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The Moral Equivalent of Football

Watching the glorious Green Bay Packers last night, I had some questions about how football should be interpreted. How far can we carry the analogy between football and war? How literally we can see it as mock war? The football team is an army, dominated by its commander-in-chief, its American Caesar, the quarterback. It has kicking (artillery), running backs (mobile armored divisions, or cavalry in the old days), and passing (an air force). No navy, though. The cheerleaders' job is to quicken the animal spirits in the fans, a job for which they are admirably, uhh, suited; their equivalents in the political and military arenas are the talking-heads in the media, whose job it is to promote the popularity of the war with the public.

There is a well-defined front in gridiron battle. It is symmetrical warfare. The team moves the ball into enemy territory. Getting through the goal posts of the enemy is like seizing a national capital. When fans pull the goal posts down after a victory, it is the equivalent of burning, raping, and pillaging the conquered enemy.

The team scores points by success at offense. It doesn't literally score any points for itself by success at defense. Of course you could say that preventing the enemy from getting points is the algebraic equivalent of scoring positive points for your own team, but somehow that's just not the same as literally and visibly scoring points in defense. I wonder if you can score positive points at defense in any sport?

Besides the absence of a navy, unless you count floats in the parade at half-time, the analogy breaks down in other ways. For one thing, the NFL season is laughably short: early September to the end of January. Why shouldn't it go on and on like a presidential campaign or a war in the Mid-East?

Football has an offensive team and a defensive team. In the political and military spheres we have a Department of Defense and a Department of Homeland Defense. Two departments of defense. Aren't we a bit naive and overconfident to try to get by in this dangerous world with no offensive military capabilities?

A breakdown in the analogy like that is bad enough, but football's greatest failing is that it asks fans to pay for it, whether they're at the stadium or at home on the couch. I don't know how patriotic Fox News viewers can tolerate this, but at least Fox network does its duty in rectifying this situation by carrying free broadcast NFL games every Sunday. The government should finance NFL football to make it free to the fans. (It does at the high school and collegiate levels.) Every American who takes God and Country and Football seriously should work to rectify this dreadful situation. Until then we must conclude that NFL football is un-American.


Anonymous said…
Funny you mention that the government should finance the NFL. In Argentina, the government last year decided to subsidize their national sport (soccer) League to the tune of 0.5% of GDP. It called the subsidy program "Soccer for Everybody". All games are broadcasted live, free, as long as you can stand an endless stream of government propaganda commercials. But it worked ! The President got reelected in a landslide. May be Obama heard about it and will announce it during the campaign... and whoever wins the Republican nomination should also jump into the bandwagon and promise it too.
"Football for everyone !!"
Indeed, it's a wonder that this hasn't been on each party's platform!