And NO,Malcolm is NOT Art Garfunkle's son!
I don’t generally post “See? Someone famous and respectable agrees with me!” links, because 1) somebody agreeing with me doesn’t validate my argument, 2) I’m trying to promote ethical awareness and analysis skills, not to be “right,” and most of all, 3) if I did, I’d feel I had to hide when the famous someone is Glenn Beck, Joy Behar, Ozzie Ozbourne or Dinky, the Pet Rock.
However, I found the comments of Malcolm Gladwell on the topic of football interesting, and I link to them here. Gladwell is the author of “The Tipping Point,” and like Jacque Barzun, Bill James, George Will, Judge Richard Posner, blogger Rick Jones and some other perceptive thinkers I admire, always worth paying attention to, even when he’s wrong. I had suggested that the increasing evidence that football-related head injuries were routinely crippling players implicated the ethics of being a football fan here, and have periodically revisited the issue on this blog and as a guest on Michel Martin’s NPR show, “Tell Me More.” As a result, I have received a good amount of hate mail from football fans, telling me that I’m a baseball-biased idiot. I may be that, but I don’t think Gladwell is. I think that he ( and I) may be right: ethics and insurance premiums may eventually send football the way of pro boxing.
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Spark: WTVR.com, on Ray Easterling’s recent suicide.
Source: Slate
Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at jamproethics@verizon.net.
Ethics Alarms 
You’re baseball-biased, but anyone who’s ever had a good knock on the head (like the first – and last – punch I ever took in a boxing ring) is NOT an idiot, for using what’s left inside their head to ponder the dubious ethics of “sport” which consists of routine, repetitive blunt force cranial impacts.
The comparison of football to boxing is overstating the case. In boxing, I’m paying to watch one person pummel another into unconciousness. In football, I’m paying to watch a team score more points than another. They do this by strategic movements and plays down a field, while trying to stop the other team. I don’t specify how they must stop them, and if it can be done without injury all the better. I realize not all football fans feel this way, but hey, some people have a caveman mentality.
I think that’s a little bit disingenuous, though, Andrew, though I don’t doubt that it is true in your particular case.. Most team sports involve two teams trying to score goals or points on the opposite sides of the field—football, soccer, rugby, basketball, hockey, field hockey. touch football, lingerie football…flag football. It’s clearly the violence and hitting that makes football, at least pro football, so popular—that’s how it’s marketed, and that’s how its played. We’ll find out who’s right, when football is forced to reduce the violence to such an extent that the fans notice. My guess: the game will lose popularity
If the violence gets turned down, you can bet we’ll get a few thousand journalists and bloggers up in arms about the changes, but I don’t know how much of the fan base will actually leave. The NFL has already made several aspects of the game (most notably coverage) significantly less physical, but it hasn’t caused an exodus. Many of us like the game for the skill, not the collisions.
And some of us like the results and the bragging rights for our team more than the game, skills, collisions, or otherwise.
You would have to make it non contact to reduce the risk of concussions. As to boxing at least it’s honest in that everyone knows the point is to beat the shit out of each other. When the bounty scandal broke I could not believe all the people who were “shocked” that such a thing went on in football. The fans have been ignoring for years that football cripples players and shortens their lives. They are more interested in living vicariously through the actions of the players on the field.