I’ve never fully understood football. I don’t know if it was for lack of interest or because it just seemed too complicated, but I admittedly never tried to comprehend it. I don’t mean the mechanics of the game (although I’m a little hazy on those details, too), I mean the phenomenon of American football: the reason we play it (i.e. obsess over it) as an American society despite its proven dangers. It’s like smoking cigarettes. We know it’s bad and it just might kill us, but people choose to gamble and do it anyway because it feels good.
Just for writing this position people will label me too-girly-to-understand. Perhaps that is true. But yet again the liberal banner exulting the dangers of football must be raised and repeated, for otherwise I fear the imminent decay of our society into a caveman world of oblivion.
Let’s start with the most recent, horrifying football news. On Sunday afternoon Ohio State football player Kosta Karageorge was found dead. He reportedly shot himself in the head after suffering numerous concussions thanks in part to his beloved sport, football. Right before he was last seen, he texted his mom, “I am sorry if I am an embarrassment but these concussions have my head all f***ed up.” Karageorge was a walk-on to the Ohio State football team after having wrestled for three years. CNN reported his death with an opening line of, “The rough sports he loved may have helped to do Kosta Karageorge in at age 22.” This simple, matter-of-fact statement is about as hype a repercussion as his death may receive. There will be no riots or protests for Karageorge. There will be no Ferguson fury. We have accepted as an American society that the pleasure we derive from watching young men hurl themselves at one another across a field of grass is worth more than the death of a few or the brain injury of hundreds. In fact, we teach our little boys that strong, able, successful men play football. We turn a blind eye to the casualties as we continue to pour money and effort into a sport that does nothing for the good of mankind.
Michael Brown, the victim of the Ferguson shooting, was 18. His needless death has been protested for months and has brought this country damn near to its knees. It’s all you hear about when you turn on the news. That’s because of what it stands for. Brown’s death stands for the injustice and the racism that still plague our society. He’s a cause people can rally around. But what about Karageorge? What does his mom feel like? He was only four years older than Brown. He died needlessly, too. No one is protesting for him. Yes, he will receive well-deserved candlelight vigils and a school-wide grievance, but will anyone question the institution of football? Will anyone research the statistics of how many football athletes are injured or die from concussions? Will anyone cry for an end to this constant violence like they did in Ferguson? I’ll just go ahead and take a guess. No.
And here we find ourselves back to the slippery slope that is former Athletic Director Dave Brandon and the University of Michigan football program. Why, you may ask, do we refuse to question football and why do we refuse to make our players safer? Money. Yes, we’re a society that will do anything for money. Dave Brandon himself made $850,000 in 2013 while working at the University. That made him the highest-paid employee of the University. So somewhere, someone decided that Michigan football, with all of its concussions and sexual abuse scandals, was more important than the University cancer researcher with a Ph.D. on North Campus who spends over 12 hours a day in a lab trying to find a cure for breast cancer. But that is neither here nor there.
Money, then, is what drives this train. While people run to burn things down and throw rocks at policemen over the death of Michael Brown, they leave NFL football playing on the TV at home, forgetting that the Super Bowl represents the single largest human trafficking incident in the United States each year. People rush off to protest violence, while supporting violence (without even knowing it). Here’s the boys-will-be-boys part I really don’t understand: we’re letting football and all of its atrocities fly because we find it relaxing to watch young men break each other’s legs and tackle one another to the ground? I think I missed something. Perhaps in another 50 years Ferguson will be a story of the distant past. People will rejoice in a newfound equality between all races. Football, then, will be the next injustice and violent theme we protest in this country. One can only hope.
Maura Levine can be reached at mtoval@umich.edu.