Let's chat about the National Football League. This week's schedule (all times Eastern):
Sun 2024-10-06 9:30AM New York Jets @ Minnesota Vikings
Sun 2024-10-06 1:00PM Buffalo Bills @ Houston Texans
Sun 2024-10-06 1:00PM Carolina Panthers @ Chicago Bears
Sun 2024-10-06 1:00PM Cleveland Browns @ Washington Commanders
Sun 2024-10-06 1:00PM Indianapolis Colts @ Jacksonville Jaguars
Sun 2024-10-06 1:00PM Miami Dolphins @ New England Patriots
Sun 2024-10-06 1:00PM Baltimore Ravens @ Cincinnati Bengals
Sun 2024-10-06 4:05PM Arizona Cardinals @ San Francisco 49ers
Sun 2024-10-06 4:05PM Las Vegas Raiders @ Denver Broncos
Sun 2024-10-06 4:25PM Green Bay Packers @ Los Angeles Rams
Sun 2024-10-06 4:25PM New York Giants @ Seattle Seahawks
Sun 2024-10-06 8:20PM Dallas Cowboys @ Pittsburgh Steelers
Mon 2024-10-07 8:15PM New Orleans Saints @ Kansas City Chiefs
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
My humble CW opinion is that the NFL is immoral. It has married itself to online gambling companies, it decreases civic participation and exercise by marketing itself as a relevant national spectacle, it increases consumerism and microplastic exposure in the youth, and it reduces everyone’s attention to things that actually matter (discourse, philosophy, religion — your pick, anything is better than the sports).
People get this causation backwards very frequently. The NFL isn't tricking you into arguing with people online less, or thinking that it's a spectacle, or giving you microplastics. It is downstream from the things people desire to watch and participate in. Consider that the National Lacrosse League has all of the same incentives yet you don't think of it very frequently. Maybe you think "giving viewers and participants something they yearn for" is immoral, but the intuition needs some workshopping, I would suggest focusing on the gambling arguments.
The NFL employs marketers, psychologists, designers, sociologists, media people for the purpose of tricking you into buying their product. They might do this through an advert, paying a celebrity to post about the sport, through youth influencers, or by associating their stupid game with an actual American tradition like Thanksgiving. They are more clever than you and me and they have more money to spend on their image.
People “desire to watch” (did you mistype when you included the word “participate”?) things that they consider relevant and important. The problem is that they aren’t wise to the extreme lengths that corporations go to trick you into thinking their product is relevant and important. Arguing that the NFL doesn’t trick people because few watch Lacrosse is like arguing that Nike doesn’t trick people because few buy Rebok: not every corporation is equally adept at shilling their product.
Then let’s just bring back the colosseum. We are close enough with the MMA. We might as well let them kill each other instead of just causing brain damage. Truly, the people yearn for the colosseum, and it is immoral to keep them from bloodsport.
Think of the 99% of activities hobbies or media you have no interest in, then consider that they also hire marketing professionals, perhaps even the same ones. The suggestion that everything would be in peace and harmony without evil corporations tricking us into being fat or dumb is so childish and poorly reasoned that I'm disappointed seeing it on our humble website. People like things they are predisposed to enjoying, or which they objectively value. If the national poop-eating league was given 100 billion dollars to market, I struggle to imagine all that advertising and psychology convincing me or you to watch it. On the margin advertising is obviously effective to get people to play, attend games (both forms of participation, shockingly), buy jerseys, and the like, but your argument here is so poorly developed I struggle to engage with it. Accusing me of mistyping while spelling Reebok wrong is also funny enough that I'll point it out.
The second argument is more coherent, that even if 'sports' are naturally popular, the degree to which they are catered to or how they are played is immoral. My simple response is what I've written above, that if someone tried to open a gladiator coliseum nobody would watch it or participate in it. My simpler response is "tackling people isn't nearly as bad as killing them." The meaningful degree to consent to bodily harm is not clear for contact sports, whereas I think about almost all people would think it is clear for We who are about to die.
Also worth a mention is that contact sports aren't particularly dangerous to life and limb compared to things like cycling. An 18-year-old elite women's cyclist just died at the world junior championships. The spring, the defending Tour de France champion suffered a crash that shattered his collarbone, fractured multiple ribs, and punctured a lung.
Safetyism is not a superior approach to life relative to accepting that virtue requires some risk. I have never heard anyone claim that cycling is a bloodsport because people get hurt badly sometimes.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link