The football scandals and the "cult of violence" against women and families

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After WWII the refugee Jewish German sociologist Leo Lowenthal was author of an important study  which looked at the people portrayed as "heroes" and "role models" in all sorts of literature aimed at youth.  He found that athletes and entertainers had replaced politicians, military leaders and business leaders in these works and in popular media(magazines, radio, movies).

He called these heroes "idols of consumption" whose achievements were the subject of discussion and debate in a way that questions of economics and politics were not. There were many reasons for this besides the usual "bread and circuses" arguments popular with much of the left. First, working class youth particularly saw in entertainment and sports a world where low income people and people of color really could be successful by developing themselves, unlike the "real" world of business and the professions where wealth, connections, and access to education that would provide credentials were paramount.

Lowenthal was a member of the "Frankfurt School", as a prominent group of refugee German scholars influenced by Marxism were called. Writing from a Marxist perspective, I would say these athletes and entertainers were, not only "idols of consumption," but commodities, purchased by the managers of  college and professional teams and movie studios for the profit and prestige of owners and investors. While this was true of all spectator sports and mass entertainment, it was in the U.S. especially true of football, which analysts had seen since its inception in the late 19th century as a "war game" where teams of men used age old military tactics to conquer and strategically hold territory, physically blocking and tackling their opponents, a game where, as in war, violent physical contact was the norm. Football was also played exclusively by men, unlike basketball, where women until the recent period played by a different set of rules; baseball, where women played softball; or tennis, volleyball, swimming and other sports where women played by the same rules as men. Football, while it goes back to the late 19th century, was in many ways the perfect spectator sport for a cold war without end in order to sustain a permanent war economy.  In fact, some writers before WWII, looking at Europe's endless wars as against what they saw as  peace in the U.S., even commented that the game of football served as a substitute for the aggressive behavior found in warfare

In the cold war era though, it served as a complement to such behavior. Men of all ages would stay home on Sundays to watch men be hailed for  blocking and tackling other men, some of whom would be carried off the field on stretchers.  Their wives would be referred to as "football widows". Compared to those in the other professional sports, football have had a weak union, one where injured players are not even guaranteed their salaries and there is a very large turnover.  In part, this has a lot to do with the role that the college game plays as essentially, for the players, an unpaid  minor league. In 1972, in what was one of the last major achievements of the social movement for gender equality in the U.S, the National Organization forWomen(N0W), against the opposition of the National Collegiate Athletic Association(NCAA), successfully added to the Education Act a clause, title 9, which called for the end of all gender based discrimination in admissions and in both academic and athletic programs in colleges and universities which received federal funds.  While conservatives at the time and forever after have condemned Title Nine as producing "reverse discrimination", the opposite is really true.  As long as this enormous amount of resources is expended at all levels on football, a game that women do not play, the goal of Title Nine will not be attainable.

             Sports culture, especially baseball and football  in the U.S. has  long  reflected larger shifts within society. In the early 20th century (the "Progressive Era") reforms aimed at curbing  both the violence  and corruption in college football, which pre-dated the professional game, were enacted. For instance, the outlawing of the flying wedge, a formation that led to scores of major injuries and some deaths every year, was intended make the game safer for student athletes. In the conservative business political culture of the 1920s, the game was commercialized and both star players and football coaches became major celebrities.  Knute Rockne of Notre Dame received fees to lecture major corporate executives on successful football management as a model for successful business management.

 In the upsurge of  1930s and 1940s, books, plays, and some Hollywood films either satirized or condemned the role of college football as a source of both corruption and anti-intellectualism on college campuses, although films like Knute Rockne All American sustained the "idols of consumption" mythology of the game. In that film, Ronald Reagan gained some fame playing George Gipp, the quintessential football hero(even though some journalists noted that the real Gipp lived a fairly dissolute life of drinking and gambling, much like some contemporary football heroes). In the 1930s, when the college game continued to be far more important than the professional game, old elite northeastern private universities, recognizing the negative effects of the game on academic reputations, withdrew from national football competition, founding their own "ivy league", and the elite private University of Chicago, founded by Rockefeller money, withdrew under President Robert Hutchins from all intercollegiate football competition.  

