired before 2009 showed:
- Only 13 percent reported
current excellent health
compared to 88 percent with
excellent health at the time
they signed their ﬁrst NFL
contract.

End of Football?
• Some 93 percent reported pain, with
81 percent describing pain as
moderate to severe.
- That’s three times the rate
in the general population.

End of Football?
• Knee injuries were the most reported
NFL injuries, followed by shoulder
and back injuries.
• Nearly half (47 percent) had 3 or
more NFL injuries.

End of Football?
• Nearly half (49 percent) reported
diagnosed concussions.
• 81 percent reported undiagnosed
concussions.
• The average number of reported
concussions of either type was 9,
Cottler found.

End of Football?
• The consequences emerged in the
survey results regarding medication
to ease pain. It showed that:
- 52 percent used opioids
during their careers.
- 71 percent of that group
reported they abused opioids
during their careers.

End of Football?
• Players who misused opioids during
their career were more likely to
misuse opioids in retirement, Cottler
reported.
• Former NFL players such as former
Bears’ quarterback Jim McMahon
also use marijuana to ease pain.

End of Football?
• “Current misuse was associated with
more NFL pain, undiagnosed
concussions and heavy drinking,”
Cottler concluded.

End of Football?
• Pain pill abuse proved to be deadly.
• Former Giants’ defensive back Tyler
Sash died after an accidental
overdose in September 2015.
• He was 27.

End of Football?
• Nothing concerned football
administrators, coaches and players
more than head injuries because of
the potential for long-term
consequences, including the risk for
dementia and early death, a fact that
football helmet manufacturers point
out on their products.

End of Football?
• Zach Langston (No. 39) was a star
player at Pittsburg State in Kansas, a
Division II power that has won four
national championships.
• Langston’s family estimates he
suffered some 100 concussions in
middle and high school and in
college.

End of Football?
• In February 2014, Langston
committed suicide at the age of 26
after periods of depression, rage and
anxiety.
• His mother, Nicki, sent his brain to
Boston University to see if he had
chronic traumatic encephalopathy
(CTE). He did.

End of Football?
• CTE is a “progressive degenerative
disease of the brain found in athletes
(and others) with a history of
repetitive brain trauma, including
symptomatic concussions as well as
asymptomatic subconcussive hits to
the head,” according to the Center for
the Study of Chronic Traumatic
Encephalopathy.

End of Football?
• The center, at Boston University,
examines the brains of deceased
players who either willed their brains
or whose families agreed to have the
organs examined.

End of Football?
• Some 92 percent of the brains of 376
former NFL players donated by their
families had CTE, the center
announced in February 2023.

End of Football?
• In November 2017, center director
Dr. Ann McKee said that an
examination of the late Aaron
Hernandez’s brain showed the most
extensive CTE damage of anyone
ever studied under 40.
• Hernandez played at Florida and for
the New England Patriots.

End of Football?
• He was convicted of murder and late
committed suicide in 2017 while
serving his sentence.

End of Football?
• Washington State quarterback Tyler
Hilinski took his own life in 2017 at
the age of 21.
• “After reviewing the tissue, we can
confirm that he had the pathology of
chronic traumatic encephalopathy
(CTE),” the Mayo Clinic reported.

End of Football?
• The stories of football players dying
before their time persist.
• There’s the group of a dozen USC
linebackers from 1989. Five died
before they turned 50. Alcoholism,
suicides, diabetes. Each exhibited
evidence of brain pathologies before
they died.

End of Football?
• Alana Gee, the widow of USC
linebacker Matt Gee, sued the NCAA
for $55 million in Calif0rnia state
court, asserting the organization did
not adequately protect Gee from
concussions.
• In November 2022, a jury ruled
against her claims.

End of Football?
• Gee played for USC from 1988-1992.
He died in 2018 after a heart attack
triggered by hypertension and
cocaine and alcohol toxicity. Alana
Gee contended that the substance
abuse stemmed from CTE.
• Tests at BU concluded that he
suffered from CTE.

