Guilt About Sports
| 11
|
by Stilldocked
I love boxing. I think there is nothing more elemental in sport then the idea of two people, trained and matched, with nothing but their will and desire, going to face each other to see who is better.
That being said, I have found it more and more difficult to watch heavyweight boxing, especially on the elite level, because I know these men are slowly killing each other. Post concussion syndrome is a frightening thing and the goal of the heavyweight fighters is to knock the other one out, often resulting in a concussion of relative severity. The goal of the sport is to concuss their opponent into submission.
With that knowledge, and the lack of decent heavyweights over the last decade, heavyweight boxing has become tough to watch. I find myself drawn to the lower weight classes, with fewer knockouts and more technical skill.
I bring this up because I am finding football to provide the same feeling in the pit of my stomach that "something is not right". It is a queasy feeling that is not entirely comfortable. The injury to Kevin Everett this past weekend solidified this feeling. It went from queasiness to a rock sitting in my stomach. Yes, it was a freak injury, and a statistical anomaly (two ways of saying the same thing), but in a collision sport like football (thanks Coach Steverson for fixing that phrase in my mind), where everything is happening at ten thousand miles an hour (again, thanks Coach), the collisions will produce statistical anomalies and...wait for it...concussions will happen. In my limited football career, I can think to at least two points where I was concussed and this was small time Upstate New York High School football, not the monsters that are playing football on the high school, college or pro-levels now.
Not that I am going to stop enjoying football, because the autumn means football. It means seeing the Dutchmen rout RPI. It means watching the Giants lose a close game that they should win. It fills the need for sport when the Mets have either been eliminated or are so far ahead that the playoffs are a foregone conclusion (it's either or for the Mets, and pennant races just don't happen...as you know the Mets are very good or they are awful). Football provides drama and something to talk about the next day, and in it's own way, it is just as primal as boxing.
No, I am going to enjoy football, however, I am going to keep in my mind that these young men are killing themselves for my pleasure. "Are We Rome?" left out this discussion. Maybe we aren't that different from the Romans when it comes to our blood lust and the decadence that is only natural for a dying civilization.
