A Fall Without Football
By Don McPherson
Is America ready for a fall without football? If not, what does that tell us about the assumptions of altruism learned through sports and our sports-obsessed nation?
The end of my professional football career was one of the most profound moments of my life. Like many people experience at the end of their careers or with the loss of a job, I was faced with attempts to salvage remnants of my identity without the game. Who was I without football?
That moment felt like being dropped off a cliff. My world changed rapidly and the thing that gave me purpose, supported my attitudes and decisions and justified my lifestyle was gone. Without football the calendar had less meaning, many “friendships” faded away and, business affiliations and opportunities were forced into re-evaluation. What made this moment uniquely profound was the backdrop of the assumptions of altruism and transferrable skills that had longed been preached as the redeemable payoff for sports participation – the feigned justification for our sports obsessed culture.
When I retired from football in 1994, admittedly I was conflicted about the place that sports had led me and left me in life. I was raised on the (assumed) altruism but lived through the period when business and the economic impact of sports changed its function and influence in American society. From youth sports to higher education, professional sports to the global Olympic movement, I witnessed, first hand the evolution of sports into an entity unrecognizable from the lofty nostalgia upon which we originally assigned virtue and altruism. In 1994, I searched desperately for that grounding; the place where sports represented the best of our humanity and the platform from which I could engage more complex and urgent social issues.
Twenty-six years later I wonder if sports have advanced an altruistic spirit commensurate with the billions of dollars we have collectively shed upon it. Or are we left with the divisive selfishness of the “I win-you die” paradigm that has characterized the way in which we identify with and, consume sports.
The business of sports exploits and promotes our divisions. Playfully, we call them rivalries and while they can be fun, they are hardly rooted in any discernible history but rather taught and passed down through generations and propagandized as true cultural identity. If you grew up in the Bronx, you don’t know why you hate the Fenway, you just do. In rural Alabama it’s hard to explain why a state trooper poison generations-old trees on a rival college campus; trees that were mere symbols of community pride. College football rivalries in other parts of the country have names like “Good Ole Fashion Hate” (Georgia vs. Georgia Tech) and the “Holy War” (Brigham Young vs. Utah). These traditions make us cheer louder during the game but what is their residual impact when the game is over? Do we come together in communal appreciation for the purity of competition and athleticism or do we retreat with petulant bombast in victory or retributive cries of “next year!”?
Who are we as Americans without our delineating affiliations, that are often justified by and highlighted through sports? Have we invested so much in the doctrine of “us versus them” that it has permeated other aspects in our society?
When COVID-19 was realized as a foreboding threat to the United States, our president declared himself a “wartime” president and many on both sides of the political divide adopted the “war against COVID” rhetoric. I was immediately reminded of the hyperbolic and useless proclamations of war against social issues of our own making that required truthful introspection and comprehensive strategies to address but, instead we created amorphous “wars” that seem to have no distinct adversary; like the “war on drugs” or, the “war on terrorism;” waged against a behavior or concept with no identifiable enemy and therefore no real strategy or metric to determine victory. But the rhetoric fits our seemingly rote response to dissonance or conflict; that we must be aligned against “the other;” it is less about who (or what) that is and more about national solidarity.
However, this pandemic does not require that we rally against an enemy, but that we work together to eliminate a virus that lives among us.
What this moment needs is a rallying cry for LOVE; that we put aside our differences for a universal outcome. We must be for something greater than the prevention of a disease but for the advancement of our existence. That may sound extreme but when faced with a once-in-a-century pandemic, we must acknowledge the particular gravity of this threat that requires a proportional response.
In so many ways COVID has already revealed many of our national vulnerabilities, exposing healthcare disparities along racial and socio-economic divides and, the tenuous and fragile economic lives of millions of Americans families. The environment has also worked to bring rise to racial tensions that have simmered for too long in our nation and brought them to an unceasing boil.
The revelation of our social ills, no matter how grotesque or depraved, typically hold our attention for a news cycle. Since young children were slaughtered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, we’ve done little more than train our teachers and children how to respond to an inevitable “active shooter” in their school. Predictable and preventable school shootings occurred weekly, until March 2020 when COVID arrived and shut down our schools. Shootings have stopped but that’s because teachers and students face a more lasting and deadly proposition – the physical nature of “schooling” – children in a classroom.
In normal times we reflexively turn to sports to restore a sense of normalcy, foregoing the hard conversations and decisions and, ignoring what our social ills say about the fabric of our society. In fact, we use the theater of sports to satiate our want to move on; a moment of silence for victims or brief cessation of the “I win-you die” rhetoric in media and fan behavior. Military “fly-overs” and American flags that cover a entire football field are tacit but blunt reminders that our strength and unity are forged by displays of grandeur and threat towards another, not love for one another.
We are all vulnerable to COVID and our strength and only defense against it is the unanimity of our behavior.
I have always believed in the transferrable skills learned through sports, however, only if we are deliberately taught how certain habits and skills are applied outside of sports. Among those transferrable qualities I value most is the concept of “team;” individuals working together for a common purpose; a concept that is not revealed until it is truly tested.
We are at that moment of reckoning of what sports have taught us about the concept of team and other redeemable qualities of sports, as we are forced to live without the spectacle and distraction. We have preached to our children that sports are about sacrifice and community, citing sportsmanship and “giving back” as the hallmarks of a great (unselfish) athlete. We have grown a billion-dollar industry around college sports that insists the athletes are amateur “student-athletes.” And, since I began playing football at the age of ten, I cannot remember taking the field without saying the Lord’s Prayer followed by standing in reverence for our national anthem with my hand over my heart.
In truth, the promulgation of sports in American culture has NOT prepared us for this moment; the assumed altruism and patriotism has taught us to love America but not Americans and, has left us with few examples of how to truly love our neighbor especially those who do not worship, love, vote, live or look like ourselves. We have turned universal public health strategies into tools of tribalism. Our rhetoric and behavior make us more vulnerable to a virus that thrives on our inability to be united against it.
Perhaps a fall without football is exactly what we need as a nation. My hope is that we live up to the altruistic rhetoric and find our faith, community and family as the strength and unifying force this crisis requires. And, that we summon from within ourselves the ability to come together at a time when healing, reconciliation and love are needed more than ever. As someone who loves the game, I hope that a fall without football is one reason we get there.
Don McPherson is the author of You Throw Like a Girl: The Blind Spot of Masculinity, chronicling more than thirty-five years, using sports to address social issues and focused on a quarter century of work on gender violence and aspirational masculinity. His programs have reached more than one million, throughout North America. A member of the College Football Hall of Fame, McPherson was a highly decorated All-American quarterback at Syracuse University.