The influence of college football on public universities, as well, has by no means been positive in the past or the present. In spite of the still popular myths, studies have repeatedly shown that the funding of academic programs at public universities has had little, if anything, to do with football programs. Beginning in the 1950s, when the NFL both supplanted and began to transform college football into a free minor league (a practice which continues today), some of the poorest public universities in the country, such as Mississippi and Alabama (symbols then of segregation and academic mediocrity) became college football champions without any visible positive effect on their academic quality or reputation. This was also true of many undistinguished public universities with limited resources such Oklahoma and Nebraska where academic resources have remained limited.  Also, no direct connection between scholarly achievements and successful football programs has been shown even at distinguished public universities such as the universities of Michigan and Wisconsin. With  a few exceptions, the top football teams competing for the  major bowls today--Alabama, Texas Christian University, Baylor, Mississippi State,  the University of Mississippi-have never been, and are not now, even among the middle rank of U.S. public and private universities, in terms of investment in their academic programs. However, the defunding of public higher education in the Reagan era and beyond led many public universities to greatly expand their college football programs in the belief that this was the best way to increase public funding and private donations at the same time that they began to define themselves as "public research universities" whose primary mission was in reality to develop "free" research and development for corporations. In regard at least to the football program, where there are no patent and intellectual property laws for universities and scholars to fall back, on  this was, as Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade said of the exotic fools who, motivated by greed, searched for the Maltese Falcon, "the stuff dreams are made of."

Just as the political elites sought to erase much of the twentieth century in terms of labor and social policy from the Reagan era on, university administrations and governing boards longed for a return to the world that James Thurber and Elliot Nugent had satirized brilliantly in their classic 1930s Broadway play, The Male Animal.  Their ideal seems to have been  a world where anti-intellectual alumni funded new football stadiums and censored scholars while cartoonish  students (except for a radical few) cheered them on, living in a world of parties and games, oblivious to the depression all around them. As tuition rose and rose from the 1980s on and the job prospects for college graduates declined sharply, football coaches became the highest paid "public employees" in a majority of states. The game itself became a plaything for corporations and the wealthy, who established what one might call "vanity bowls", over fifty sub minor bowls sponsored by various companies and some states in which over 100 teams competed. A team had only to win half of its games, including three non competitive ones, to become " bowl eligible, something that did not exist in any other sport.

Football and the General Crisis of Higher Education   

 These policies were and continue to be a disastrous failure at most public  universities, as millions are  wasted and large debts accrued (and the success or failure of the teams  continues to have  nothing to do with the development of the university).  At the same time, the salaries of faculty especially at private universities continue to rise well above that of faculty at comparable public universities, where administrators and department chairs seek to solve budget crises by reducing the number of fulltime faculty through coaxed and or coerced retirement, replacing them with part-time lecturers and graduate students, reducing the quality of education that students receive while sharply increasing their tuition costs and fees. Such  policies continue unabated ,  producing growing frustration and anger among students, faculty and staff. They are, in fact,  similar in many respects to  the Reagan-Bush policies that continued until the great crash and long recession following 2008 led to attempts by the Obama administration to develop new policies.

"Winning One for the Gipper" in 2014

In the world of public universities,  there has been no attempt to break with or even to seriously challenge the disastrous policies of the last three decades. Indeed, they have gotten worse as new stadiums are built and universities seek admission to more prestigious conferences  while classrooms, libraries, and laboratories deteriorate. Universities frequently attempt to make up their football related athletic deficits by increasing student fees while  both students and  others find the games in the new stadiums (that they and taxpayers are funding) to be for too many people inaccessible and unaffordable. The great majority of student athletes in track and field, tennis, volleyball, and swimming (the sports that university administrators condescendingly call "Olympic sports including sports that large numbers of people engage in for recreation) angrily watch while a small number of athletes in the "revenue sports" of which football is first, are given full scholarships, access to superior housing and special tutors.