End of Football?
• The Gee case was the first CTE case
against the NCAA to reach a jury.
• In 2016, the NCAA settled a class-
action lawsuit. It agreed to pay $70
million over 50 years to monitor
former college athletes’ medical
conditions and $5 million toward
medical research.

End of Football?
• The kinetic force of modern players
who are much larger and faster than
players from the 1960s and earlier
plays a role, but the evidence
suggests the constant hits to the
head accumulate and trigger the
onset of CTE, dementia and other
brain disorders.

End of Football?
• Studies show that all players are
potential victims of CTE, but some
positions tend to be more dangerous
than others.

End of Football?
• The positions most susceptible to
brain trauma and, hence, the onset of
CTE in players, are:
- Defensive backs
- Kicking team
(kickoffs)
- Running backs
- Linebackers

End of Football?
• The NFL first responded to increasing
scrutiny of concussions in 1996.
• Since then, the league has changed
rules and funded research into
helmet technology and tackling
techniques to dampen criticism.

End of Football?
• The NFL moved kickoffs to the 35-
yard line to make touchbacks more
likely.
• The league also barred players with
concussion symptoms from returning
to the game and left the decision for
that in the hands of independent
neurologists.

End of Football?
• The NFL is also enforcing hits to the
heads of quarterbacks and to what it
describes as defenseless receivers.
• College, meanwhile, is enforcing
targeting rules designed to eliminate
the helmet from tackling and
blocking.

End of Football?
• Helmet size, meanwhile, has evolved
over the past 50 years, with each
iteration designed to protect the head
from trauma.
• More innovation is expected in this
area as the NFL increases funding for
research and development.

End of Football?
• After years of denial, the NFL
acknowledged a measure of
responsibility for the long-term effects
of head trauma on players.
• It settled a lawsuit filed by thousands
of players for what eventually
reached more than $1 billion in 2015,
a figure that has since grown.

End of Football?
• As of December 4, 2023, 20,573
retired NFL players and 3,842
representative (authorized people
representing deceased or
incapacitated players) have
registered for a settlement.
• Maximum benefit: $5,000,000.

End of Football?
• The NFL has distributed
$1,235,042,591 as of Dec. 4, 2023.

End of Football?
• Two European scholars sees a
reconfiguration of Walter Camp’s
concept of masculinity already in play
among NFL players because of
concussions.
• In a recent paper, Eric Anderson and
Edward M. Kian argue that:

End of Football?
• “ … the devastating effects of
concussions, in the form of chronic
traumatic encephalopathy, combined
with a softening of American
masculinity is beginning to permit
some prominent players to distance
themselves from the self-sacrifice
component of sporting masculinity.”

End of Football?
• Still, McKee, the CTE center director,
said in a 2023 press release that
players “feel invincible, at the top of
the game, and I understand that and
the power that must hold over them.
But they are just unfortunately not
living with the real risks of the
disease. It makes me sad.”

End of Football?
• Are players beginning to question
why they play and endure the pain,
which for most lasts a lifetime?
• Take this exchange between Tom
Brady, quarterback of the Patriots at
the time, and Steve Kroft during a
piece on 60 Minutes in 2007:

End of Football?
• “Why do I have three Super Bowl
rings and still think there’s something
greater out there for me? I mean,
maybe a lot of people would say,
‘Hey, man, this is what it is. I reached
my goal, my dream, my life.’ Me, I
think, ‘God, it’s got to be more than
this.’ I mean this isn’t, and can’t be,
what it’s all cracked up to be.”

End of Football?
• Kroft: “What’s the answer?”
• Brady: “I wish I knew…. I wish I
knew.”

End of Football?
• Brady retired in February 2023 after
23 seasons, including 20 with New
England and three with Tampa Bay.
• Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post
sensed the real reasons behind his
permanent retirement after un-retiring
a year earlier.

End of Football?
• On the day of Brady’s retirement,
Jenkins quoted Brady as always
saying that he was driven by
“insecurity.”

End of Football?
• She wrote: “The game taxed all of
him. ‘For me, football is a challenge,
emotionally, spiritually, physically and
mentally,’” he said. “For most of his
career, he loved that about it. But it
came with a personal price tag.”

