Review by New York Times Review
"THE LIBERTINE," wrote Simone de Beauvoir, "in hurting the object that serves him, 'tastes all the pleasures which a vigorous individual feels in making full use of his strength; he dominates, he is a tyrant."' She was quoting, indirectly and then directly, the Marquis de Sade. In "Against Football," Steve Almond quotes the retired football hero Michael Strahan: "It's the most perfect feeling in the world to know you've hit a guy just right, that you've maximized the physical pain he can feel You feel the life just go out of him." Strahan's effusion may seem more sadistic than Sade's. But we have seen Strahan on TV, as jovial analyst of America's most popular sport, and also as ratings-boosting co-host (with Kelly Ripa) of weekday chattertainment. Sade, who acted out some of his vicious fantasies, was imprisoned, not unreasonably, for much of his adult life. He died in a madhouse. Strahan, who set a National Football League record for jamming quarterbacks into the ground, has been described by David Amsden in The New York Times, not unreasonably, as "cuddly." Statistically, he and the quarterbacks he sacked may well have suffered brain damage. Beauvoir devoted a long essay to the question "Must We Burn Sade?" Almond's book presses us to answer whether we must abolish football. In "Why Football Matters," Mark Edmundson recounts how playing football in high school was positively character-building for him, in a darkly impassioned sort of way, but he wonders, "Is character always a good quality to possess?" Both authors are football fans. Almond, a journalist and short-story writer, speaks of "the hundreds of N.F.L. players, past and present, whose names and career paths and highlight reels I have, pathetically, unintentionally and yet lovingly, filed away in my hippocampal hard drive." In addition, he says, "I happen to believe that football, in its exalted moments, is not just a sport but a lovely and intricate form of art." On the other hand, "football is the one major American sport that selects specifically for the ability to inflict and absorb physical pain." I guess boxing isn't major in America anymore, and so-called Ultimate Fighting, not yet. At any rate, the head-banging essential to football has been linked to such brain trauma as often leads to premature dementia, and even suicide, in men who play it at high levels. And most of those men are African-Americans who have reached the N.F.L. via some institution of higher learning that profited considerably from their smash-mouth labors and repaid them, by and large, with a questionable diploma, if that. Furthermore, today's players bulk up to the point that they are crushing themselves as well as one another. Football, Almond argues, "legitimizes and even fosters within us a tolerance for violence, greed, racism and homophobia." The homophobia angle is complicated. "It is my own belief," he writes, "that the brutality of the game is what allows for" physical intimacy among the guys who play it. "Men purchase the right, through their valor, to love other men without experiencing shame." Sounds good, minus points for the brutality. But Almond goes on to rehash the story of two straight Miami Dolphins teammates, supposedly close friends, Richie Incognito and Jonathan Martin. Incognito felt obliged, as a team leader, to lift Martin's brutality level, his will to dominate. So he kept trying to pick a fight, barraging Martin with racial (Incognito is white, Martin black) and homophobic slurs, in person and by text. "Goodnight slut," at bedtime, was one of Incognito's thousands of messages to the buddy he perceived to be insufficiently mean. Martin would banter back, but eventually he got so tired of Incognito's baiting that he quit the team and checked into a hospital for psychiatric care. However, the two continued to text. Incognito: "I miss us." I spent a lot of time around N.F.L. players in the '70s and '80s. The dozens seem to have turned freakier since then. The story "Why Football Matters" tells is primarily one of tough love between the author and the game. But Edmundson, who teaches English at the University of Virginia, sees that the game has gone way beyond tough, and yet "it is often the most devoted Christians - the ones who claim to love Jesus in the loudest voices - who are most attached to the Saturday and Sunday spleen hustings. How can this be? Are people ... so blind that they can merrily hold two contradictory beliefs together in their minds and hearts and not be bothered?" Though the short answer to that is yes, Edmundson goes on to invoke the God of the Old Testament, about whom "there's nothing pacifist." For Almond and Edmundson, love of football began with father-son bonding. In pee-wee football, Edmundson's boy earned the sobriquet Pit Bull. But then he outgrew his own ferocity (and his willingness to be yelled at by coaches) and stopped playing. "I'm not really mad anymore," he explained. What had fueled the anger that made him a tiny terror on the field? He hated the extra reading lessons his parents were making him take. Enforced phonics training! If that could slake the nation's blood lust and generate billions of dollars, we might have an alternative to football. But Almond is dead serious: Supporting a spectacle that causes brain damage is immoral. He calls out individual commentators, including President Obama. They acknowledge the severity of football's downside, right? So how can they fail even to consider its abolition? Elsewhere, in a passage representative of the book as a whole, he writes: "I'm going to get hammered for asking these questions. Fine. Hammer away. But don't pretend that's the same as answering." Well, my son and I have been rooting for the Steelers since he was 4. How can we justify not giving that up? Must we fall back on the Marquis de Sade? Here, as parsed by Beauvoir, is the Sadean rationale for getting off on other people's pain: "At any given instant thousands of people suffer and die, in vain, unjustly, and we are not affected: Our existence is possible only at this price. Sade's merit is not only that he cried aloud that which each person shamefully admits to himself, but that he did not reconcile himself to it. He chose cruelty over indifference." Or we could boo vicious hits and cheer the game's graces. In practice recently, according to steelcityblitz.com, the Steelers' Markus Wheaton fielded a punt while cradling four other balls in his arms. That's pretty cool. 'It's the most perfect feeling in the world to know you've hit a guy just right.' ROY BLOUNT JR.'S most recent book is "Alphabetter Juice: Or, The Joy of Text." He was embedded with the Steelers in 1973 and revisited them thereafter to write "About Three Bricks Shy... And the Load Filled Up."