Welcome to the Machine

The machine cannot run without fuel.  And fans and "sports writers" provide that fuel. The irony is, neither group really knows much at all about football or the long-term costs to the people who play it and their families. But they act like they do, especially the never-have-played sports writers who provide erroneous narratives. It becomes incumbent, then, to dismantle these inaccurate narratives and set them straight with some hard-learned truths.  

How does one go from a part of the machine to being a renegade from the cause, a traitor to the movement? What are the culminating events? There are many former football players, indeed, more than you would ever believe, who have become renegades and turned their backs on the game. The reasons are legion.

Die-hard fans scoff at the notion that football will ever fade away, but they are overlooking the evidence. For many years now, the numbers of young boys playing tackle football has been in steady decline, even in states where football is akin to a social religion. More and more parents are facing the realities of playing the sport, and they are removing their kids from football and encouraging them to play other sports that do not risk brains, bodies, and promising futures. The result will be an ever-dwindling pool of new players, which will push football into being narrowly regionalized.  The ensuing burden of supplying bodies for the entertainment of the watchers will fall on boys from lower income families.  And this is already happening. 

In this episode, I explain how I arrived at this point.  In doing so, I must necessarily begin at the end - with the most recent events - then work back.  

In the Prologue, I begin to explore how young men come to the game. My father grew up in a small southern town in a state where football - like it was all over the South - was quickly becoming king. But unlike some other people who are groomed and destined for it from birth, instead of him reaching out and finding the game, the game reached out and found him.