Chronicle of a (Football) Death Foretold: The Imminent Demise of a National Pastime?

Abstract

Football today, most conspicuously at the professional level (National Football League), is the economic and cultural colossus of American spectator sports. To speak of its ‘life cycle’, then, would seem nonsensical: although it has a clear ‘birth’, to speak of its ‘death’ might seem ridiculously premature. Yet, recent developments make imagining such a death possible. In this essay, I will explore two current controversies – over ‘athletes’ rights' at the collegiate level and the dangers of traumatic head injury at all levels – that have the potential to destroy American football at least in the form we know it today. And it will trace the factors behind those controversies – the insistent and persistent ‘amateurism’ of American college athletes and the fundamental violence of the game itself – back to their origins. What might end American football as we know it was present in the game from nearly its beginning.

Keywords::

• American football
• amateurism
• violence
• intercollegiate
• professional

Notes

^1. In 2012, the NFL had to share TV ratings with the Summer Olympics: while the NFL had the top 5 rated shows (and 34 of the top 50), the Olympics had 4 of the top 10 (and 15 of the top 50). The sole intruder in the top 50, at #39, was the BCS (Bowl Championship Series) Championship Game, the premier college football game of the season. The NBA, the World Series, NCAA's Final Four basketball tournament and all the rest of the major American sporting events lagged behind (as of July 5, 2013, on sportsmediawatch.com, ‘The 50 Most-Watched Sporting Events of 2012’). For all primetime programming, the NFL had the eight highest rated shows (followed by the Olympics Opening Ceremonies and the Grammy Awards) and Sunday Night Football was the highest rated weekly programme (as of July 5, 2013, on nielsen.com, ‘Top 10 TV Programs of 2013 – Single Telecast’ and ‘Top 10 Primetime TV Programs of 2012 – Regularly Scheduled’).

^2. ‘Pac-10 Announces ESPN/Fox TV Deal’, ESPN (online), May 4, 2011, http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id = 6471380; ‘College Football Playoff Revenue Distribution Set’, USA Today, December 12, 2012, http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/bowls/2012/12/11/college-football-bcs-playoff-revenue-money-distribution-payouts/1762709/

^3.Oriard, Bowled Over.

^4. See, for example, Sack, Counterfeit Amateurs; Smith, Pay for Play; Thelin, Games Colleges Play; and Oriard, Bowled Over.

^5.Smith, Pay for Play, 8.

^6. Steven Wieberg, ‘NCAA to Modify $2,000 Stipend Proposal’. USA Today (online), January 14, 2012.

^7.Intercollegiate Athletic Association.

^8.Savage et al., American College Athletics.

^9. Westbrook Pegler, ‘Carnegie Probe Seems to Be a Waste of Time’. Chicago Tribune, October 25, 1929.

^10. See Oriard, King Football; Thelin, Games Colleges Play; Watterson, College Football; and Smith, Pay for Play.

^11. Ibid.

^12.Watterson, College Football, 209.

^13. For the establishment of the one-year scholarship in 1973 as a pivotal moment, see Sack and Staurowsky, College Athletes for Hire; Oriard, Bowled Over.

^14.Sack, Counterfeit Amateurs, 84–97.

^15. Tom Farrey, ‘NCAA Might Face Damages in Hundreds of Millions’. ESPN the Magazine (online), February 21, 2006; Brad Wolverton, ‘NCAA Will Pay Big to Settle Antitrust Lawsuit’. Chronicle of Higher Education, February 8, 2008.

