The problem with football isn’t that it’s ‘barbaric’
The problem is that it’s controlled by billionaires who call the shots with little to no accountability to anyone but themselves.
“Scary stuff. Is he dead?”
That’s how I learned about Damar Hamlin, the Buffalo Bills football player who suffered a cardiac arrest on the field last week. I wasn’t watching the game, but a friend messaged a WhatsApp group including me and other friends of ours who love football.
That’s right. I love football. I know it’s violent and the most popular television show in a media system owned by a handful of all-too-powerful corporations—but I can’t help it.
I grew up watching the Washington Redskins (now Commanders) with my mom, who was in the Redskins marching band in the 80s and 90s. My dad likes their rival, the Dallas Cowboys, and I ultimately switched sides when the Cowboys won three championships. I now read Cowboys news every morning and try to watch every one of their games. New York Times writer Jane Coaston nailed it when she described the sport as “a logic game played at full speed, a chess match, a whirlwind, and sometimes it’s completely, wonderfully bonkers.”
Hamlin’s injury made me feel all-too-familiar feelings: shock, disgust, sadness, an adrenaline rush. I’ve seen some of my favorite players injured many times. Dak Prescott breaking his ankle. Tony Romo breaking his collarbone. Michael Irvin injuring his back and being forced to retire. Scrolling through Twitter for updates on Hamlin’s condition was like following the protests after the police murdered George Floyd. Part of me hoped Hamlin was okay but another part expected bad news.
Now that Hamlin is recovering—he was released from the hospital earlier this week—I want to bring some nuance to the relentless criticism of the National Football League (NFL).
The problem with football isn’t that it’s “barbaric,” “brutal,” or “deadly.” The problem is that it’s controlled by a private, for-profit corporation. Thirty-two people—the team owners—call the shots with little to no accountability to anyone but themselves. The problem is capitalism.
Yes, football is violent. NFL players ages 25 to 39 have about three times the rate of arthritis as the general public. Retired players in their 50s are 10 times as likely to be diagnosed with dementia as the general population.
But many jobs hurt people. An average of 275 workers die every day from hazardous working conditions. Nearly 1,000 truck drivers die each year. There were 38,300 injuries at Amazon’s U.S. facilities in 2021. Joshua Hill (who recently launched a newsletter) tweeted stories from workers who shared their stories the night Hamlin was injured:
The problem in all of these cases (and across the economy) is that workers—the people actually doing the work—lack power to control their working conditions.
One of the stories described how Amazon forced workers to keep working after an elderly worker died on the warehouse floor. Managers stacked boxes around the body until a coroner could arrive.
Fortunately, football players are represented by a union—the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA). That gives them some power in relation to the owners. In fact, that’s the only reason they were able to stop the game after Hamlin went down.
As journalist Dave Zirin wrote,
“It’s important to note that the league only called the game after player reps from both teams contacted the union, the NFLPA, which informed the league that the game was done. This was a workplace action. Participants exercised their collective power and demanded that their trauma, their grief, their very humanity be recognized.”
I’m not holding my breath until the owners—most of them billionaires—give up control of the league to the players. But it’s a thought-provoking exercise to imagine the people actually playing the game getting to make decisions about how they play it.
Maybe players would be able to freely choose to play a violent (yet fun, emotional, beautiful) game while also deciding together about changes to make it safer and more player-friendly. They might even get health care to cover their injuries after they retire. (The average NFL career lasts only 3.3 years, and 78 percent of players go broke within three years of retirement.)
And the really thought-provoking exercise is imagining our society without big, powerful corporations dominating nearly everything we do.