            This then is the context in which these scandals have taken place: a continuing war economy, military interventionism reminiscent of the old colonial empires, and a culture of violence as sport pervading mass media in movies  television and the new world of video games. All of this is as unregulated and as rampant as the world of hedge funds on Wall Street, while those in positions of power mouth platitudes about diversity and issue statements of disapproval when there is a blatant act of violence or corruption in the world of ("minor league") college or major league professional sports. 

            The scandals, reflecting the double standards within contemporary culture, operate at every level.  In New Jersey, seven members of the Sayreville High School football team were accused of vicious assaults, including sexual assaults on freshman team members, as part of their rituals, leading to criminal charges and the suspension this year of the school's football program. A number of college players for highly rated teams, most famously Jameis Winston of Florida State, have been accused of numerous crimes, from petty theft to sexual assaults. In Winston's case, a campus disciplinary hearing concerning charges that he violated the university's code of conduct has been postponed twice.  Few believe that he will be barred from likely championship games over the next month and everyone expects him to receive a multi-million  dollar NFL contract regardless of the findings. Recently, a missing Ohio State football player, Kosta Karageorge, was found dead, apparently of self inflicted wounds.  His mother has claimed that he had suffered concussions and was in a confused state.  The authorities have, as is standard, given family and friends their condolences and have gone back to the business of preparing for the Big Ten championship game.  

 What has been shown to exist is the kind of double standard that permeated the 19th century "free market" society that conservatives continue to glorify, one where  the police and public authorities routinely looked the other way at the transgressions of those with wealth and privilege. In this case, while the players themselves generally do not come from wealth and privilege and are themselves exploited, the stars are routinely treated like thoroughbred horses, separated from ordinary horses and given special treatment until they are put out to pasture to produce new thoroughbreds. Professional football players, however, are not so well treated after they leave the game.  Many suffer both reduced life expectancies and severe limitations on the quality of their lives thanks to the concussions and other injuries that they have suffered as players.    

In the NFL a number of high profile domestic violence cases have caught the attention of large numbers of people, more so perhaps than the actions of the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East or the condition of low wage workers in the country or the organized protests in response to the Ferguson, Missouri, shooting and decision. In regard to the latter, a positive gesture of solidarity with Ferguson protesters by a handful of St. Louis Rams football players at their Sunday game, raising their hands to show they, like Michael Brown, were unarmed (acting in reality as "positive role models") has been given widespread media attention and largely negative comments by sports media and fans on call in shows. Some have been angered by the perceived slight against police, others because these players dared show that they were thinking, feeling human beings and not simply " good soldiers" pounding each other into the ground for the pleasure of the television audience.  

 Since football is first and foremost a war game and athletes are trained to  use force situationally, it is not remarkable that violence against women as a ritual of male bonding and male power, a pseudo masculine ritual that the society encourages ,is growing among football players. Ray Rice, former Rutgers star and star running back of the Baltimore Ravens football team, struck his then fiancée in an Atlantic City club elevator after an argument, knocked her unconscious, and then dragged her from the elevator.  Unfortunately for Rice, this act in the elevator was recorded  and released into the world of the internet and became a sensation. When Roger Goodell, the present NFL commissioner, who like other sports commissioners in the tradition of the baseball commissioner has both broad dictatorial powers but serves at the pleasure of the owners, gave Rice a two game suspension there was an enormous outcry by women's groups, activists campaigning especially against violence against women in sports, and general sports media. Goodell  then reversed himself and gave Rice an indefinite ban and his team, which had stood by him and praised him, dropped him like a hot potato. Rice has just won a grievance taken by the players association, which he and the players deserved  to win, because Goodell's conduct, as anyone who has been involved in labor relations knows, was an extreme example of arbitrary and capricious conduct which all grievance  procedures in collective bargaining agreements seek to prevent. Rice's wife has said that he was never violent with her before or after the incident, which for them has meant both terrible publicity and the possible loss of millions of dollars in income.

 We have yet to see how the NFL Commissioner will deal  with the Adrian Peterson Case, where the star running back of the Minnesota Vikings plea bargained after being charged with beating his four year old son with a switch in Texas.

