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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Give and take: Sunday letters

Story had impact

Thank-you for choosing the analysis piece on football by Bill Plaschke (“Football: Are risks worth rewards?” Jan. 27). I hope it has a good and lasting effect on readers here.

Perhaps these modern coliseums will someday be visited as tourist sites, too.

Melody Faris

Spokane

Modern football too brutal

I believe that football is not what it used to be. It’s becoming too dangerous to play because of the preparation for players to become gladiators of football. They lift weights to condition the body of a gladiator’s strength to overpower an opponent on the field.

During the ’50s, weight training was not a part of preparing for the football team. The players who were physically stronger naturally than others were the team’s strength. Now all players are stronger than they were prior to the sports-training methods, therefore preparing one gladiator against another creates more serious injuries than they use to have.

I predict that football in the pros will end its reign of glory regardless of the money in the sport. A person’s health is more important than money in your hand.

John Tuft

Spokane

Comeback had life lessons

I believe that sports is a metaphor for life: culture wars, nation wars, conflict settled on the field. The NFC title game was an example of this. Quarterback Russell Wilson, usually sporting the sloe-eyed look of an assassin was reduced to tears of relief and joy following several hours of struggle, mostly in vain, against an awesome foe, foiling the hopes of his Seahawk team.

Then the life lesson began on confidence, commitment and loyalty, playing out in the waning minutes of the game. The errant passes to the cursed receiver began to be completed. Wilson never stopped believing in himself and his team. The misfits gathered in an onside kick, rarely attempted in the NFL, completed a fake field goal that stated three points were not going to win, so here’s a touchdown. The two-point conversion from a scrambling Wilson and the coup de grace, a long pass to Jerome Kearse, till then bent on ending his career as a receiver, caught the pass that would save his team and himself.

The struggle was written on his face and earned his place in the lore of football and in life. I thank him and his teammates for their gifts this day.

Jim McArthur

Spokane

9th man deserves hoopla

It’s wonderful to see Spokane get caught up in the Seahawks road to the SuperBowl: 12th man jerseys, 12th man flag and tweeted photos to the newspaper and television stations.

But I don’t get it, Spokane. You have your own football team: the Spokane Shock. Why don’t you ever do the same for them?

What gives?

Linda Fifer

Coeur d’Alene