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 as a solution to a
problem of the disappearing
American frontier and the lack of
opportunities for the educated class
to prove its manhood in front of other
men.
• From a rough “cross between rugby,
soccer, and a bar fight,“ football
evolved quickly into a spectacle.

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
• 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.

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 New
York Jets, Lawrence Taylor of the
New York Giants, Walter Payton of
Chicago, Jerry Rice of San Francisco
and Tom Brady of New England.

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 afterward.

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.

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.
• Fictional heroes such as Frank
Merriwell of Yale created what would
become the dream life of football

Review
• And they were conditioned by popular
magazines 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 that persists in
the 21st century.

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.
• Calls to ban football multiplied.

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, president of
Harvard, in 1894, even before the
Yale-Harvard game that year that
featured an astonishing level of
violence.

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

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
featured the forward pass.

Review
• The 1905 rule changes also showed
football’s governing committee that it
could neutralize criticisms by
modifying rules to soften opposition
to the game.

End of Football?
• Yet as the 20th century deepened, it
became clear that despite advances
in equipment and rules to make a
violent game if not entirely safe than
safer, the game would always be
accompanied by physical trauma.

End of Football?
• As the game nears the 150th
anniversary of the 1869 contest
between Princeton and Rutgers that
is considered to be the birth event of
modern football, its future has never
been as profoundly in doubt as it is
today.
• The pathologies stemming from the
game have turned the dream life into

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
commonly reported NFL injuries,
followed by shoulder and back.
• 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 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 the label of their product.

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, including its
latest in 2011.
• Langston’s family estimates he
suffered some 100 concussions in
middle school, high school and
college football

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, a
brain disorder triggered by constant
hits to the head. 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 99 percent of the brains of
former NFL players had CTE, the
center announced in July 2017.
• For college players, the percentage
was 91 percent.
• Some 21 percent of the brains of high
school players studied had CTE.

End of Football?
• In November 2017, center director
and neuropathologist Ann McKee told
a conference 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 before his

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 must susceptible to
brain trauma and, hence, the onset of
CTC 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, 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.

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.

End of Football?
• As of November 1, 2017, 15,950
retired NFL players, 1,183
representative claimants (authorized
people representing deceased or
incapacitated players) and 3,2432
derivative claimants (spouses,
parents, children, etc.) have
registered for a settlement.
• Maximum benefits for each claimant

End of Football?
• Two European scholars sees a
reconfiguration of the concept of
masculinity already in play among
NFL players.
• 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,”
they wrote.

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,
and Steve Kroft during a piece on 60
Minutes in 2007:

End of Football?
• Brady: “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’s answer may be found in
interviews with the 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 prescription
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.
• The story is titled “The Hard Life of an
NFL Longshot,” written by Charles

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.

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 Tom Brady acknowledges,
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?
• 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
falling.
• The number of high school players
dropped in 2016-17 by some 26,000.
• It is still the most popular high school
sport with 1,086,748 participants.

End of Football?
• Even more troubling is the decline in
tackle football when all teenagers are
included in the figures.
• The percentage of teens playing
tackle dropped from 7.1 percent of
the population between 2014 (1.631
million, and 2015 (1.566 million, 7.1
percent).

End of Football?
• Flag football, meanwhile, is growing.
• A 2018 study by the Sport & Fitness
Industry Association revealed that
more children ages 6-12 are playing
flag football than are playing tackle.
• Flag participation grew 38 percent to
1.5 million children between 2015-18.

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?
• There is a clear dividing line in
America in participation rates of
tackle football.
• The numbers are falling in the North
and East, rising in the South.
• In Texas, a $70 million high school
stadium recently opened.

End of Football?
• Television ratings for the NFL, too,
fell in 2016, down by several
percentage points since the game’s
viewership peak in 2015. Ratings
have since rebounded, up 6 percent
in 2018 over 2017.
• Was the decline in 2016 because of
the silent protests by players kneeling

End of Football?
• There are several elements in play,
including the saturation of games on
for 12 hours on Sundays and on
Monday and Thursday nights and the
lack of big-name players who have
always driven the story of football
beyond the game and into pop
culture in each generation.

End of Football?
• Still, 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,’; it makes Americans, well,
Americans.

End of Football?
• The playwright Arthur Miller, author of
Death of a Salesman, understood this
at an intellectual level.
• Julian Posey lived it as the patriarchal
head of the family; it was 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 name
to further political goals.

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, facts popularized during his
time in office.

End of Football?
• And 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?
• Could the recent decline of America’s
common narrative be blamed on the
fact that since Reagan no U.S.
president has played football?
• Probably not but still the game is part
of our national conversation.

End of Football?
• In fact, one president sought to use
football as a device to widen the
existing political and racial divide
among the nation.
• It worked for a year but the game is
too powerful even for a president to
seek to bring it down for personal
political gain.

End of Football?
• Fox Sports executive vice president
for research, league operations and
strategy pointed out in a Nov. 28,
2018, tweet based on viewing
statistics that during Thanksgiving
week 2018, Americans watched 48.4
million minutes of NFL and college
football, or 2.5 hours for every human
in the U.S.

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.
• The question is: have we reached
that point?

End of Football?
• The answer is no, at least not yet.
• 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 amid the
game’s ecstasy and violence.
• The writer David Maraniss stressed
this in the title of his biography of
Vince Lombardi, “When Pride Still
Mattered.“
• Perhaps it still does.

End of Football?
• And it must matter because in the
final analysis football reflects who we
are as a nation, and perhaps it’s time
to understand that sacrifice, pain,
teamwork, winning and losing are all
embedded in the game as much as
they are in life.
• And football is American life.

JRN 362 - Lecture Twenty Two

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JRN 362 - Lecture Twenty Two