What Can and Should be done

First, the issue of violence against women and domestic violence must be addressed.  Even though the women's rights movement has not only raised these issues over half a century but won a series of victories in changing the laws, from rape shield laws to domestic violence prosecutions, such acts are likely to grow in the current context of increased economic inequality and insecurity where men are encouraged through the glorification of violence through mass media to take out their failures and frustrations on women and children. Punishing high profile athletes or entertainers  or stock brokers and others more likely to keep such abuses hidden, while necessary, is not sufficient to change the situation.  

Since we are talking about education, one might start with high schools, where there is a growing movement against bullying.  Educating high school students about the destructive nature of self segregating cliques and de-emphasizing competitive spectator sports as the way to bring students together makes the best sense.   

Stopping the coaches, some of whom treat student athletes as if they are marine drill sargeants, first at the high school and then at the college level, should also be a goal of school administrators.

Taking universities out of the minor league sports business in both football and basketball, paying the players salaries and perhaps franchising the teams out to private business people (those teams which could be sold profitably) would in all probability be in the best interests of both the players and the schools.   In colleges, an NCAA "salary cap" of $300,000 for all football coaches would also be a very good start.  Or perhaps something even more revolutionary is needed-a policy that no football or basketball coach will receive a salary larger than the highest paid faculty member.

Finally strengthening professional sports unions to protect the players in terms of health, safety, and retirement security also makes the most sense in reforming all professional sports.    Having both minor league college teams and major league professional teams unionized and working with women's rights organizations directly to develop preventive as against reactive policies to violence against women in sports should also be a part of this program.

Since there are tens of millions of sports fans/consumers who are the basis for all the profit produced in all of the professional spectator sports, getting rid of the present absurd and reactionary system of "commissioners" with dictatorial powers who serve at the whim of the owners, and replacing them with public administrators who would make the interests of the fans/consumers and players/workers paramount would also be a huge step forward for sports.  This might also be done at least for public universities in the NCAA. Making the games safer for players and cheaper for fans/consumers, as they once were, should be the first priority of public sports administrators. Even though that would be bringing capitalism directly into college "revenue sports," and establishing a regulated and reformed capitalism for professional sports  one  still could see these policies as stepping stones to  socialist solutions for both sports and society . 

Building Sports in a Socialist Society

Socialism in sports would mean a  policy of Sports for the People, emphasizing sport as recreation and exercise, making competition in effect friendly in intramural games, offering an alternative in action to football coach Vince Lombardi's statement, "winning is not everything.  It is the only thing."

As for violence against women and children in society, socialism   would address directly the poverty and militarism that serve as a backdrop for that violence. 

Educating men and women on questions of effective and humane child rearing and domestic conflict resolution would be a normal part of learning and living in a socialist society. Such a society is the only one that can eliminate the causes of these crises, not simply punish and make examples of high profile individuals or  seek to cover up the abuses until the heat is off, which is what contemporary policy makers in major league professional sports and minor league college sports(and even in  high schools) are doing today.

As for football itself, which I have followed as a spectator since the age of ten(even though baseball means much more to me) it may as a war game not be redeemable, unlike basketball, baseball, soccer, and even hockey which could and should be reformed in terms of the violence. I am not saying that it should be banned or outlawed, although I think today's NFL players deserve much better treatment as employees from the owners. In a socialist society one would hope that, as Marx said about the state once socialism had reached its higher Communist stage, football might wither away

Is this "utopian"?  In a society where football coaches can "earn" millions of dollars and college Presidents smile and say that is what the market demands, and the NFL has to be sued to provide medical benefits for former players suffering the physical and psychological  wounds  inflicted when they played, in short a world that reflects  contemporary jungle capitalism, it is a rational response to a system becoming more and more violent and irrational in pursuit of real (the professional game) and mythical(the college game) wealth and fame.

Photo: St Louis Rams players enter the field with hands raised in in a gesture of support for demonstrators protesting police killings in Ferguson, Missouri and New York.    Google images

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