The Game Has to Change: Rethinking the Future of American Football
It must.
I haven’t played a game of football in over a decade, but I’m reminded of my time as a player almost daily by the aches in my body.
This is the same story for thousands of ex-players ranging from all levels of the game.
As a player, I sacrificed my body without regard.
I rattled my head a few too many times, saw too many flashing lights, and heard too many ringing bells. I made the big hits, imitating my favorite players in the league. I also had one too many concussions — with more uncounted than those counted for.
As many players do, I continue to live with the repercussions of all of my football-related injuries.
When you’re playing the game, you never think it will be you or happen to you.
However, I learned pretty quickly that it could happen to me when I was diagnosed with a herniated disc with the risk of paralyzation at 17.
I’d be in a wheelchair today if I took one wrong hit.
Yet, as football players, we’re often made to feel out of control of our bodies.
There was always a difference between being hurt and being injured.
You were always hurt, and it was better not to recognize the pain outside yourself. Your hurt was yours, bottled up, ready for the next hit. Feelings of pain were invalidated, or worst benched as punishment.
“Playing hurt” is the culture in football from Pop Warner to the NFL.
There is a long over-due discussion on the patriarchal notions that underlie the sport of football and its implications on players’ long-term health — physically and mentally.
Patriarchy expressed in football discards bodies on the spectrum and intersections of race and gender.
This is the culture of American football — a culture that degenerates and discards the bodies of those who play the game. Often, Black bodies.
Not only does patriarchal violence expressed in football harm players physically, but it also harms them emotionally and mentally.
Many players, as I can hear the voice from my trainers and coaches now, are denied their own capacity to feel. Often told to: “suck it up,” “perform in spite of the pain,” “work through the pain,” “push yourself to the limit,” and “no pain, no gain.”
As a football player, the denial of pain was seen as an earmark of toughness. The pain was celebrated, and the endurance of pain was defined by the patriarchal cultural belief that pain enhances one’s own worth and masculine adequacy, “you’re more of a man.”
In football, there is an emotional, mental, and physical proprietorship over players’ bodies due to the ritual of patriarchal manhood in surrendering the capacity to feel.
Yet, to feel is to be human.
When we lose contact with feelings, we lose our sense of our body and a sense of ourselves.
This form of masochism, dominating, aggressive, and emotionally guarded, is reflected in our society. In a sense, American football symbolizes and reaffirms the ideal prototype of hegemonic notions of patriarchal manhood in American society.
As fans, players, and spectators, we’ve been conditioned and grown accustomed to the risk of injury that comes with the game while overlooking the players’ humanity.
We can only hope that change will come.
The game must change.
And there must be room for the men who play to acknowledge their pain, physically and emotionally.
If we truly care.
I am more than affected by the recent tragic events of the game and will continue to pray for the players and their families. I also want to acknowledge the right move by coaches and players at the time that there were more important things than football.
