Football not likely to retreat much

The image shows Al Noga - remember him? Of the Vikings? - in the news recently because his workers' compensation claim has been rejected. Noga experienced repeated head trauma that he says has caused a dementia diagnosis. He's 53 years old. The MN Supreme Court reversed a Workers' Compensation Court of Appeals ruling that Noga was entitled to permanent and total disability benefits. There was a statute of limitations problem.
 
The week of the county fair was when I'd pass by the playgrounds along East 7th Street and see pre-season football workouts. Eventually I'd stop there and take 3-4 photos for my Tiger pre-season article. Football workouts got one's adrenalin pumping a little. We were going to be lifted from the sleepy summer months.
There was irony in my interest: I had never come close to even sampling the sport of football as participant. You might suggest I wouldn't have been good at it anyway. Fine, I'll accept that. I'm happy to accept that because it means that at present, at age 64, my odds are better of maintaining good cognitive health. Secondarily, I might be spared a problem like arthritis. An "old football injury" might have seemed like a badge of masculinity in an earlier time. We seem to have progressed rapidly from such attitudes. But football lingers in our culture, stubborn against the headwinds it ought to be facing.
The quality of color television in the mid-1960s was such that football was going to spring to ridiculous heights of popularity. I'm as guilty as anyone for having enjoyed it. The news of today projects a cloud over the sport, a cloud which for the time being it can overcome by people's old habits. Addictions?
High school participation has declined, yes. It's not to the degree that logic and good sense would suggest. I'm reminded of reports on newspaper readership decline starting in about 2007. In theory the decline should have been drastic, given our transition to the Internet for all kinds of info. Author Michael Wolff, an idol of mine, made drastic projections based on logic and was off the mark. Instead we'd see news stories reporting ever so small rates of decline, baby steps as it were.
We have seen a huge decline in the quality and quantity of the newspaper product in Stevens County.
 
Go online for the schedule
It's August so we can think about the football opener, whenever it is. I always have the school calendar at a designated spot in the household. So in the past I'd routinely consult it for such information. This year our school district decided not to put sports schedule info in the calendar. What a departure from the norm! Logic would suggest this could have been done several years ago. The well-developed internet has been around for a while. But people's habits do not change overnight.
I could have started paying for stuff with plastic long ago but only recently made the adjustment. Now I'll have to adjust and learn how to conveniently find MACA sports schedule information online. I have only had an internet device at home for a year and a half. Prior to that I used public computers in two places, a nice system partly because my online time would be limited in a healthy way. Now I have to resolve to exercise the proper restraint.
My paper school calendar seems worthless to me now. The school could save money by just not having it printed in the future.
We could consume all our MACA sports information online and forget about any local "newspaper." The Morris paper is barely a shadow of its old self. The Hancock paper is gone. The Ad-Viser free shopper is gone. It's not unusual to see a mere 12-page "Canary" ad publication which still has its two pages for Jim Gesswein Motors of Milbank.
I'm sure Paul Martin would disregard me, but I'll encourage him once again to discontinue sending out the weekly paper circular. Those circulars come from a huge pile of boxes each week - I dealt with them a lot in my days of driving the newspaper van. It's really just pollution, isn't it? Willie's has info online and besides that, why can't we just trust the store to have reasonable everyday prices for everything?
 
A difficulty in facing facts
The information is overwhelming now about how boys should avoid the sport of football. And yet we'll see the legacy popularity of the sport hanging on, at the end of this month. Whenever the home opener date is, I'll probably stop by on my bike, not buying a ticket of course, to sample what surely will be the usual buoyant atmosphere. Once again our adrenalin will pump.
I think the pep band has become a question mark for all weeks. The presence of the band would just lift the atmosphere of pomp and pageantry more. It contributes to the players feeling special in this activity, an activity that does little more than subject them to pain and risk. But the stands are filled with people cheering! The parents are enthused.
If you try telling parents the stories about NFL players whose lives end in ruin because of football, they'll be so quick to retort and give the benefit of the doubt to their sons' activity. They'll say "oh, that's the pros." You can easily research about how the damage is real for adolescents whose bodies and brains are more tender.
I find most parents to be glib and annoying. I guess they're enamored by the "Friday night lights." They like the short-term sugar rush of their sons seeking to win this week's game and to get community adulation.
 
Gain sense of reality
I'd like to tell the boys: not long after graduation you'll realize that very few people will care about what you did on a football field.
I am prepared to lose my arguments, to be painted as negative and as rather a stick in the mud.
Will I write online about high school football this fall? That is a very good question, a vexing one. It's an annual challenge I grapple with. While I don't want my journalism to serve as promotion of the sport, I still want to feel part of the community. So I may well proceed with game updates "under protest," as someone would say in the military.
Families today ought to be aware of football's peril. They must in sober fashion weigh all this. It's their responsibility, not mine. Good luck to the Tigers? I don't even want to say that. A good number of people would sneer at me. That's unfortunate. I'm at least lucky that I never played the sport. That's the selfish view I guess.
 
Addendum: A standard Morris resident's answer to my assertions would be "yeah? Well, you lived with your parents." Yeah, that's a good fact-based refuting of what I said, right? By the standards of Morris, I guess it is.
 
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com