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Blog~Thoughts on football and dog fighting

Discussion in 'Pit Bull News' started by Vicki, Oct 22, 2009.

  1. Vicki

    Vicki Administrator Staff Member

    Published Oct. 22, 2009 at 10:19 a.m.
    By Jeff Sherman


    I like watching football, but it's far from my favorite sport. There's the groundwork. Now, on to the guts of this blog.

    American football really has it all. It's fast, full of destruction, precision and, at any moment, you know someone is liable to get whacked, flattened and downright leveled. Ah, football. Many games are more like video games or movies, aren't they? Huge guys, in full armor, going all out in search of a win.
    What's got football on this basketball boy's mind today?

    Malcolm Gladwell, author of "Blink" and "The Tipping Point," is the one who has me thinking. Gladwell has written one of the year's best pieces of sports journalism. His New Yorker piece called, "Offensive Play. How different are dog fighting and football?," is as good as it gets in his profession. It's thought provoking, honest and entertaining. Give it a read.

    Here's an exerpt:
    "In 2000 and 2001, four drivers in NASCAR's elite Sprint Cup Series were killed in crashes, including the legendary Dale Earnhardt. In response, NASCAR mandated stronger seats, better seat belts and harnesses, and ignition kill switches, and completed the installation of expensive new barriers on the walls of its racetracks, which can absorb the force of a crash much better than concrete. The result is that, in the past eight years, no one has died in NASCAR's three national racing series. Stock-car fans are sometimes caricatured as bloodthirsty, eagerly awaiting the next spectacular crash. But there is little blood these days in NASCAR crashes. Last year, at Texas Motor Speedway, Michael McDowell hit an oil slick, slammed head first into the wall at a hundred and eighty miles per hour, flipped over and over, leaving much of his car in pieces on the track, and, when the vehicle finally came to a stop, crawled out of the wreckage and walked away. He raced again the next day. So what is football? Is it dog fighting or is it stock-car racing?"
    I never played the game at any thing above a flag football level, but even so I'm certain that even with all the precautions taken to protect players that I wouldn't want my son or frankly your son to play the game. Call me a wuss or risk averse, but I'm simply doing the concussion and brain damage math. Again, read the piece, do some research on concussions and on post-playing-days life for football players and you, too, might be a bit scared.

    I'm not bashing football. Again, I'm a fan. But, I am wondering if the sport may need to pay more attention to safety.

    But, as Gladwell concludes in his 10-page piece, "There is nothing else to be done, not so long as fans stand and cheer. 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."

    Is football too violent?

    OnMilwaukee.com Sports: Football, violence and dog fighting
     
  2. Vicki

    Vicki Administrator Staff Member

    Malcolm Gladwell, Ted Johnson, and Why Football Isn't Like Dogfighting

    Malcolm Gladwell, Ted Johnson, and Why Football Isn't Like Dogfighting

    byMike Gleason


    In his latest article in The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell writes about the toll professional football takes on the brains of former players—how the years of collisions eventually lead to serious mental problems down the line.
    At issue is whether the sustained legal hits to the head—as opposed to illegal actions—cause the long-term damage many players suffer from later in life.
    Gladwell even draws a parallel to football and dogfighting, suggesting the brutality of the two sports is similar, and pondering whether football as we know it can vanish over the coming years.

    This issue is particularly near and dear to Patriots fans, who saw Ted Johnson's career cut short because of numerous concussions. He has said he suffers from post-concussive syndrome and intends to donate his brain to a Boston University study after he dies.

    I am normally an unabashed Gladwell fan, but I strongly disagree with the comparison between dogfighting and football. I feel to paint the two with the same brush is unnecessarily sensationalist.

    Let me start with the obvious: football has many positive qualities not shared by dogfighting. In an increasingly sedentary world, football encourages physical activity in young adults. Football instills discipline, and reinforces the value of teamwork and effort.

    However, I believe the comparison fails because it does not take into account what makes dogfighting so objectionable in the first place: the lack of choice on the part of the participants.

    Gladwell says:
    "Part of what makes dogfighting so repulsive is the understanding that violence and injury cannot be removed from the sport. It’s a feature of the sport that dogs almost always get hurt."

    I would argue that a much larger part of dogfighting's repulsiveness is that the dogs are forcibly compelled to fight. They are simply not given an option.
    Indeed, Gladwell later writes:

    "In a fighting dog, the quality that is prized above all others is the willingness to persevere, even in the face of injury and pain. A dog that will not do that is labelled a 'cur,' and abandoned."

    However, on the matter of the player's choice, he devotes but one sentence, claiming we cannot accept that the risk of football injury is a risk "freely assumed." I think a serious discussion of this matter is a fairly large omission on the part of the article.

    If the article is in fact an argument for banning the game (it seems to be so—he argues that hits to the head are an integral part of the game, and no amount of better equipment or harsher rules would change that), then the matter of choice is paramount. We must ask ourselves if people should be allowed to engage in activities that could harm them?

    Personal responsibility has been under attack in our society for quite some time. Smoking bans have moved beyond public buildings and restaurants, and are now threatening to move outdoors. The government is now considering all kinds of legislation to punish fat people for, well, being fat.

    Yet there have been quasi-reasonable justifications put forth for both. Smoking, they claim, may harm others as well as oneself. The obese have an disproportionate effect on health care costs (a justification I find specious, but that's beside the point).

    Banning or forcibly reforming football, though, would take that question to another level entirely. I believe it would represent an unwarranted infringement on the public's right to self-determination.

    Does the NFL need to do more in this area? Of course.

    Should players be better informed of the risks of playing? Definitely.
    Should we continue to refine protective equipment and the rules of the game? Without a doubt.

    But does football, even with all its injury woes, resemble dogfighting? Not in the least.

    Malcolm Gladwell, Ted Johnson, and Why Football Isn't Like Dogfighting | Bleacher Report
     

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