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Jonathan Chait had an intriguing article in last week’s New York magazine (“In Defense of Male Aggression: What Liberals Get Wrong About Football”) in which he discusses the current state of America’s most popular sport. The article is an admixture of personal reminiscences, an examination of the physical dangers inherent in the game, the current travails of the NFL, and, ultimately, the relevance of football in our present-day culture. Describing the sport as a “manifestation of traditional masculinity that is increasingly out of step with liberal society”, Chait posits that “we are seeing”, in liberal attacks on the game, “a safety-reform movement mutating into a culture war, where one part of America rises in visceral, often-uncomprehending revulsion against the values and mores of another.”

This last point, beyond the author’s personal revelations about his experiences as a high school player, a brief dip into the pool of injury statistics and a sociological foray into the relationship of football’s violent nature to violence in our society, is the crux of Chait’s argument. He underpins it with social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s thesis that “people naturally gravitate toward competing notions of morality. Some of those, like fairness and caring, are associated with liberalism. Others, like loyalty and respect for authority, are associated with conservatism.” So, in Chait’s view, “football is obviously not just for conservatives, but it does embody the conservative virtues.”

And this is the point at which he takes liberals to task, characterizing “the backlash against [football] as a signpost of a new social system unwilling to consider that the worldview of one’s political adversaries might have any wisdom to offer at all and untroubled by the fear that, perhaps, football exists because it channels a genuine, deep-seated impulse. In this case, that discipline might be a helpful response to impulses of aggression, and not just a false-heroic myth used to legitimize and justify brutality.”

Full-disclosure: I like football. I played in high school and in college. I coached six seasons at the high school level and eleven in college, all as part-time assistant. I believe the game has much to offer young men: the traditional values of teamwork and discipline; the possible rewards for hard work; the opportunity to overcome personal insecurities. And, yes, as Chait points out, the physical combat of the game offers a legitimate outlet for male aggressiveness. That said, there are aspects of the sport that are too problematic to ignore- the distortions caused by money at the professional and collegiate levels, the moral and ethical equivocation apparent in dealing with the social and legal transgressions of athletes, and the increasingly brutal nature of the game..

Begin with the professional version. Be honest- the NFL is an entertainment industry powerhouse, with huge TV ratings and revenues. As such, the pros play a version of the game designed to keep fans watching their big-screens and the sponsors buying ad time. Rules changes over the years- coupled with the increased size, speed and skill of the athletes- have made the game faster than ever. The league thrives on a wide-open, pass-oriented style of play. Defenders cannot touch potential receivers once they are five yards past the line of scrimmage, allowing the receivers to run freely through the secondary and then become targets of high-speed collisions initiated by defensive backs. Even the rules that punish hits on “defenseless” receivers or those barring helmet-to-helmet contact cannot completely eliminate the jarring contact inevitable when big fast men in armor run into each other.

While the NFL is unlikely to abandon its love affair with this style of play, a return to the rule which allowed defenders to impede potential receivers beyond five yards as long the ball had not been thrown, would remove many high-speed collisions. Receivers would no longer find it easy to get open once they evaded pressing defenders and got more than five yards downfield. Since defensive coaches know that it is impossible to cover a receiver closely for more than a few seconds, today’s defenses resort to pass-rushing schemes such as the blitz to force the passer to throw the ball before his receivers can begin marauding through the secondary. Quarterbacks facing pass-rushing specialists and schemes are injured at a high rate- again, even with rules designed to mitigate or completely eliminate violent hits on passers.

Free to physically impede receivers beyond five yards, defenses would play more man-on-man coverage: Result- offenses would counter by running the ball. Yes, the game would slow down and offenses would probably resemble the Vince Lombardi Packers of the 1960’s. Those fans and NFL executives who believe the football on television should resemble a fast-paced video game would be unhappy. They forget- or never knew- that the 1960’s were the years that professional football began its growth as America’s most popular sport. They also forget that today’s players are measurably bigger and faster than those of 50 years ago. (I cannot recall that an athlete even close to J.J. Watt played in those days). Finally, the lengthening of the schedule from twelve to fourteen and to the present sixteen games, and the addition of Thursday night games as a regular feature, means the players are exposed more than ever to possible injury.

(Note: To delve into other issues plaguing the NFL requires more discussion than I can cram into this piece. I will reserve that commentary for some future posting.)

Varied problems afflict the lower levels of the sport. Big-time college sports have transformed the term “student-athlete” into an oxymoron. College athletics’ governing body, the NCAA, and the various major programs that field teams, earn large revenues from their football and basketball programs. The resulting distortions are inevitable: Coaches earning millions while the players are prohibited from cashing on their athletic exploits. Player likeness’ can be employed in merchandizing while the players themselves are not compensated. It came as a shock to the NCAA when a National Labor Relations Board ruling last March classified student-athletes as employees with the right to unionize.

With all the money at stake, college athletics faces many of the same issues as the NFL when it comes to the off-the-field behavior of those revenue-generating stars. The cases of NFL stars Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson were national news, but no more cause for wonder than the treatment Florida State QB Jamis Winston received from both the university and the Tallahassee police in the case of an alleged sexual assault. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell often refers to “protecting the shield” in explaining the NFL’s zeal to preserve the popularity of its brand. The same mentality is at work when a star such as Winston is accused of a felony and the authorities do not bother to investigate.

For a brief part of my undergraduate days, I was an Ivy Leaguer. The Ivies take their football very seriously and they compete fiercely. But there is a sense of proportion in Ivy League football: They play a ten-game schedule and do not participate in post-season bowl games. They eschew the money of the big-time (they can doubtless afford to) to maintain competitive sports as just another part of campus life. It would be naïve of me to believe that the major sports schools would be willing to forsake the money and change their approach. The problem is that the accumulation of bad publicity may obviate any chance they will have to make the choice.

High school football, combining the excesses of a violent team sport with the exaggerated behavior of teenagers, has not avoided the problems besetting its elders. In the past, steroid use among professional and college players was soon reflected in use by adolescent athletes. More recently, the rape case in Youngstown, Ohio that involved football players and the sadistic hazing charges leveled against players on the Sayreville, NJ team that led to the canceling of the season are proof that the values of accountability and responsibility- which should be at the core of what is taught about the game- are not emphasized effectively.

The liberal backlash we are witnessing against our most popular sport may be emblematic of a trend in 21^st-Century America. We no longer fix things that are broken- we get rid of them. If a school is “failing”, we close it. If a government program is beset with bureaucratic inefficiency, we defund it rather than improve it. Strangely, this places some liberals in the same position as conservatives.

Now, as Chait warns, we may be willing to toss the baby out with the bath water.