This week, in perhaps the most violent football game of the NFL season, Monday Night Football featured the Cincinnati Bengals hosting their rivals, the Pittsburgh Steelers. By the time it ended, Hall of Fame quarterback Troy Aikman called it “terrible for the NFL and the game of football overall.”
The injuries were brutal.
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Ted Kluck is the author of twenty books, including Three-Week Professionals: Inside the 1987 NFL Players’ Strike; screenwriter on the forthcoming feature film Silverdome; and journalism teacher at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. He says, Yes, we are complicit.
Of course, if we agree that football is violent and chaotic and dangerous (it totally is), and we agree that buying a ticket assures the continued flourishing of that violent, dangerous thing, then of course we’re complicit. Just like we’re complicit in an often morally bankrupt Hollywood system when we buy a movie ticket, complicit in gluttony when we overpay for a lavish meal, and complicit in hypocrisy when we smugly announce to our small group that we’re not letting our son play football — only to pull on our favorite college team’s jersey on Saturday afternoon and flip on our giant HD television to enjoy the carnage from afar.If we’re that worried about being complicit in bad things, it may be best not to leave the house in the morning.
Yes, I still buy tickets. I still coach football at an HBCU in Jackson, Tennessee (Lane College). At age 41, I still occasionally play in semipro leagues in Mississippi, Tennessee, or wherever they’ll take me. Everything worthwhile I’ve ever really learned about myself or other people I’ve learned on a football field. Football taught me how to be courageous, how to persevere, and how to thrive in a pain-saturated environment. It has given me lifelong friends and amazing times with my dad. And God’s taking football away from me in college, and then giving it back to me later, taught me a lot (in both cases) about God’s abundant goodness.
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K. Erik Thoennes is professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at Biola University and author of “Created to Play: Thoughts on Play, Sport, and the Christian Life.” He says, No, we are not complicit.
Football is dangerous, and may be stupid, but it’s not immoral. The same could be said for climbing a mountain, riding a motorcycle, being a commercial diver, or attending a Hanson concert. I’ve done all of those things (except one), and my life is richer because I did.In fourteen years of playing football, I only left the field in an ambulance once, and although I lost count of the times I “got my bell rung,” and had several legit concussions, I would certainly do it all again. I loved to hit. And, although I realize this will seem bizarre to many, I loved getting hit, and getting up, and getting back to the huddle. Those hits were preparing me for life in a fallen world — playing football tremendously shaped my character for good, and the unique relational bonds developed on the field were deep and lasting.
The intensity of football is one of the main reasons it is so fun and formative, and the potential danger is why it is so intense. All those collisions do take a physical toll, and I think it is wise to improve the rules and equipment so it cuts down on injuries. But football is a violent game, and although injury is an unavoidable part of it, injury is not the goal (this cannot be said of professional boxing, where causing a brain contusion is the supreme goal). For thousands and thousands of young men like me, football taught us to be better men, and even to be better Christians. Like climbing Mount Everest, I think it’s worth the risk.
by Tony Reinke
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