End of Football?
• Brady’s “11-day break from training
camp (2022), as it turned out
because he was dealing with his
impending divorce — and a
shockingly visible weight loss that left
him gaunt — should have been
greeted with the humane and
common-sense recognition that he
was suffering badly,” she wrote.

End of Football?
• “It’s apparent now that what NFL
viewers observed in real time was a
great champion struggling with
vulnerability as his sports immortality
ran bang into his human frailties. And
it finally caused him to accept that,
sometimes, that’s just how it goes,”
Jenkins wrote.

End of Football?
• “You hope that he has finally laid
down his all-in-ness and can go on
peaceably to less rigid and obsessive
pursuits — such as fishing with his
son on a Sunday, a simple and
commonplace pleasure in the week
of an ordinary middle-aged man,”
Jenkins concluded.

End of Football?
• Jenkins wrote that Brady’s “all-in-
ness”toward the game took its toll
emotionally and physically.
• But that approach was not all that
different from players who took part in
Cottler’s pain study.
• Her summary is as follows:

End of Football?
• “At the conclusion of the interview,
players were allowed time to share
additional thoughts. Many of them
provided compelling anecdotes about
the terrible pain they live with. They
also conﬁrmed that players should be
continuously monitored during their
careers for misuse of (opioids) …

End of Football?
• “While some noted that playing in the
NFL was not worth the accelerated
loss of health, others said they still
would have played despite knowing
the risks.”

End of Football?
• That same theme is evident in a
November 2012 story in the New
York Times Magazine about a first-
year NFL player who at the time
sought a spot on the roster of the
Atlanta Falcons, Pat Schiller.

End of Football?
• “Dude,” he said, as I stood staring at
his dresser. “I swear to God, if
someone tells me right now there’s
some miracle body cream out there
that would make me feel 100 percent
and prevent me from getting hurt but
that could also cause cancer or liver
damage down the line, I’d use it in a
heartbeat. I would.”

End of Football?
• Players such as Schiller fully
understand that the game can lead to
horrific injuries, lifelong pain and the
early onset of dementia yet they still
play.

End of Football?
• Who are these people who endure
long practices, constant pain and
anxiety over losing their jobs in
exchange for money and just 16
hours of game-play in the NFL and
just 12 hours in college per year?

End of Football?
• Look at a couple of players from the
2012 New York Jets, whose
backgrounds are part of Nicholas
Dawidoff’s article on the team in the
Sept. 27, 2012, issue of The New
Yorker magazine.

End of Football?
• “The Jets, like every team, have
many players who experienced
severe neglect as children – a mother
who died in childbirth, a father who
died of an overdose or of AIDS.

End of Football?
• “There are Jets players who have
seen murders up close, who have
been shot at or stabbed, who were
abused by relatives, who have been
jailed.
[See the assigned story of Cincinnati’s Tee Higgins
whose mother was murdered when he was six
years old.]

End of Football?
• “Antonio Cromartie went to twelve
Florida schools in twelve years,
because his family kept losing its
home.

End of Football?
• “Santonio Holmes, as a child, took
care of his siblings in a bullet-riddled
apartment while his mother worked
as a migrant farm laborer.”

End of Football?
• The team doctor, Kenneth
Montgomery, said in the article that
football players are “naturally inclined
to endure pain.”
• And that includes emotional pain, too.

End of Football?
• “And, while football is often seen to
be an outlet for aggressive young
men, a more common expressed
attraction of the game among Jets
players is the company of coaches
and teammates who offer some of
what was missing at home.”

End of Football?
• “Football is my father.” – cornerback
Julian Posey.

End of Football?
• Why do such broken men endure
knowing that they may be pursuing,
as Brady acknowledged, something
that is empty of meaning, that may
leave them physically broken for the
rest of their lives?

