University Diaries has been tracking this meme for about a year. A guy recounts in lurid detail this lurid sport that – as described – only a moral degenerate would follow, let alone get excited about every week.
[L]ast year was uniquely disastrous for the game. Heisman-winner Jameis Winston’s off-the-field behavior—rape allegations, petty theft, a brief suspension for obscenity—stalked a league already burdened with lawsuits from former athletes … [T]he best running back was suspended for whipping his son with a branch, domestic abuse cases seemed to materialize weekly, and the Ray Rice saga exposed the commissioner to be exactly as dense and cynical as many already feared…
Then the guy comes up with elaborate theories as to why he keeps excitedly watching the game anyway. But, as in this latest article, one really obvious explanation doesn’t occur to the guy. He loves violence, and the more violence the better.
After all, as he himself notes, football is more popular than ever.
January 6th, 2015 at 3:23PM
I suspect that at least part of the weirdness has nothing much to do with violence; rather, football is one of the few aspects of (what might be termed) collegiate tradition that survived the GI Bill and the ’60s and continues to flourish in vigorous if twisted form. It’s the last vestige, or at least the most visible, of old-time college life, which is why it’s so much more important to alumni than to today’s undergraduates.
January 7th, 2015 at 11:25PM
It might just be that the attraction is fending off boredom. Something to get excite about, due to the fact that the public has been politically neutered, unions, which at one time created some measure of political discourse, destroyed.
Speaking of unions, the Michigan legislature just passed a law outlawing athletes from forming any at their public unis. Those that bear the greatest cost of our sports obsession won’t be allowed to organize so as to mitigate the game’s worst aspects. So what is the point of our unis if they’re no longer the place to question current thinking?