Tag: Football

No Matter How Cute the Commercials

~ slfuchs ~ 2 Comments

The Niners and the Chiefs will play the “Concussion Bowl –aka– the Super Bowl next Sunday in Las Vegas. For many millions it is the not to missed High Holy Day of American Civil Religion.

And I see on the internet that decent seats – not great but decent – can be had for about six grand. So, I find myself wondering:

What would I do if my doorbell rang, and a person handed me two fifty-yard-line seats, two first class tickets to and from Las Vegas and a voucher for five nights in a luxury suite on in one of the finest hotels on the Strip?

Oh, I would be tempted, but I hope I would decline the gift.

I hope I would decline the gift in the same way I hope that if I lived in ancient Rome, I would decline a ticket to see gladiators battle to the death for the amusement of the audience. If you look at the statistics, and they are irrefutable, you will see that American football is just a couple of degrees more civilized than the gladiatorial contests of ancient Rome!

According to Wikipedia based on a whole host of other sources as indicated by the footnotes:

“Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) has been found in 345 of 376 (that is 91.76 %) deceased former National Football League (NFL) players’ brains, according to a 2023 report by the Boston University CTE Center, which has led the effort to diagnose CTE cases. In comparison, a 2018 BU study of the general population found one CTE case in 164 autopsies, and that one person with CTE had played college football.[1] The NFL acknowledged a link between playing American football and being diagnosed with CTE in 2016, after denying such a link for over a decade and arguing that players’ symptoms had other causes

Although the symptoms of CTE can vary, it doesn’t directly cause death but instead changes personality and behavior, making a person not feel like themselves anymore.[15] Players with CTE can become isolated from their friends.[16] Sometimes they become unable to tell a story,[17] carry on a conversation,[18] or recognize their loved ones.[19] One former player later found to have CTE described having headaches that felt like ice picks hitting his brain.[20]

Some former players with CTE suffer from memory loss and depression.[21] Some players and those around them deal with their violent mood swings, rage,[22] and paranoia.[23][24] In some cases, damage to players’ brains contributes to severe alcoholism leading to death.[25][26] Two former NFL Man of the Year winners suffering from CTE symptoms shot themselves in the chest so their brains could be studied for the damage inflicted by football.[27][28]”  (Dave Duerson and Junior Seau)

And speaking of injuries according to an article in the February 2020 issue of Forbes magazine:

No sport racks up injuries quite like football, so it’s no surprise that NFL teams spent an estimated $521 million on sidelined players during the 2019 season, according to a study by The Associated Press

521 million dollars

I think of the number of schools, low-income housing units, medical care facilities and other worthwhile causes that could be served by 521 million dollars annually. It sickens me to fathom that that money is going to treat injuries inflicted in the pursuit of spectator entertainment and the almighty dollars of ticket sale, TV, and advertising revenue.

As a Rabbi, but more importantly as a human being, created in God’s image, can I really be a fan or even an observer of a spectacle that shortens the lives and drastically reduces the quality of the post-career lives of the participants?  Oh, like millions and millions of others, I used to be a fan, but several years ago I realized I can no longer be.

You see, where evil exists, we have a simple choice: We can be part of the problem or part of the solution.

“Whoa, whoa, Rabbi,” so many have responded, “Let’s not get carried away. The players know the risks, and they exercise their own free choice to participate.”

It is an argument that assuages the qualms of many but not me.

Are we not complicit in the life-altering and life-threatening injuries and early deaths of the players when we dangle untold riches and glamor before the eyes of the participants? I conclude that we are…no. matter how cute the commercials.

Therefore, though mine may be a lonely voice crying out to tuned out ears, I must say, “No,” to “The Concussion Bowl” and all the dementia-causing life-shortening contests that precede it.

Prayer After Super Bowl LI

~ slfuchs ~ 2 Comments

Eternal One,

Once again much of the world you created rejoiced in the face of evil. Thousands spent billions to watch and millions more tuned in to the mayhem of Super Bowl LI.

They rave about how exciting the game was!

