On November 30, as the college football season came to an end rivalry week At the climax, at least half a dozen games included heated fights between the contestants. The most notable was the matchup between Michigan and Ohio State, known as “The Game.” The visiting Wolverines upset their rivals in Columbus, and after they attempted to plant their flag at midfield, a huge melee broke out that police disturbingly attempted to quell using pepper spray in an assault on students.
Media coverage of this incident, which focused on the players' behavior rather than the police response, widely criticized the “ugliness” of the incident. Sporting News said an “ugly scene spoiled” the game, while CNN lamented almost identically how “an ugly fight after the final whistle marred” Michigan’s victory. He The New York Post reported “It got ugly,” while the Detroit Free Press suggested Michigan's victory “had a bit of an ugly stain.” A Fox commentator called him an “incredibly ugly scene for a beautiful rivalry.”
They are right: violence in college athletics is ugly and has no legitimate place in institutions with the mission of training, developing and educating students. The problem with all this righteous indignation, however, is that it fails to recognize that college football is inherently defined by violence, even as it is celebrated by universities, the media, and millions of American viewers.
In fact, a few days before the “ugliness,” a 20-year-old young man Alabama A&M player dies in a hospital after head injuries he suffered during a game in October, a death for which college football violence is responsible and which appeared to receive less coverage than rivalry fights.
The violent nature of football is not limited to cases of immediate death. By studying American football players, researchers at Boston University have found that every 2.6 years of football participation doubles the chance of contracting the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and that football players have 61% more likely to develop Parkinson's disease compared to other athletes. These consequences have been and will be suffered by the participants of college football. And they are, without a doubt, a form of violence, although we seem very willing to support it.
But traditional forms of violence, such as those seen in fights, are also characteristic of college football culture. Before the Michigan game, Ohio State coach ryan day said“This game is a war. And every time there is a war, there are consequences and victims. And then there is the loot and the rewards that come with it.” While that message has aged poorly in light of the fight, raising questions about the coach's influence on the players' behavior, it should in no way be seen as anomalous.
write our new book Regarding the human costs of sports, we interviewed 25 former players from the Power Four, college football's top conferences, about their experiences. Many told us that their coaches frequently encouraged their teams to engage in violence even outside of the game. One reported that a strength coach designated a place in the locker room for players to discuss their problems with each other; Another told us that fighting with teammates was so common in his experience that he perceived it as a reflection of a “good practice” session. Accusations and trials detailing abusive behavior in college football programs routinely emerge.
Given this context, it makes no sense for anyone to get upset over public fights in college football: the sport is already saturated with violence. While it is conceivably possible to reform the most toxic forms of brutality outside of the game (a somewhat Sisyphean task given how pervasive the culture is), at the end of the day, little can be done about the fact that American football It is, by its very nature, violence and harm that serves as entertainment.
Although some commentators He criticized Ohio State's Day for seeming to justify the fight after the game, in fact he was saying the quiet part out loud: “I'll find out exactly what happened, but this is our field. “We're certainly embarrassed by the fact that we lost the game, but there are some proud guys on this team who just weren't going to let this happen.” Day's crime appears to be that in rationalizing the fight, he inadvertently admitted the prevailing ethos of college football: Sometimes, we have to beat each other up.
There was, then, nothing aberrant in the violence we witnessed on the playing field during The Game. This was simply the truth about a beloved national pastime on full display.
Nathan Kalman-Lamb is an associate professor of sociology at the University of New Brunswick. Derek Silva is an associate professor of sociology and criminology at King's University College, Western University. They are co-authors of “The End of College Football: On the Human Cost of an All-American Game” and co-hosts (with Johanna Mellis) of The End of Sport Podcast.
