Against Football

against footballI heard the book, Against Football: One Fan’s Reluctant Manifesto by Steve Almond, being discussed on NPR:  It prompted the following comments.

I was never a huge football fan, but I did follow the Cowboys and OU football. The Cowboys I first became enamored with when we lived in New Jersey and they were a new NFL expansion team. Dallas was close to Oklahoma, and Oklahoma was one of the few touchstones I had in my young life as a rolling stone. It is difficult to live in Oklahoma and not root for the Sooners, or at least the OSU Cowboys.

Another reason that I feigned a large interest in football was because it was the manly thing to do. All my male peers seemed to love the game and to have something to discuss with them a basic knowledge of football current and past events was needed.

I had a brief decade in Arkansas where I was able to grow a little moss, and I became interested in Razorback sports. If you know nothing else about Arkansas know that they are Razorback crazy. You see the red hog everywhere you go in the state.

The winds of time changed, Continue reading “Against Football”

Football and Priorities

I will not go into much detail as it is all over the news, but there is a child sexual abuse scandal unfolding at Penn State involving a former assistant coach who worked under Joe Paterno.  Apparently at least one of the alleged incidences happened in the team locker room and Paterno was aware of it.   It also seems the President of the University, Graham Spanier was also aware, and a cover up ensued.

Paterno had announced that he would retire at the end of the season and there is one more game to go.  The university trustees unanimously voted to fire both men for the good of Penn State University.  The news described a “riot” last Continue reading “Football and Priorities”

How different are dog fighting and football

A recent article in The New Yorker, Offensive Play How different are dog fighting and football? By Malcolm Gladwell, explores the effect of extreme contact sports like football and boxing on the human brain.

For an American male, I’m a bit of an anomaly.  I do not really follow sports, except professional golf mildly.  There are several reasons for this.
 
One would be that for me personally sports are more for the doing rather than the watching.  I engage in several at a fairly incompetent level, but I enjoy them nevertheless.
 
Secondly, a while back, I just got bored with them.  Continue reading “How different are dog fighting and football”