American football is too dangerous, and it should be abolished

The Guardian ^ | Monday 4 January 2016 | Dave Bry

[MinorityRepublican]

We just completed another regular season of NFL football. Now let’s see if we can make it the last such season ever played. In its current state, professional football is immoral and we as a society should end its existence.

I imagine some fans of American football felt their hackles rise upon reading that. “Immoral” is a strong word, impossible to type from anywhere other than the saddle of a very tall horse, which isn’t the most comfortable seat for me.

I ate foie gras with Christmas dinner last week and enjoyed it immensely. I know that its production involves torturing ducks, which I think is wrong. In eating it, I am putting my own pleasure over the wellbeing of another living creature.

So I don’t take the moral high ground lightly. But I value human life more than avian life, so I will continue to scold those of you who put the pleasure you derive from watching football (and in so doing, paying money to the NFL, propagating its immoral practices) above the wellbeing of the players you’re watching play.

The damage football players suffer need not be debated at this point. The new Will Smith movie, Concussion, is based on one of the many books detailing the mountain of scientific evidence proving that the sport shortens lives.

Efforts to make it safer with better equipment will not work, because the damage happens inside the players’ skulls, when the brain sloshes around and smashes against its bone casing.

It’s the speed and power with which players ram their helmeted heads into other players that’s the problem. The game as it is played today kills the people who play it, period.

[Mean Daddy]

Whether football continues or not will be up to the parents. More and more parents are putting their kids in other sports and you’re starting to see growth in soccer and lacrosse.

[Vendome]

Nice hit

[MinorityRepublican]

Without football, most of these guys are going to be at the bottom rung of wage earners with a few lucky ones becoming Phys Ed teachers in the public school system.

And not end up getting shot or in prison.

[KarlInOhio]

Meanwhile, the Guardian (aka the work therapy program for London's Bethlehem Hospital) advocates for the continued importation of millions of Muslims into Britain. The last time I checked, decapitation is more damaging to the brain than football.

Guardian, I diagnose you to be gridironophobic. Since you have a phobia, I can ignore, laugh at or morally condemn your opinion and you have to shut up. Those are the rules.

[DennisR]

oh goody! We can now become fans of the world’s most popular sport... soccer! Where it’s the fans, not the athletes, who get beat up, trampled, or killed. Ninety boring minutes for a 1-0 score!

[central_va]

Does everything need a /sarc tag?

[Chode]

feh...

[D Rider]

Yes, much like parents are not forced to place their kids in peewee football programs. That’s the issue: where does football go when the available pool of players begins to dry up?

slavery and gladiators? Idk, kids still play, it's still fun. If people quit paying ( assuming it is not made illegal by government mandate) then maybe it should go away as a professional sport.

[refermech]

I don’t believe anyone is being forced to play football.

[1rudeboy]

That's an interesting economic concept: instead of paying to watch people knock themselves senseless and become mentally retarded in the process, actually participate in the risk . . . .

In any case, enjoy the rest of the thread, because:

[PIF]

Rugby should be abolished - no one watches it;
Cricket should be abolished - the one person watching fell asleep;
The Guardian should be abolished - just for sport.

[Himyar]

Football is too war like for the wussies out there. Attacking, taking ground etc. All these do gooders want to abolish everything that could possibly hurt anything. There is growing pressure on equestrian sports too. Pretty soon it will be tiddly winks or nothing.

[RckyRaCoCo]

American football players are savages.

[Starstruck]

Doesn’t the Guardian have something in the UK it can report on? Apparently not, and therefore it pokes its’ nose into American society.

Probably because in the next few years the Jaguars are going to relocate to London.

[1rudeboy]

Speaking of equestrian, I initially thought that those “crash vests” that automatically inflate when you detach from your saddle where pretty gay too . . . but then I came around to thinking that they are a good idea at the professional level.

[1rudeboy]

where = were

[longsufferingjetsfan]

Soccer is too boring and therefore must be abolished

[OrangeHoof]

The European sport of football (soccer, here) has caused 100s of deaths among both players and spectators alike. Let’s ban this first and see how it goes over.

[Mr. Mojo]

I don't believe anyone is being forced to play football.

Those of the author's statist/collectivist mindset don't care. They want gov't to step in and abolish anything they either don't like (for whatever reason), hurts their delicate feelings, and/or deem dangerous to the collective. Europeans typically suffer from this insufferable statist do-gooderism at far higher rates than Americans, but there are plenty of them on this side of the pond as well.