End of Football?
• Another writer for The New Yorker,
Malcolm Gladwell, searched for an
answer in an article that listed the
recent death roll of former players:

End of Football?
• “Mike Webster, the longtime
Pittsburgh Steeler and one of the
greatest players in N.F.L. history,
ended his life a recluse, sleeping on
the floor of the Pittsburgh Amtrak
station. Another former Pittsburgh
Steeler, Terry Long, drifted into chaos
and killed himself four years ago by
drinking antifreeze …

End of Football?
• “Andre Waters, a former defensive
back for the Philadelphia Eagles,
sank into depression and pleaded
with his girlfriend—’I need help,
somebody help me’—before shooting
himself in the head …

End of Football?
• “There were men with aching knees
and backs and hands, from all those
years of playing football. But their real
problem was with their heads, the
one part of their body that got hit over
and over again.”

End of Football?
• And then there were the stories of
Junior Seau (suicide) and Dave
Duerson (suicide) and other former
pro players that were not included in
Gladwell’s piece?

End of Football?
• Gladwell concluded that the reason
players play, and coaches coach and
spectators watch in such
extraordinary numbers is simple:

End of Football?
• “We are in love with football players,
with their courage and grit, and
nothing else—neither considerations
of science nor those of morality—can
compete with the destructive power
of that love.”

End of Football?
• Recall Fitzgerald’s description of
players in The Bowl:
• “One aches with them intolerably,
trembles with their excitement, but
they have no traffic with us now, they
are beyond help, consecrated and
unreachable--vaguely holy.”

End of Football?
• And that leads to a question: why is
football – a game bursting with
violence and pathologies - the one
true religion of America, the force the
unifies the nation and stands at the
core of patriotic celebrations?
• Are ecstasy and violence required for
our Dream Life to be whole?

End of Football?
• The fan/media reaction is easy to
understand.
• Teams play a role in creating a tribe
of our own, which is of particular
importance when times change or
when our lives are fragmented,
according to sociologists.

End of Football?
• Football occupies a full day as a
ritual, with pre-game tailgating, in-
game cheers and chants and post-
game revelry.
• It’s a way to live vicariously without
suffering the pain, rejection, loss and
other elements of physical
competition.

End of Football?
• Participation rates, however, are
sending mixed signals.

End of Football?
• In high school tackle football,
participant numbers have dropped for
more than a decade.
• Participation reached an all-time high
of 1,112,303 in 2008-09,but in the
2021-22 school year, fewer than a
million players competed in 11-player
high school football.

End of Football?
• That’s the lowest in America since
the turn of the century, the National
Federation of State High School
Associations reported in a U.S. News
and World Report article posted in
January 2023.

End of Football?
• A 2016 UMass Lowell Center for
Public Opinion Research survey
found that 78 percent of American
adults did not think children should
play tackle football before age 14.

End of Football?
Dr. Anikar Chhabra, director of sports
medicine at Mayo Clinic Arizona, said in
a report published by the Cronkite
News/Arizona PBS in 2019 that “the
increased prevalence of head injuries
and the multiple unknowns of impact on
a youth brain, which will require further
research.”

End of Football?
In August 2023, the BU CTE Center
released a study that showed almost 42
percent of amateur athletes who
competed in contact sports including
football, ice hockey, soccer, rugby and
wrestling and died under the age of 30
had CTE.

End of Football?
• The dividing line in America over
tackle football participation is
beginning to blur, as even the
stronghold in the south is weakening
even though a $70 million high school
stadium in Dallas, Texas did not raise
eyebrows there when opened in
2018.

End of Football?
• Flag football, meanwhile, is growing.
• It is now an Olympic sport scheduled
to debut in the 2028 Los Angeles
Summer Games.

End of Football?
• Still, television ratings reveal robust
fan interest in tackle football.

End of Football?
• A record 42 million watched the
Cowboys-Giants game on
Thanksgiving Day 2022.

End of Football?
• That’s the biggest regular-season
game audience since December 3,
1990, when the 10-1 Giants played at
the 10-1 San Francisco 49ers in
Monday Night Football.
• The game drew an average audience
of 41.5 million viewers.

