“Football is for everyone!”
These words begin an announcement from County Executive Calvin Ball yesterday about a new girls’ Flag Football initiative in the Howard County Schools. The program will receive financial support from the Baltimore Ravens and Under Armour. An investment in girls’ sports is worth celebrating, especially right now.
Image from County Executive Ball’s social media
In case people wonder if I ever disagree with our esteemed County Executive, well…
No, I don’t think football is for everyone. American tackle football is dangerous and violent and continues to chew up and spit out athletes whose futures are marred by permanent injuries both to body and brain. The world of professional football is steeped in systemic racism where the abilities and dedication of Black players are exploited to create financial benefit for the entire network of white people who hold power.
High school football is certainly not for marching bands who are often told they may not practice their routines on the field because they might somehow spoil it for the football players. Or other high school programs that languish while big money pours in to support football.
But we keep saying this thing anyway, that football is for everyone. Why?
Professor emeritus of sociology and gender studies at USC , Michael Messner, sums it up nicely. In an Op Ed for the LA Times, he writes:
High school football, and its accompanying spirit rituals, remains a key nexus of group pleasure and collective identity.*
I love the very academic tone here, the way his assessment is rooted in sociological observation and study. Oh, those primitive peoples, performing their spirit rituals to affirm collective identity.
I think we have now safely established that I take a dim view of “football is for everyone.”
My opinion is not going to cause anyone any lasting harm and you are not obliged to agree with me. If you’ve been here a while you know I’ve written about this before, in particular, high school tackle football.
Maybe It’s Time to Talk, August, 2017
The Good Old Days, February, 2018
But you don’t have to take my word for it.
Key Characteristics: Football has the highest injury and concussion rates among all sports, regardless of gender, according to the National High School Sports-Related Injury Surveillance Study. Injuries to the head/face, ankle, knee and hand/wrist are the most common. Though still low relatively speaking, football’s catastrophic rate is more than twice as high as the next-closest boys sport (lacrosse).
- - The Healthy Sports Index, Hospital for Special Surgery (learn more here)
Now it appears that the risk of brain trauma may also affect much younger athletes. According to a new study in JAMA Network Open, high-school football players can show alterations in brain tissue too. While it’s impossible to determine the presence of CTE without conducting an autopsy of the brain, the work provided disturbing evidence that playing the game early in life may lead to serious problems later on.
- - Football Can Damage the Brains of High-School Players, Jeffrey Kluger, Time
And, coming back to Messner in the LA Times:
Sometimes, when we think about gender equity we ask the wrong questions, based on the assumption that equity means girls and women striving to do what boys and men have been doing for decades. In this case, instead of asking why girls don’t play tackle football, more people are starting to ask why boys do, while suggesting that it may be time to start moving boys — starting with youth sports and extending into middle school and high school — into flag football.
- - If tackle football isn’t safe for girls, why do we let boys play? , Michael A. Messner, LA Times Voices
That’s a very good question. If tackle football isn’t safe for girls, why do we let boys play? Why, indeed? I think I know why. Far too many people are emotionally invested in this almost sanctified world of high school football. They must reenact those all-important spirit rituals and bask in the nexus of group pleasure and collective identity.
If we continue to sacrifice young men on this cultural altar we are a very primitive people, in my opinion.
*In the same way, we might also say that professional football, “…and its accompanying spirit rituals, remains a key nexus of group pleasure and collective identity.”
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