[P]eople cling to football. To penetrate that bubble, you literally have to say, “This could be killing our kids.” … You see a guy get totally jacked. He’s down on the ground, we think he might be paralyzed. Everybody is holding hands and praying for this person. But as soon as he gets carted off the field, it’s like the volume comes back on. A pause for a moment, and then someone on TV says, “Well, that puts it in perspective.” No. What puts it in perspective is the fact that five minutes later, we don’t give a shit.
What would our universities do without it?
May 6th, 2012 at 8:17PM
The shift from baseball to football as a national sport, like the shift from radio to television, parallels the collapse of socially responsible institutions like banks, medicine, and education. The brutes — physical, moral and mental — are in charge. I wonder how many reasonably intelligent people have just given up. I have. Those with sensibility are left to contemplate the bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
May 6th, 2012 at 8:40PM
Isn’t it true, though, that the era of baseball as a national sport heavily overlapped the era of boxing as a much more popular sport than it is today?
May 7th, 2012 at 7:17AM
without big-money sports what would local news in states like Nebraska use to distract citizens from the lack of actual news about their ongoing disintegration?
May 7th, 2012 at 9:43AM
There’s a reason why baseball isn’t the top sport anymore. It’s too slow. People aren’t getting the shit knocked out of them. We’re a very aggressive culture.
As it stands, this is a weak argument because there’s little sense of, or interest in, comparative international perspective. To take just one off-the-top-of-my-head example: Pakistan could hardly be described as a society lacking an aggressive streak. Yet cricket – one of the more stately and recumbent of the great world sports – is extremely popular there.
May 7th, 2012 at 10:04AM
Nebraska’s unemployment rate peaked under 5% and is currently around 4%. In recent years, it has usually ranked in the top ten states for economic competitiveness, personal well-being (whatever that is), and despite the ghastly climate swings, Omaha and Lincoln regularly make lists of top places to live. My own city of Mediocrevilleburgton could use a little of that disintegration.
May 7th, 2012 at 10:41AM
tp: It’s interesting to look at the mix in certain cities. Las Vegas is an intellectual desert, but everyone wants to live there.
May 7th, 2012 at 10:43AM
Alan: Good point – I think people are far too eager to make broad generalizations about America as aggressive, etc. You don’t need any such arguments to make one devastating point after another about what football’s become here.
May 7th, 2012 at 4:13PM
theprof: I live in Omaha our streets and sewers are literally crumbling and our social services have been savaged, we are steadily losing population and our remaining people are undereducated in terms of the little job growth there is, just wait until the federal farm bill begins to get cut, that will be the death knell for the already aging and dwindling rural areas, the bigger math doesn’t add up…
May 8th, 2012 at 10:13AM
Omaha, Population, 2010: 408,958
Omaha, Population, 2000: 390,007
Omaha, Population, 1990: 335,795
Omaha, Population, 1980: 314,255
Omaha, Population, 1970: 347,790
Omaha, Population, 1960: 301,958
Omaha, High school graduates, percent of persons age 25+, 2006-2010 88.3% vs. 87.6% (entire US)
Omaha, Bachelor’s degree or higher, pct of persons age 25+, 2006-2010 32.4% vs 30.4% (entire US)
Your major verifiable contentions are not supported by the facts.
May 8th, 2012 at 10:21AM
Former quarterback Kurt Warner is getting raked over the coals for saying he might not let his kids play football: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/kurt-warner-stands-ground-nfl-concerns-answers-critics-132130467.html
May 8th, 2012 at 10:57AM
you didn’t look at the state’s population nor the estimated number/percentage of new jobs requiring a college education.
May 8th, 2012 at 4:02PM
Nebraska population, 1960-2010:
1960: 1,411,330
1970: 1,483,493
1980: 1,569,825
1990: 1,578,385
2000: 1,711,263
2010: 1,826,341