And on the big game day. . . . a blog mirror; The N.F.L.’s Obesity Scourge

 The great running back Jim Brown. . . who played before the field was all giants.

As anyone who stops in here knows, I'm not a football fan.  Not even close.

Indeed, I used to claim that I didn't follow the sport, or wasn't in to it, but I really dislike it.

Well, that's too strong.  I don't detest it, but I do dislike all the endless hype.  Around this time of the year somebody will inevitably stop in my office and ask who I'm rooting for in the "big game".  I usually don't know who is in the big game, and I don't want to discuss it.  I'll end up watching it, sort of, as my wife loves the game and its sort of a minor holiday.  I'll actually managed to watch it without really ever watching it.  I've been present for entire games and not known who was in it within fifteen minutes of it being over.  

My problem with football is that its the most boring sport ever concocted.  Portrayed as if its a stunning example of modern gladiatorism, it actually has just about as much action as s knitting circle in a retirement home.

None of which means that I'm not sympathetic to the human toll it takes.

Head injuries have gotten a lot of press regarding football in recent years, and well they should. As that's occurred, I've continued to be simply amazed by how people continue to urge their kids into it.  My son didn't play high school football, which is no surprise as I'm so disinterested in it, but he was large enough and athletic enough that he could have if he'd wanted to.  I'm glad that he didn't and frankly I'd discourage any kid of mine from doing so, a view I share, I'll note, with an orthopedic surgeon and Marine Corps veteran who held that view a good forty years ago. 

But this time, I'm not commenting on that, but on another aspect of the modern game.

Over the years as I've not watched football I've none the less observed as the player got bigger and bigger.  Some have speculated that this is due to the modern diet, but I doubt that. There's always been really, really large men.*  With a larger and larger American population competing for just a select number of spots in the game, and the game getting slower and slower and slower, it makes sense that we'd see it gravitate to the very large.  

And I don't mean the very tall.  I mean large.  Indeed, some of these guys are downright fat even while they're playing professional ball.  And I've wondered, as a result of that, what happens to them after the game.  It turns out to be as bad or worse than I'd imagined, as this New York Times article spells out.

In the past few decades, the N.F.L.’s emphasis on the passing game and quarterback protection has led teams to stock their offensive and defensive lines with ever-larger men, many of them weighing well over 300 pounds. But their great girth, which coaches encouraged and which helped turn some players into multimillion-dollar commodities, leaves many of them prone to obesity problems.

In retirement, these huge men are often unable to lose the weight they needed to do their jobs. Without the structure of a team and the guidance of coaches for the first time in decades, many of them lose the motivation to stay in shape, or cannot even try, as damage to their feet, knees, backs and shoulders limits their ability to exercise. 

This is a big reason that former linemen, compared with other football players and the general population, have higher rates of hypertension, obesity and sleep apnea, which can lead to chronic fatigue, poor diet and even death. Blocking for a $25-million-a-year quarterback, it turns out, can put linemen in the high-risk category for many of the ailments health experts readily encourage people to avoid.

This doesn't mean we should ban the game or something.  It's just something worth noting.  Football has gone from a fairly fast paced high school and college game that was centered in schools at those levels to a professional sport involving millions of dollars. As that's occurred, it's become a slower game played by massive people, a fact that's aided by the fact that its leisurely pace is augmented by time outs that stop the game constantly (how else can an  hour of play last for three or more hours?).  Really large guys couldn't play a fast moving game like soccer, for example, as the fatigue on their big bodies would be just too much.  Indeed, Army Rangers tend to be fairly small and mid sized lean men, not giants, for the same reasons.

I'm not proposing to do anything about this.  It's just worth noting.  If professional football wanted to do something about it, it could just by reducing the padding and armor and eliminating most of the time outs and the half time.  But that's not going to happen. 

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*Indeed, one of the reasons that I don't like football is that its simply impossible for me to relate to it.  A game that can only be played by physical giants is sort of a circus, and I've never been very interested in the circus either.  With other professional sports, save for basketball which I also don't care for, you can related to the action as  you could play the game, even if not on that level.  I was a fair baseball player when I was young and I've retained an interest in that.  Soccer looks like a game that any young person can play.  I can ride a horse and all equestrian sports interest me.  But a game played by huge and increasingly overweight men?  M'eh.

On the male aspect, I can't help but note once again that we oddly live in an era in which we'll pretend that the oldest and most dangerous sport, the game of kings, warfare, which has been an exclusively male game since the first rock was thrown at a fellow combatant is now equal opportunity, while the sports we all watch and we know are physical, but not lethal, and sometimes not even as physical as soldiering, are not in any sense.  That's simply because we're familiar with them personally, whereas for most of us we know no more about real warfare anymore than we do about life in the Amazon rain forest. We just imagine to know it.