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [September 28, 2014]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Almond loves football he remains a fan of the Oakland Raiders, a team whose only appeal may be to wistful adults who spent their adolescent years watching safety Jack Tatum terrorize other teams' receivers. He also hates football. And, in a brilliantly quotable, carefully constructed, emotionally vulnerable tract sure to anger as many as it convinces, he argues against the sport's many sins even as he thoughtfully examines its hold on the souls of the faithful. How can fans ignore the life-shortening violence suffered by players, he asks, or teams' parasitical relationship to local economies, or football's lingering homophobia, or its troubling racial implications, or its dilutive effect on higher education, or what it says about us that we like watching slow-motion replays of players getting concussed? Some may hold Almond's claim of fandom as a straw man, but it rings true. (Besides, he admits to being a total effing hypocrite.) Is he arguing for the sport's abolishment? No. He asks for an honest conversation and suggests nine practical changes that seem possible if only the last one Remember who's in charge can be taken to heart. A searing, thought-provoking book that most needs to be considered by those who seem least likely to read it.--Graff, Keir Copyright 2014 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Early on in this powerful polemic, before expanding on the numerous reasons spectators should more seriously consider the ramifications of the football, Almond (Candyfreak) declares that he's been an avid, lifelong fan. Most of the arguments he espouses are familiar: football causes brain damage and lasting psychological conditions; football is largely unethical because it perpetuates a culture of bigotry and militant thought; and football perpetuates a manipulative system of crony capitalism that takes advantage of its players at the high-school, college, or professional levels. Further, Almond makes a convincing case for the theory that Americans have turned to football in order to meet spiritual needs that arose as a result of industrial and social progress. Perhaps the worst of it, Almond states bluntly, is that fans bear more responsible than they acknowledge, as they continue to watch greedily and passively despite being aware of these facts. Throughout, Almond anticipates his opponents' responses, pointing out that many will take issue with his diatribe. Fortunately, Almond is drawing on his own experiences as a fan to illustrate how difficult the problem, which provides the book with an engaging personal angle that will lure readers who are mature enough to hear him out whether they agree with his conclusions.. An important read, even if as Almond concedes, it offers more questions than answers. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Almond's (Candy Freak) problem is that he likes to watch football but feels that it fosters greed, racism, homophobia, and violence; it makes him feel ethically dirty. The reader's problem is that the author is so wildly over the top that legitimate issues raised, such as concerns about player health and safety and the corruption of corporate welfare for owners, are lost in extreme rhetoric. Almond regards football as a sacrificial rite symptomatic of our imperial decadence that indoctrinates Americans to be more angry and cruel and less able to overcome our racial neuroses, lust for violence, yearning for patriarchal dominion, and sexual hang-ups. As contrition for the author's guilty pleasure, he appears to want each fan to don a hair jersey and suffer with him. VERDICT This diatribe will appeal most to those who hate sports. (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by School Library Journal Review
A longtime devoted football fan, Almond spends much of the first quarter of this book solidifying his football bona fides before beginning his onslaught of reasons that he feels he can no longer watch his favorite game. These arguments are familiar-concussions and sub-concussive hits; the game's twisted monetary incentives; its cult of violence; racism; and its vexed relationship with the American capitalism and patriotism. But the sheer weight of the evidence is impressive and hard to ignore. Even when Almond's arguments seem strained, he is able to put the burden of proof squarely on readers to disprove him with more than a simple dismissal. Particularly strong is his complete demolition of the argument that the mere popularity and fixity of the game somehow puts it above criticism. Many football fans will react with derision, and many non-fans will consider his points self-evident: both are wrong. These are arguments that deserve to be considered deeply and grappled with, and teens-who have not yet devoted their lives or opinions to or against the sport-are in a perfect position to take Almond's manifesto seriously.-Mark Flowers, John F. Kennedy Library, Vallejo, CA (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A provocative, thoughtful examination of an "astonishinglybrutal" sport.Almond's (God Bless America: Stories, 2011, etc.)lifelong devotion to football has never wavered, but he calls for its overhaulbecause he can no longer in good conscience ignore the cumulative andcatastrophic results of repetitive injuries to players' bodies or theprevalence of cognitive brain damage among NFL retirees. The author is not ascold or curmudgeon; he honors the sport and writes expressively that footballis "a faithful reenactment of our fundamental athletic impulsesto run, leap[and] catch." Football is astoundingly popular"Americans now give footballmore attention than any other cultural endeavor"andAlmond quotes critic William Phillips regarding its popularity, much of whichis "due to the fact that it makes respectable the most primitive feelingsabout violence, patriotism, manhood." Almond shares comical recollections offootball's role in his life and anecdotes of how fandom brings people(particularly parents and children) together. Two of his proposed remedies tothe current merciless state of football are a mandatory parental discretionwarning before games and the revoking of the NFL's nonprofit status, whichsoaks taxpayers for as much as 70 percent of the costs of new arenas while the multimillionaire (and some billionaire) team owners often pay little. Theauthor posits that fans are ethically obligated to push for change because "We're consumers.Our money and attention are what subsidize the game," and he presents acompelling argument that Americans' "allegiance to football legitimizes andeven fosters within us a tolerance for violence, greed, racism, andhomophobia." Almond rightfully anticipates significant push back for this book,which raises difficult, uncomfortable questions about fandome.g., "What doesit mean that millions of white fans cheer wildly for African-American men inthe context of a football game when, if they encountered these same men on adarkened street, they would reach for a cellphone?"Comic, compassionate and thought-provoking. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