End of Football?
• The NFL said its three Thanksgiving
games in 2023 averaged 34.1 million
viewers, the highest on record for that
holiday.
• 41.8 million – watched the Cowboys
– Commanders play in 2023.

End of Football?
• College games are likewise drawing
record viewers.
• Some 19 million watched the
noontime Ohio State-Michigan game
in November 2023, making it the
most-watched, regular-season
college game in 12 years.

End of Football?
• For all its flaws and wandering
audience figures, football matters and
remains the top-rated attraction on
television and in fantasy sports.
• As C.W. Whitney of Harper’s Weekly
put it near the start of the 20th
century, football makes us ‘the
people’.

End of Football?
• The playwright Arthur Miller, author of
Death of a Salesman, understood
that the game bore deeply into the
psychological depths of the nation
and family.
• Julian Posey lived it. He saw football
as his father.

End of Football?
• For a century, American presidents
grasped this psychological point, as
several had watched, coached and
played the game, using that
experience as an expression of their
“American-ness” and “manly”
qualifications for office.

End of Football?
• Grover Cleveland (1885-89; 1893-97)
posed in 1906 with his nephew and a
football after he left office.

End of Football?
• President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-
09) burnished his credentials by
hosting a White House meeting in
1905 to find ways to dampen criticism
of the game.

End of Football?
• President Woodrow Wilson (1913-
21), who coached the Wesleyan
football team (stressing loyalty and
teamwork) before becoming
president of the United States,
pointed to the game for giving men
preparation for victory in World War I.

End of Football?
• President Herbert Hoover (1929-
1933) served as student manager of
Stanford football in the 1890s.
• He would invite his Stanford football
classmates to the White House in
1931.

End of Football?
• President Dwight Eisenhower (1953-
61) competed for West Point before
leading the Allied victory over Nazi
Germany in World War II and twice
winning presidential elections.

End of Football?
• President John Kennedy (1961-63)
made sure to attend football contests
and banquets and mention the game
to further political goals.
• Recall that he praised Mississippi’s
gridiron success when seeking to
integrate colleges in the state.

End of Football?
• Richard Nixon (1969-74) likewise
attended college and pro games,
talked to coaches and even
suggested a play to coach George
Allen of the Redskins for the Super
Bowl.

End of Football?
• President Gerald Ford (1974-77)
played at Michigan and coached at
Yale.

End of Football?
• President Ronald Reagan’s (1981-
89) resume included his time as a
football player in college and later
playing one in the movies.

End of Football?
• President Donald J. Trump played on
the football team for one year at New
York Military Academy and later
owned the New Jersey Generals of
the USFL (1984-85).

End of Football?
• President Joe Biden was a high
school football star as a wide receiver
at Archmere Academy and played
one season at the University of
Delaware.

End of Football?
• If football is, indeed, our nation’s
father, if we watch because we love
the players and their capacity to
combine ecstasy and violence in a
single game, it suggests America is
willing to accept the toll the game
extracts to a point, but that point has
yet to be reached.

End of Football?
• The players themselves shows us
why they care, and perhaps we care
because we share the same
elemental sense of honor, pride and
tradition, the stuff that makes people
– and their existence – worthwhile.

End of Football?
• We are all football players in a dream
life of our own making, where it is still
possible to find meaning and pride
amid the game’s ecstasy and
violence.
• The writer David Maraniss stressed
that in the title of his biography of
Vince Lombardi, “When Pride Still
Mattered.”

End of Football?
• And it must matter because in the
final analysis football reflects
America.
• Personal sacrifice, pain, teamwork,
winning and losing are all embedded
in the game as much as they are in
everyday American life.

End of Football?
• That’s why that if America exists as
an ideal, America will have football to
reflect it.
• In short, the game still matters to tens
of millions of Americans who play and
watch and dream of becoming that
hero carried off the field on the
shoulders of teammates.

JRN 362 - Lecture Twenty-Two

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to JRN 362 - Lecture Twenty-Two

Similar to JRN 362 - Lecture Twenty-Two (20)

More from Rich Hanley

More from Rich Hanley (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

JRN 362 - Lecture Twenty-Two