Such a reckoning would pose “an existential problem,” Steve Fainaru told me last week, saying that if there’s a definitive determination that “the game itself can cause this devastating disease in a huge number of players, it can’t help but cause you to think: What exactly am I rooting for?”
He and I were talking as two people struggling with our love of the sport. He said: “Who wants to believe that all the joy that Junior Seau gave us led him to become completely unrecognizable to his family? How do we reconcile that as football fans? Some people have suggested, jokingly, that the book should have been called ‘Nation of Denial.’ ”
He mentioned a visit that he’d made to the Colosseum in Rome, where gladiators once fought. At least in pro football, he observed, “They’re not sacrificing people at the end of the game.”
I thought of Seau and of Dorsett, and said: “No, not at the end of the game. They’re just delaying it.”
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I did feel sorry for these men, but if they say they would do it all over again – no regrets – if they had the chance, then I cannot say that I should spend any longer thinking about the dismal situation. If someone made me lose my memory and gave me brain damage and I was asked – would I do it all again – I would exclaim a profound – absolutely not! If they would do it all over again, then any amount of reform would not matter, because no matter the risk, they will play football anyhow.
The man who said the game is all about money needs to understand that if the world is about capitalism, everything is about money. If he wants to change how football is played, it being about money, he needs to address the economic system that drives the game.
Capitalism darn mean we shouldn’t care? In fact caring for the weak in society is at the heart of capitalism itself.
Kanaga, I will have to disagree. I believe capitalism is incompatible with caring. For how can you make millions and billions — if you cared, wouldn’t every time you saw a homeless man on the street, you buy him a house or at least food to eat? With that kind of behavior, millionaires would soon be poor men. If the football owners cared about health of their players more than the masters cared about the health of their slaves, they would soon be subject to equal treatment and there would be no inhumanity in football, in fact, the game as we know it would cease to exist. There has to be some distance between the capitalists and caring otherwise I believe the system would fall apart.