toor and football

Sat., Jan. 6, 2018

Rachel Toor (“EWU, end football, for the sake of society - and students” Dec. 10) has a point. But it ain’t gonna happen.

Football is war. War is the imposition of one’s will over another. War happens when all nonviolent efforts to get one’s way fail. Everybody wants to get their way. This drive is exorcised by a game the goal of which is to take the other guys’ territory by brute force with no weapons but one’s armored body. Conquest measured by ball placement, terminology burrowed from battle manuals, real-time human dramatics and clarity of outcome combine to create this uniquely American game’s appeal. An appeal apparent by the vastness of the football industrial complex. An elephant in our room that’s not going anywhere.

Bill Baxley

Spokane

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