I sulked.
I was angry. The Giants won four years earlier, crushing my team's hope of a perfect 19-0 season. Why did they have to win again? No one thinks Eli Manning is as good as Tom Brady, so why has he beaten Brady twice in The Big Game? I tried to be respectful of my wife's excitement, and keep my fuming to myself. I would say I failed, but I think the biggest failure was even thinking of it in those terms. Of course she was excited - her team just won the Super Bowl!
So, my team lost. Big whoop. I don't play for them. My self-worth is not tied to their success in any way, shape, or form. Them being good or bad does not reflect on my character. I should have been excited that my wife was excited, instead I was miserable.
This made me start to re-evaluate the way in which I approach sports fandom, but particularly football. For some reason, football brings out the worst in me. I get angry. I get loud. I yell at refs. I rail about bad calls on Facebook. I might yell at refs during hockey games, but after the game is over, meh (for the most part). When I watch football, though, that anger can last for days. Sometimes even weeks. I still twitch with repressed anger over the Golden Tate "Fail Mary". I still don't like Richard Sherman for mocking Tom Brady after a regular season game. This cannot be healthy.
Through the 2012 season, I tried to be more cognizant of my football-related mood swings, and realized that I was more upset about things that involved my Patriots than other teams. Bad call in the Patriots' favor? Thumbs up! Color commentator argues that the other team's player is better than his counterpart on the Pats'? Stop being so blatantly Anti-Patriots, you raging jerk! I'm going to fire-bomb your swimming pool and then steal all of your neighbor's socks and frame you for it!
So, I decided to be more neutral. I decided to become a "fan of the game" in 2013.
This decision was helped by the fact that the Patriots management acts like they and the players are one big family (see: the outpouring of support after Myra Kraft passed away) until it comes to contracts, then they are as cutthroat as any Wall Street investor, treating players as commodities, not people.
The results, however, were mixed, as I started out neutral, but fell back into old habits of hating certain teams and players, especially when they played the Patriots. I have no scientific evidence to back up this claim, but I believe that the aggression inherent to football invokes aggression in its fans. I have no reason to doubt that domestic abuse increases during football games.
The idea of not watching, of stopping altogether never really occurred to me. Football is a tradition in my life. Lazy Sundays in the Fall, the windows open, cool dry air and the crisp scent of fallen leaves. Lazier Sundays in the winter, cold and snow outside, heat and a blanket on the couch. Dan Dierdorf mumbling around his tongue. Jon Gruden making ridiculous comments.
My wife actually brought up the idea this summer, after Ray Rice beat up his wife, dragged her by the hair, essentially blamed her for instigating the incident, then was suspended by the league (who didn't even watch the video of the incident) for a whole two games. Players get more than that for smoking pot! After years of watching players get accused of a slew of various transgressions - many against women - and get off scot-free, without even a slap on the wrist, this was the last straw for her, and I can't find any reason to disagree with her.
On top of that is just the health and safety of the players. Concussions are rampant, but worse may be the long-term damage these players are doing. As Steve Almond points out on Salon:
...medical researchers have determined that brain trauma isn’t just due to the big hits that cause concussions. It’s due to the thousands of sub-concussive hits that are inherent to the game and occur on every play. The brain is a soft organ. When it slams against the inside of the skull, it gets damaged. No high-tech helmet is going to insulate players from basic physics and physiology.
It's not just the big hits, which the league is (poorly, IMHO) trying to regulate out of the game, but the constant pounding that the players take with each and every play. This is not to mention the havoc wreaked on the rest of the body through both the brutality of the game and also the way these athletes distort their bodies to bulk up so much. I've read stories about guys who played when I was a kid who can't function during the day without a host of painkillers.
Again, piggybacking off Steve Almond's piece linked above, we can argue that the players know these risks, but what does that matter? We are the reason they make so much money, making it appealing for them to put themselves through this misery. Yes, they play because they choose to, and because the owners are willing to pay them so much to do so. These owners though, are businessmen, and they aren't going to throw that kind of money at a player unless they are getting a return on their investment. Ticket sales, merchandise, concessions, parking, TV money. All come from the fans. Not to mention, public funding for stadiums, local tax breaks, and the entire operation being tax-exempt. All because local fans demand the team stay in their city.
Almond gives other very good reasons to boycott football, at all levels, and the more I think about it, the more it just makes sense. I will miss my lazy Sundays on the couch, but Doctor Who is on Netflix, so there's always that.
What really worries me, though, is how is this different for my absolute favorite sport, hockey? Is the NHL much different than the NFL? I think the players are more down-to-earth, and you hear far fewer stories about criminal behavior from NHL players; the culture just feels different. Salaries are high, but rarely as ludicrous as in the NFL. I'm not sure about teams demanding new arenas. I know that Boston actually did the opposite, and forced Jeremy Jacobs to pay for improvements to North Station when he privately-funded his new arena.
The most important issue, though, is brain trauma. The league has tried to cut down on the big, concussion-inducing hits, but checking is still a part of the game, and as noted, any action that causes the brain to slam into the skull can lead to long-term damage. Now, the physicality of hockey is different than that of football. It is possible for a hockey player can go an entire game without being hit, regardless of position. In football, pretty much the only player with no expectation of being hit is the kicker and punter. And even they get hit on occasion. Other than that, on every single play, nearly every single player slams into someone else. Quarterbacks get hit. Running backs charge into groups of defenders. Wide receivers get run down by safeties and corner backs.
Frankly, I just don't think you hear about hockey players having the long-term health issues you hear about with football players. What's more, I truly believe you could take the hitting almost entirely out of hockey, and still have a great sport. Yes, some old-timers and "purists" would complain, but the majority of the fan base would keep watching, and maybe even enjoy it more. Contrast this with football. Fans have railed against newer rules against unnecessary roughness my mockingly calling for the NFL to go to two-hand touch or flag football. One problem with this is that while it would get rid of the BIG hits, the linemen would still be colliding on every play. The other problem is that it would utterly change the game. If you look at international hockey, such as the Olympics, you see a game focused more on speed and finesse, and less on hitting.
So, football, it's been fun, but I can't ignore the way you mutate and corrupt everything with which you come into contact. Hockey, you're cool (get it? Sorry, I couldn't resist).
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