^16. Robert Wheel, ‘Ed O'Bannon vs. the NCAA: The Antitrust Lawsuit Explained’. SB Nation (online). http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2013/1/31/3934886/ncaa-lawsuit-ed-obannon

^17. Taylor Branch, ‘The Shame of College Sports’. Atlantic, October 2011, 80–104. For a typical salvo, see Joe Nocera, ‘Let's Start Paying College Athletes’. New York Times Magazine, December 30, 2011. www.nytimes.com

^18. Keith Strudler, ‘Many Fans Think College Sports Programs Break NCAA Rules…Education Should Be a Priority, Say Most’. Marist College Institute for Public Opinion (online), March 26, 2013. http://maristpoll.marist.edu/wp-content/misc/usapolls/us130304/Sports/Complete%20March%20%202013%20Marist%20Poll%20Release%20and%20Tables.pdf; ‘Poll Shows Distrust in Colleges, Support on Coaches' Pay’, USA Today (online), March 26, 2013, http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/2013/03/26/college-athletes-coaches-pay-cheating-ncaa-rules-survey/2023289/

^19. Shailer Mathews, ‘Reforming Athletics in the Central West’. The World To-Day 9 (November 1905): 1221–1226.

^20.Falla, NCAA: The Voice, 128–9, 137.

^21. In 1876, 46 colleges teams (varsity and class teams) played by soccer rules and 17 by rugby rules. In 1877, 27 played soccer, while 43 played rugby; and in 1878, 21 played soccer and 52 played rugby. See Smith, ‘1876/77 College Foot-Ball’.

^22. On American football's beginnings, see Smith, Sports & Freedom; Oriard, Reading Football; and Watterson, College Football.

^23. On the development of the rules, see Davis, Football; Nelson, The Anatomy; and Oriard, Reading Football.

^24. Within the vast literature on this subject, see, for example, Rotundo, American Manhood; Bederman, Manliness and Civilization; Putney, Muscular Christianity; and Oriard, Reading Football.

^25. See, for example, ‘Amenities of Football’; ‘Law to Make Football a Crime’; ‘Twelfth Player in Every Football Game’.

^26. See, for example, Edgar Saltus, ‘Rome Brought up to Date’. New York Journal, November 22, 1896; ‘Football Player of '97 Armed Like a Knight of Old’, TheWorld (New York) SundayMagazine, October 17, 1897; ‘The Modern Gladiators’, New York Herald Sunday Colored Supplement, November 29, 1896.

^27. Theodore Roosevelt, ‘The Harvard Spirit’. Harvard Graduates’ Magazine (September 1905): 1–9.

^28. On Roosevelt's intervention, see Smith, Sports & Freedom; Watterson, College Football; and Oriard, ‘Rough, Manly Sport’. For a (skewed) popular account of Roosevelt's intervention from the perspective of the current crisis over violence, see Miller, The Big Scrum.

^29. ‘Football in 1906 Under the New Rules’, Judge, March 6, 1906.

^30.Watterson, College Football, 401.

^31. Ibid., 402.

^32. This account of NFL football is distilled from my King Football and Brand NFL.

^33. ‘Savagery on Sunday’, Life, October 24, 1955, 133–8.

^34. Thomas B. Morgan, ‘The Wham in Pro Football’. Esquire (November 1959): 97–102; ‘Controlled Violence of the Pros’, Life, October 14, 1966, 76–91; ‘Madness Is a Game on Sunday’, Look, December 3, 1963, 68–74; and ‘Sunday's Gladiators’, Saturday Evening Post, November 24, 1962, 22–7.

^35. Bob Glauber, ‘Special Report: Life after Football’. Newsday, January 12–16, 1997 (five parts); Dan Bickley, ‘Modern-Day Gladiators’. Arizona Republic, January 16–18, 2003 (three parts). See also William Nack, ‘The Wrecking Yard’. Sports Illustrated, May 7, 2001, 60–75.

^36. Jeanne Marie Laskas, ‘Game Brain’, GQ (online), October 2009. Malcom Gladwell, ‘Offensive Play’. New Yorker (online), October 19, 2009. Schwarz covered the story for the New York Times in dozens of stories from 2009 into 2011.

^37. For a historical overview of an immense topic, see Shurley and Todd, ‘Boxing Lessons’.

^38. Most notably, the NFL has begun levying stiff fines for ‘helmet-to-helmet contact’ and aggressively punishing other forms of wilful or excessive violence.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Oriard

Michael Oriard has written four books tracing the cultural history of American football, in addition to a football memoir, a study of American sport fiction, and a study of sporting metaphors across the breadth of American literature and culture. Until his recent retirement he was Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Culture at Oregon State University.