As a football fan, let me make what I know will be a futile plea as training camps open: Can we just play the game?
Every sport has its share of coaches and commentators going on about how their game builds character — mostly with all evidence to the contrary. Baseball and cycling have their pervasive doping scandals, hockey has its “enforcers” whose job it is to start fights, and in most sports charges of all manner of misconduct from domestic violence to gambling and cheating abound.
But no sport can touch football for bizarre incongruousness. On the one hand, it’s almost impossible to get through watching a game or a post-game interview without some mention of God or character. On the other hand, football leads all sports in bad behavior by its players and coaches.
The game’s current winningest coach, Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots, was fined half a million dollars for stealing signs from his opponents. And there seems to be something rotten in Foxborough because this year’s big scandal in professional football involves the ongoing saga of Patriots quarterback Tom Brady apparently ordering footballs to be deflated — making them easier to handle and throw — and then destroying his cell phone to hide the evidence of possibly incriminating texts.
But the NFL is lucky because, at the end of the day, if Brady really did what he’s accused of, then what he did was cheat a little bit and give himself an advantage he probably didn’t even need. Last year was far worse. The 2014 flagship NFL scandal featured security camera footage of Baltimore Ravens star running back Ray Rice beating his girlfriend in an elevator.
And I write “flagship NFL scandal” because these are not just isolated incidents involving wayward individual players. In fact, violent behavior off the field by NFL players is so widespread that the San Diego Union Tribune keeps a database of charges against players. The database has 800 records going back 15 years, and these don’t include count drunk driving arrests.
And the trouble often extends back to the players’ college days. In 2011 Sports Illustrated reported that one in 14 college football players had a criminal record.
All of this is bad enough without having to endure all the yammering on about how football builds character. Maybe it does in some, but it surely doesn’t in others; the record indicates that if you want your kid to develop character, the odds would be better if you encouraged him to play chess — or maybe even go into politics, law or used car sales.
So, can we please just play the game? Appreciate the amazing catch, the brilliant pass, the hard and cleanly executed block — without being lectured about how the good play was just a reflection of the players’ strong character and personal relationship with their Lord and Personal Savior Jesus Christ?
The answer, of course, is no, absolutely not. The mythology of character and pervasive (almost entirely Christian) religiosity are engrained in American football. This is why I’ve taken to recording all the games and fast-forwarding through the commentary. I view football, and all sports for that matter, as an entertainment and a distraction from everyday life, not any kind of analogy for it. For me, the games come with chips and salsa, not God and lessons of character.
Really, folks, it’s only football.