  • It mattered not that many on the field were able to play only with the help of Toradol or other dangerous drugs to mask their pain.
  • It mattered not that so many past players have committed suicide, died young, or live with life-ruining dementia.

We watched anyway!

Some claim: “They knew the risks, and they chose to play.

  • Would they have known the risks if the first time they walked on a field, their parents and they had to sign a declaration that told the truth:

“Playing this game is liable to shorten your life or condemn you to live each day with pain?”

  • Would they have accepted the risk if we had not glamorized football and conditioned players, from when they were in the cradle, to worship at football’s altar.

When we study ancient history, we read of gladiatorial festivals and ask: “How could civilized society allow such carnage in the name of entertainment?”

When, O God, will we ask the same question about American football?

How long, O God?

  • How long will we celebrate and delight in such havoc to enrich owners, sponsors, TV networks and gamblers?
  • How long will we deny the price our entertainment exacts?

Many moral or religious leaders have turned a blind eye!

They watch, wear game jerseys and make bets on the outcome with others consecrated to work for a more just, caring and compassionate society.

Where, Eternal One, is the compassion for these former NFL players who have committed suicide?

They are not just statistics. They were real people:

Where also, O God, is our concern for the families of dead players found on post mortem to have Chronic Traumatic Brain Damage?

They are not just statistics! They are real people:

And where, O God, we must ask, is our compassion for those who still walk this earth doomed to lives of pain and suffering from the traumatic brain damage their doctors have diagnosed?

They are not just statistics! They are real people:

Some of these names, O God, were well known to even the casual football observer. Only diehard fans knew the names of others.

No matter! We must ask:

  • Did they die or do they suffer in vain?
  • Can we not learn the lesson of their misfortune?
  • As players grow bigger, stronger and faster, will not future casualty lists not multiply much more rapidly?

Open our eyes, Eternal One! Remove our blindness! Help us to see at last that the glory, the fame and the riches football brings to the few are just not worth the terrible price they exact from our pockets but, more importantly, from our souls!

Amen

 

If Lives REALLY Matter, Then,

~ slfuchs ~ 2 Comments

Elul is the last month of the Jewish year, and it is a time we Jews pay particular attention to reviewing our actions of the past year and resolving to do better in the year ahead. But self-reflection and a close examination of our values and priorities is good for all of us, all the time.

During Elul the College and ProfessionalConcussion Season began.

And so–

I offer this prayer:

Eternal One,

Be with all of those who–serving at the altar of the American religion of football–will suffer brain-addling injuries that will shorten their lives, thwart their ability to think, spawn depression, lead some to suicide, and make pain their constant companion.

When the Jewish New Year arrives, many of us will hear in our synagogues the biblical story of the Binding of Isaac.

Its lesson is not that God was unfair to ask such a thing of the one with whom God covenanted to make a more just caring and compassionate society.


And it is not that Abraham failed the test.

No, “They went together…” (Genesis 22:6 and 8) the Eternal One, Abraham and Isaac to Mount Moriah and back to teach us once and for all that God abhors and categorically rejects human sacrifice.


Well we know that humanity–though created “In the image of God,” (Genesis 1:26,27) has not learned the lesson! 


Those of us who feel called—whether we are Jewish Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, another religion or atheist–to live, teach and encourage others to make this world the best place we possibly can might urge our society to do better!

—Will we abhor and turn away from the death dealing gladiatorial spectacle of big time football?

—Will we have the courage to speak out against this multi billion dollar industry?

—Or will we “stand idly by the blood of our neighbors,” (Leviticus 19:16) or worse, join the chorus of sis boom bahs watching and cheering the carnage in the arena or in front of our TVs, ignoring our own assertions that Black lives matter, White lives matter, Hispanic lives matter–indeed that all lives matter, and none is acceptable as a sacrifice for our entertainment.

Will You Bow at the Altar of Football Violence?

~ slfuchs ~ 6 Comments

Tomorrow, much of our nation will bow at the idolatrous altar of football violence as the Superbowl unfolds!  I plead with you now:  Please join me in doing something else, anything else!

