We all know what's coming in the next Morris newspaper: a huge splash of attention, glorifying-style, on the Hancock football team. This is not to be taken as criticism. The paper is just doing what it's expected to do. There is nothing like sports, believe me, for supplying grist for a community newspaper's product.
I get a sense of the glee surrounding Hancock football as I visit a local restaurant in the morning. One feels obligated to go along with it. I would wager there is no more talent on the Hancock football roster than on the Morris roster. I think a lot depends on what enrollment classification a team is in. It looks like Hancock played a team Thursday that had no defense. Maybe the smallest schools are in an environment where many members are just hanging on to keep football. You would think that at this advanced stage of the playoffs, games would tend to be close. People who follow the scores year to year know this is not the case. Perhaps there is a "haves vs. have-nots" phenomenon.
As the enrollment size gets bigger, maybe there is more of a sense of healthy parity.
State sports tournaments are tailor-made to accommodate the needs of local media.
Pause to look deeper
OK, you sense all these observations are needlessly contrarian. Why not get on the bandwagon, you probably ask.
Surely you sense this analysis gets too "deep" and seems depressing. There's nothing wrong with thinking a little deep sometimes, as followers of our President Trump ought to realize and learn from. We have never seen such anti-intellectualism. We live in a congressional district that is taking on a strong "red" tone, where people simply depart from critical thinking skills. It's all emotional on behalf of Trump. It's all finger-pointing at the "socialist" Democrats. Yes, socialism that might free you from having to deal with private health insurance.
How might I justify the contrarian stance about high school football? No need to grope here. There are probably buses rumbling down to the state playoffs. Some pretty full carfulls too, no doubt. Boys and girls will join the parents. But what kind of takeaway is there for the girls? They are jumping up and down and cheering for a team in a sport where girls are not even allowed. What gives? Girls are too delicate? That would have to be the argument. But we are fully into a new age in which girls are not considered delicate for doing anything. So how does one rationalize the males-only sport?
Let's grope: It's dangerous yes but males have this distinct quality that makes them willing to risk and sacrifice their body? Women are not programmed to do this and would not want to do it, the argument goes. There is a word for this: bias.
Quite obviously the solution is not to open the door for girls playing tackle football. In Morris there is quite the history with the Homecoming powder puff football game, which started out non-sanctioned as a tackle game. It was controversial. Hey, all the girls were doing, was playing a game in the same manner as the boys had legally done for a long time. The school finally got its hooks into this event and transformed it from tackle to the seemingly more tame flag football. But Morris cross country lost one of its finest all-time performers this past fall, Maddie Carrington, due to a torn ACL in the powder puff event.
Bite after bite, indeed
What's with the lure we all continue to feel toward the sport of football? I never played it, and I sense no void in my life. I faced no risk of a torn ACL or concussions that science shows can be quite impactful later in life.
The sport of football got a big boost in the 1960s when the increasing quality of color TV drew fans to the tube more and more. Nothing like this phenomenon happened in the 1950s. Football was somewhat marginalized and we actually heard more talk about how the sport was unreasonably violent. By the mid-'60s due to the TV element, football took over as truly entrancing and almost addictive.
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| The Owls at left in photo from "Maxpreps" |
The winning communities give the impression that everyone in town is totally transfixed and entranced. I would suggest this is an illusion. Many people are probably quite content going about their normal lives and paying only passing attention if even that. Not that they would want to diss what is going on, right? But maybe they should.
Football mania strikes me as an escape from a mundane day-to-day world that often depresses us. The student athletes are the pawns or to be more blunt, the gladiators. No exaggeration intended. How would you argue that this description is off-base? The players get no lifelong benefit from the experience. They have serious risk of injury to body and brain. So society, even in this age of supposed total gender equality, decides things are really not that equal after all. "Girls don't play football." It would be unwise, I guess, because of a chivalrous attitude about how girls require more protection from the pain and injuries? But what about the boys? Shouldn't their interests be served in the same way? Why not?
We all know what next week's Morris newspaper is going to look like. Few people will read the actual articles. The coverage will be there as a tribute to our cultural addiction to football. Never mind trying to really learn about the specifics behind the impeachment move for President Trump. Just cry out "fake news!" and you'll fit right in, in this Seventh Congressional District.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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