Hey Y'all,
So for my final paper for this English class I took last semester, we were supposed to write 4-6 pages involving research regarding language surrounding a particular topic. Because I only needed to get like a 50% on the paper to earn an A in the course, and I'm a huge football fan, I decided to write on something that interested me. I wrote about the language surrounding the violence in football Pre and Post CTE controversy. Now this is far from polished, graduate level writing (as it was a second-level undergraduate English class) and also far from my best research or writing ability (I did all of the research and writing in about 8 hours, we had three weeks), I still earned a 99% on the paper.
Warning: this is highly critical of football media, as I tried to hide my extreme bias and love for the sport and tried to remain as objective as possible. I could have uploaded a word document through an online hosting website, but for the ease of reading on this forum, I just copied and pasted the text. As a result, a good deal of the MLA formatting was lost.
Again, this isn't the strongest, most professional piece I could have written, but I just figured that I would share it with my 11W brethren (and lady..ren). Thanks!
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Language Surrounding Violence in American Football: Pre and Post-CTE
Professional American Football, the National Football League, is currently the most popular sport in the United States. The NFL (and it’s collegiate-level counterpart) continue to enjoy widespread popularity in the wake of the CTE concussion scandal of the early-to-late 2000’s; where the League was accused of attempting to cover-up, or lessen the impact, of new medical journal findings which exposed the serious long-term health implications of the repeated bodily blows the beloved players of the sport endure throughout the course of their playing careers.
In spite of the newfound medical knowledge, a 2014 article by ESPN senior writer Darren Rovell cites a December 2013 Harris Poll, stating that 35% of American sports fans aged 18-years or older called the NFL their favorite sport (Rovell). However, one doesn’t need a study or statistical information to confirm this; it’s wild popularity is evident all over the country on Sundays in the American autumn. Football is a booming, multi-billion-dollar business-entertainment powerhouse, drawing revenue from ticket sales, television contracts, merchandising, player and team product endorsements, “fantasy” football leagues, even up to sports betting. There is no questioning its all-consuming draw on the American public.
As immensely popular as it is, it is equally violent: a full contact sport featuring the world’s largest, fastest and strongest athletes using their bodies as weapons to stop (or further) the advance of the ball down the field. A study utilizing information from the NFL by the independent quantitative/economics data consulting firm Edgeworth Economics was quoted in a 2013 Associated Press article by Howard Fendrich. The data showed in the 2012 NFL season, there were 1,496 serious injuries, with a “serious injury” being defined as an injury which keeps the player sidelined for 8 or more days (Fendrich). With 32 NFL teams and 53 players per team, there are roughly 1,696 current professional football players in the United States. When compared with the number of injuries in the 2012 season, it is evident that “serious injury” isn’t a possibility: it is a probability.
How is it then that in arguably the most powerful, educated, technologically advanced and modernized country in the world is such an evidently violent game recognized as the most popular form of sports entertainment? How do Americans condone and even celebrate it? Beyond the fact that American culture is almost inherently violent, and the game possesses a carefully crafted glossy, almost dazzling visual representation, it is the language surrounding the sport which helps to desensitize the American audience to the trauma that occurs on the field. Before the now-infamous CTE concussion scandal that rocked the sport to its foundation in the first decade of the 21st century, the language utilized by the media, fans, and even the league itself, had portrayed the on-field violence, injuries and bodily sacrifice as being heroic: a modern day display of ancient Grecian Arête played out in the coliseums of the world’s lone surviving superpower. However, the egregious, blind verbal celebration of violence, without acknowledgement of long term consequences, has diminished in the post-CTE scandal sports world.
Pre-CTE, the terms “aggression” and “violence” were often synonymous with “greatness” in the language surrounding the NFL. As such, one of the greatest defensive players in NFL history is 1999 Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee Lawrence Taylor (often simply referred to as “L.T.”). During the prime of Taylor’s playing career for the New York Giants in the 1980’s, now legendary New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick (then New York Giants’ defensive coordinator) had the following to say about Taylor’s professional production: "What makes L.T. so great, what makes him so aggressive, is his total disregard for his body,"' (Whitley).
What Belichick is saying in the above quotation is that Taylor had absolutely no regard for his personal health and physical well-being while playing football. Because of this fact, he was willing to sacrifice his body, his life itself, to be a more violent and destructive defender; resulting in more on-field production, and ultimately, more entertainment value for fans of the sport and an enduring legacy of greatness for Taylor. Statements like Belichick’s, if said in 2016, would be viewed as controversial or insensitive in light of the medical information the public now has.
In 2002, Dr. Bennet Omalu, a Pittsburgh coroner and forensic pathologist, co-authored a medical study after having examined NFL great Mike Webster’s brain post-mortem. Dr. Omalu wanted further understanding regarding Webster’s brain, as he was behaving erratically in the years leading up to his death, but showed no apparent physical abnormalities during routine neurological examination. What resulted was the discovery of CTE, or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (Ezell), a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated sub-concussive and concussive bodily blows. The repeated hits can cause micro-traumas in the brain, eventually leading to behavioral abnormalities. Since it’s inception, the NFL had promoted itself with the same violent, virtuous language Belichick had used when describing Lawrence Taylor. However, the language was widely accepted as long as the violence didn’t turn catastrophic or deadly.
