I must confess that I am an addict. Not addicted to crack, religion or cocain.But like tens of millions of Americans I am a bonifide football addict. I can imagine what it was like at the Roman Colosseum, in 1st century BCE, when gladiators entertained audiences in 87,000 seats, as they watched violent confrontations with other gladiators, wild animals, and condemned criminals. I can’t shake off the suspicion that there was a joie de vivre back then that is lacking in our politically correct 21st century except in football.
Like those Roman spectators American football fans love the ferocity of the game.The elevated portrayal of violence.Especially the violence in a blitz,which is as visceral as Sam Peckinpaw’s Wild Bunch or the violence and gore in Tarantino new movie Django. We Americans love guts, glory and gore.
It’s epigenectic. It transcends DNA.
I love eating pizza and drinking beer with fellow football addicts while loooking and listening to helmet-to helmet clash,clavicles snap, crackle and pop, while ACL and LCL rip.The football stadium is the only place in American life where you can actualy pay to see human beings commit acts of violence while drinking and eating.Football’s ethos of violence seems to be America’s last bastion of pride for alpha males.
The 60s black activist Rap Brown once said,” violence is as American as apple pie”.Is that why Americans get such a sick voyeruristic high out of helmet-to-hemet contact? Is it because most American men live such dull lives that football’s orgiastic violence captivates us. Author MacCambridge says that “football exploits something in our national DNA, something we have in common with ancient Romans—a weakness for specticle and pagantry”. Football is the bloodrite passage to manhood in America.
American men are increasingly feeling emasculated in a culture where women are surpassing men as breadwinners.Some men feel impotent since traditional ‘male’ jobs have become extinct. I wonder is that why African American men make up 67% of the NFL? Or is that stat because of other factors like dismal employment opportunties, money,or the Darwinian impulse to exorcise the John-the -conquerer demons,racist demons,impotent demons and emasculating demons that cling to black athletes like a snakes eviserated skin.
RGIII’s injury is both courageous and disturbing—disturbing because of his almost demonic need to be victorious at any cost.Like President Obama he came to Washington to slay the dragons.To win. To be victorious.To become almost immortal. Like President Obama, who now has a second term, RGIII now realises his fantasy narrative about changing football culture in Washington D. C. might be over.
The Washington Redskins lost a playoff game to the Seattle Seahawks 24-14. Despite using sleight-of-hands, and quick timing, like the master illusionist Houdini,combined with a keen vision of the opposing team’s defense.RGIII illusionist, almost magical moves, made Ware,the Dallas Cowboy’s premier defensive player, look like a deer in headlights.
RGIII is still being celebrated ,like a Roman Gladiator for staying in the coliseum’s arena despite his injury.For now, however—during his post-op period,the coliseum will nervously wait to see if this incredible football talent will go back into the bloodthirty arena.
Football addicts like me realise that RGIII refusal to sit on the bench was not about medical science.It was not about brain damage or CTE{chronic traumatic encephalopathy}which aledgely caused six former or current professional football players to commit suicide in the past two years: Junior Seau, Dave Duerson, Ray Easterling,kurt Crain and O.J. Murdock.
Like the ancient Roman Gladiators RGIII relished the existential idea of staring injury and death in the face as a sign of Spartacean nobility. Not sitting on the bench had nothing to do with the 9 billion dollar a year profits of professional football. It is something far more noble, I think it’s our collective fanaticism for our sport icons to win at any cost. In week 10 alone, Jay Cutler,Alex Smith and Michael Vick suffered concussions. All brothers in a death sport.
Historically America was founded on violence.The First Seminole War(1817-1818) began with a U.S. invasion of east Florida(where Baylor College is located) to punish hostile Seminole indians,whose territory had become a refuge for runaway slaves. If we fast forward 195 years later—on April 26,2012 in New York a Baylor quaterback , whose ancestors were slaves,Robert A Griffin III was selected as a first round draft choice for the Washinton Redskins.God bless America.
Finis