A few days ago two former Vanderbilt football players were convicted of multiple counts of sexual assault against another student. The case absolutely sickens me!  For four years, while serving as Senior Rabbi of Congregation Ohabai Sholom in Nashville, I studied the values of Biblical literature at Vanderbilt before earning my Doctor of Ministry degree in 1992. For that reason I feel an extra measure of revulsion over the actions of Cory Batey and Brandon Vandenburg,  the two former Vanderbilt football players, who were both convicted on all of the counts of sexual assault with which they were charged, I hope they both spend many years behind bars for their crimes.

Sadly, though, it was not an isolated incident. One can only guess how many other women were sexually assaulted on college campuses and other places in the two years between when the Vanderbilt rape occurred and the day the guilty verdict was read. It is only because of the enormous courage and fortitude of the victim that justice was done in this case. How many hundreds of others have gone and will go unreported?

A lengthy letter to the Vanderbilt community by Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos begins this way:

“Earlier this week, a Nashville jury found two former Vanderbilt students guilty of a vicious attack against a fellow student. The victim showed exceptional courage and strength in pursuing justice through the criminal trial. At this time, we are called upon again to consider as a community how we can ensure that what happened to the survivor of this terrible crime never happens again.

The heinous conduct described at trial was not the product of Vanderbilt’s culture. On the contrary, such conduct is the very opposite of the values Vanderbilt stands for and our students hold dear. We abhor sexual misconduct, and we subject every student to the same standards.”

But you don’t “subject every student to the same standards,” Chancellor. Elite athletes live by different rules. And you know it!

Without question the actions of Vandenburg and Batey are the antithesis of what Vanderbilt and every university stand for. And yet it is clear to me that the culture of “King Football” which reigns on university campuses across the United States is complicit in the crimes.

Athletes who play major college sports are courted to come to their institutions and coddled while they are there. People have told them since they were children how great they are, and so they feel entitled to do whatever they want whenever they want to whomever they want.

In addition, violence spews out of our television, movie and–perhaps worst of all–our computer screens. Why should people think it is wrong to abuse another human being, when they have seen hundreds of thousands of images of such abuse by the time they reach adolescence?

The combination of limitless violence and limitless adulation for student athletes is a lethal combination, and the game of football is the most visible result. Each week during the season millions of people watch highly trained athletes risk life and limb for their entertainment. Too many studies have shown that even when these gladiators walk away unscathed from their weekly combat, the effects accumulate in an alarming percentage of participants.

Look at the studies that reveal how many former NFL players die young. Look at the percentage of those who live out their lives after their short years of glory are over with life-long painful injuries. Look at the numbers who succumb to Alzheimer’s disease at an early age. These figures are shocking. But we don’t care!

We claim that in a free country, these people make the choice to take these risks, and who are we to stop them? We claim that we don’t condone censorship, so we dare not even ask the entertainment industry to tone down the violence that our kids see every day.

The New York Times has an “ethicist,” Chuck Klosterman.” Now, nothing in the man’s resume or education suggests any special training or expertise in ethics. So let’s accept that his column is for entertainment value only. Still, he has a very large stage and when asked about the ethics of watching football, he wrote:

“Any adult involved with football is aware of the risks associated with playing a collision sport … every head-to-head collision generates imperceptible ‘sub-concussions,’ slowly damaging the brain without the victim suffering the symptoms of an acute trauma. This means the players are being injured on almost every play … Football is a brutal activity …”

But that’s OK says Klosterman …”We love something that’s dangerous. And I can live with that.”

Well, when I see the effects of football both in the culture of entitlement it creates for players on the one hand and the devastating effects on their bodies on the other hand, I cannot remain silent. I don’t watch football any more.

Tomorrow they will play the biggest game of all, the Superbowl. Never mind that one of the teams participating, the New England Patriots, cheated to get there. We can’t jeopardize the biggest sporting event of the year over a little thing like that, can we?

I don’t watch football anymore because I realize now, after decades of watching, that each one of us is either part of the problem or part of the solution. We either contribute to the culture of violence that causes untold damage to minds and bodies or we do our small part to reverse it.

Which choice will you make?