Naturally, the league did their best to bury and deny the study and CTE’s existence, as a whole. However, after several high profile acts of violence and suicide by greatly loved NFL players, denial was no longer an option. Eventually the NFL instituted numerous rule and procedural changes in an effort to curb the most physically devastating injuries. These new rules trickled down to collegiate and high school play as well, changing the way the game is played across the country, ultimately resulting in a more conscientious, arguably lower-impact game where great caution is drawn to preventing direct hits to the head and neck area.
As the rules, procedures and game play changed, the language surrounding the league soon followed suit. Sports shows on major media networks no longer feature Top 10 lists of the previous week’s hardest tackles. Prior to CTE, if a defensive safety laid a particularly hard hit on a defenseless receiver, a commentator may have said something humorous or triumphant about the magnitude of the blow. Post-CTE, not only is hitting a defenseless receiver illegal, but one may hear the commentator condemning the hit as “dirty” or “classless” and hope for the receiver’s well-being.
Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, the fan perspective began to shift as well. In his 2015 article for the New York Times entitled “A Quick Reminder of Football’s Violence” sports columnist William C. Rhoden describes a scene at a New York Jets game where linebacker Lorenzo Mauldin is seriously injured. Rhoden records the fan reaction within the stadium, following with a postulation of the common fan’s understanding of the true nature of NFL violence. The article is also a prime example of the new, concerned tone the sports media has adopted regarding injury post-CTE. Rhoden states the following:
A few moments turned into uneasy minutes. Stretchers were summoned, and Mauldin’s teammates walked over, then knelt.
The stadium, bursting one moment in pandemonium, was now gripped by an eerie, uncomfortable stillness as more medical personnel were summoned to attend to the fallen player.
Finally, Mauldin, strapped down, was lifted and carefully placed on the waiting cart to hearty applause. He may have given a reassuring thumbs up, but I didn’t see one.
This was not the N.F.L. of even five years ago, when injuries were often seen as cartoon violence and the scourge of concussions was just beginning to sink in.
That did not stop fans from attending games, and it doesn’t seem to give them pause now. The difference is that today, fans know what they are watching. How they rationalize watching is up to them, but they know (Rhoden).
This shift in language also reaches the field generals of the game: the head coaches. In the same article, Rhoden inserts a post-game quotation from New York Jets’ head coach Todd Bowles regarding Mauldin’s injury. Instead of mentioning how “tough” or “hard” of a player Mauldin is, Bowles’ manner is one of concern, loss and remorse.
“For him to go down like that, first, your heart goes out to him and his family,” Bowles said when asked about Mauldin. “After that, it goes out to his teammates. You just hope he’s not seriously hurt.”
He added, “When a guy gets carted off, you worry about him until you can find out what happened.” (Rhoden)
Nevertheless, this existential shift to a safer, perhaps gentler American Football game isn’t met without a certain level of descent and a strong degree of verbal objection, from both fans and football professionals alike. In a phone interview on popular sports talk show The Herd with Colin Cowherd on March 2nd, 2016, Stanford football head coach David Shaw (widely pegged to be a future NFL head coach) had the following to say about limiting violent contact in team practices:
I think we were very conscious in that and in trying to make sure this game is played as safely as possible, but doggone it, this is a contact sport and if people are paying their money, they want to see great football and great football involves big time linebackers going and hitting guys and attacking guys and running backs that know how to avoid that, and when they do get tackled, how they drag a guy three or four more yards. I’d hate to take the football out of football (Cowherd).
There are several interesting uses of language within Shaw’s statement. While he acknowledges the need for player safety, he also acknowledges that fact that fans pay to see violence. And in his statement, he uses the term “football” as a synonym, or a replacement, for the term “violence,” most dramatically so in the last sentence of the quotation. Shaw directly equates football, on an existential level, with violence. By improving player safety by reducing the level of violence and serious injury, the “football” (read: violence) could be taken out of football.
Some fans seem to echo Shaw’s sentiments, albeit in a less carefully constructed or politically correct manner. When looking at the first comment on the YouTube video of Shaw’s conversation with Cowherd, one would find the following statement by a fan, a YouTube user by the name of Javier Vasquez: “Ivy league pussies are gonna ruin football. I wouldn’t be surprised if football is no longer a sport in 50 years.”
It is tremendously evident that violence in American Football is still desired in the wake of CTE. Coaches and fans alike seem to believe that violence, in and of itself, is the essence of the sport. Violence will always be accepted, revered and sought after, although the language around it has been polished for a post-CTE fan base. By minimizing some of the “total disregard for his body” statements, by judiciously replacing the term “violence” with “football” and by occasionally adding a concerned, remorseful post-game sound bite from a head coach, the media is able to portray a gentler, humanistic, compassionate game; allowing fans to justify the violence. Or at least helping them to turn a blind eye while they wait to cheer for the next hit.
Works Cited
Cowherd, Colin. “David Shaw- You can’t have a tough team without tough practices – The Herd.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 2 March 2016. Web. 6 April 2016.
Ezell, Lauren. “Timeline: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis.” Frontline. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, 8 October 2013. Web. 21 April 2016.
Fendrich, Howard. “NFL’s severe injuries increase in frequency, study shows.” The Denver Post. Digital First Media, 1 August 2013. Web. 21 April 2016.
Rhoden, William C. “A Quick Reminder of Football’s Violence.” Nytimes.com. The New York Times Company, 14 September 2015. Web. 5 April 2016.
Rovell, Darren. “NFL most popular for 30th year in row.” ESPN.com. ESPN, Inc., 26 January 2014. Web. 21 April 2016.
Whitley, David. “L.T. was reckless, magnificent.” ESPN.com. ESPN, Inc., n.d. Web. 4 April 2016.
