Couch Slouch: Should we even be watching football?

Upon further review, Couch Slouch has decided last week’s column on the NFL’s concussion problem did not address the issue properly. So today we tackle it again with a bolder, intellectual blitz.

Should we still be playing football?

Should we still be watching football?

I grew up with the game and have devoted autumn and winter Sundays to it for half-a-century.

As Albert Brooks says in “Concussion,” “The NFL owns a day of the week.”

Without question, I have derived more enjoyment and entertainment from viewing the NFL – by the way, thank you, Aaron Rodgers – than any other activity in my adult life.

(Bowling is a distant second, followed by playing stud high-low poker, eating Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk ice cream and the third and fourth weeks of my first marriage.)

But as we find out about the neurological damage many of the players incur and about the onslaught of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease, increasingly the “fan experience” feels like the viewing version of blood money.

How can one not feel guilty sitting there, taking pleasure in a game that destroys its competitors’ brains?

(I went to a couple of bullfights in Spain and, ultimately, had to look away. And those were bulls. In the NFL, these are humans, being “stabbed at” one crippling hit at a time.)

ESPN never felt guilty with its unfortunate, unfathomable, unforgivable “Jacked Up” segment, which for years celebrated kill-shot hits. As each jarring blow was shown, ESPN’s NFL studio crew would shout in unison, “You just got…JACKED UP!!!” Of course, this was in the Dark Ages of NFL concussion awareness, back in the early days of the 21st century.

(Column Intermission I: Apparently, Donald Trump is pro-concussion. During a speech in Reno last week, the loquacious demagogue said, “What used to be considered a great tackle, a violent head-on [tackle]…it was incredible to watch, right? Now they tackle. ‘Oh, head-on-head collision, 15 yards.’ The whole game is all screwed up. You say, ‘Wow, what a tackle.’ Bing. Flag. Football has become soft.”)

(Column Intermission II: When Donald Trump buys a book, he only reads Chapter 11.)

For sure, part of the appeal of football is its violent nature. But many people watch to live vicariously through their home team and many others watch because they can gamble on it through office pools, point-spread wagers or, now, daily fantasy sports. The game will not disappear if it is made safer, or softer.

A generation ago, I loved the big boxing showdowns – Ali-Frazier, Leonard-Duran, Hagler-Hearns. Then one day I woke up and a long-overdue notion popped into my head:

The object of the sport is to knock the other person unconscious.

Why was I watching this? So I stepped away.

It was easy to say goodbye to boxing – the politics of the sport were unceasing and the mega-fights had disappeared. But the NFL is part of a weekly routine that virtually has defined my sports world.

The thing is, I don’t want to stop people from boxing, I don’t want to stop them from playing football, I don’t even want to stop them if they’re defending unscrupulous health insurers against the aggrieved insured.

Whatever works for folks work-wise is fine by me.

(Who am I to judge, anyway? I have spent most of my professional life watching television and then writing about what I saw on TV. This is not exactly God’s work; heck, it is barely work.)

Still, it feels wrong to just sit back and cheer, knowing how mutilating the games are and how mightily the NFL acted as if CTE were a myth.

So how do I justify watching the conference championship games next weekend followed by Super Bowl 50? The same way I justify eating meat, knowing we are slaughtering animals for our gastronomic gain:

I just do it and live with being a hypocrite.

I have to stop doing that.

Ask The Slouch

Q. Sean Penn is an actor, an activist and now a journalist; you’re hardly a journalist. How do you live with yourself? (Steve Goldberg; Albany, N.Y.)

A. Well, during much of my adult life I have had to live by myself, plus I’ve found it’s a bit easier if I sleep in most days.

Q. If Sean Penn were a sportswriter, would you be out of a job? (Sarah Nicholson; Indianapolis)

A. I’ve been out of a job since 1991.

Q. The Sean Penn-El Chapo interview had sort of a Howard Cosell-Muhammad Ali quality to it, wouldn’t you say? (Paul Rogers; Coeur d’Alene, Idaho)

A. What, are we running a special on Sean Penn inquiries this week? And how come no one’s asking about his penchant for assaulting photographers? Journalist, my butt.

Q. Did part of the NFL-to-Los Angeles deal include Hollywood denying Oscar nominations for “Concussion”? (John Huber; Montgomery Village, Md.)

A. Pay the man, Shirley.

Q. Why not charge a $1 entry fee and split the proceeds 50/50 with the winners? (Jack O’Brien; Fairfax, Va.)

A. This is brilliant – it might double my column income.

You, too, can enter the $1.25 Ask The Slouch Cash Giveaway. Just email asktheslouch@aol.com and, if your question is used, you win $1.25 in cash!