Analogies that just don’t work: football and dogfighting edition October 12, 2009
Posted by Evil Bender in Morality, sports.trackback
So those of you with very strong stomachs can read this piece on “Football, dog fighting and brain damage,” which has a disturbing and important point to make about the substantial dangers football players face. That’s a worthwhile subject, and I wish everyone working to shed light on the dangers of the sport the best of luck.
But I have to say, I find the comparison to dog fighting which informs the essay to be repulsive. Malcolm Gladwell avoids making the implications of the comparison explicit, and carefully sidesteps drawing direct moral equivalence, but in my reading the implication is clear, and I don’t appear to be the only one.
So the question is, as Paul Campos asks, why is dog fighting more morally repugnant than football?
The answer, it seems to me, is simple: football involves adults who willingly engage in a high-risk livelihood. Dog fighting is a “sport” in which animals who have no choice are tortured for human amusement. Dog fighting is much more morally repugnant than football for the same reason gladiatorial contests would be. This isn’t just about level of potential injury, but about consent: professional athletes can give it, dogs cannot.
Before anyone suggests otherwise, I don’t mean to suggest that we shouldn’t do more to protect athletes, nor that football doesn’t present some morally difficult situations. But it is quite simply no comparison to an activity where powerless beings are tortured for the amusement of those with the power. Yes, I know we can perform a class and race analysis of football, and I’m open to that. But highly paid professionals taking risks with their own health is simply not comparable to the horrors dog fighting visits upon dogs.
Honestly, I thought this sort of distinction went without saying, at least among thinking people. Maybe I was wrong.
I agree entirely with you, except for the fact that many of the people with the physical talent to play professional football come from environments where they have no other chance to even begin to build the kind of life that they can have as professional football players. Though they have made the choice themselves, I am not sure how voluntary it really is- taking this physical risk or living in poverty.
It’s certainly true that one’s options can be limited, and that environment can remove agency to some extent. There’s a legitimate discussion about the role that violent sports play in our society, but it’s not the one that Gladwell appears to be having.
Oh come on.
Payton and Eli Manning grew up fabulously wealthy, and they both play football.
I grew up in a firmly upper middle class household where nearly every option was open to me, and believe me if I’d been talented enough to play in the NFL I’d have been there in a heartbeat.
Lots of people in the NFL came from well to do households. People play football because they really want to, not because a cruel society gives them no other option.
Now, this is not to say we shouldn’t keep doing everything we can to increase the safety of the players. Rules and equipment are constantly evolving for exactly this reason.
But to compare it to dog fighting is, frankly, stupid.
Hey!
No need to be so mean about it, Ty. I’m having a tough enough day at work today. Have a little pity.
Of course I don’t mean every single member of the NFL. Still, there is a clear history in this country (and other places too, I’m sure) of brutal sports like boxing attracting ambitious poor people with nothing to give but their bodies.
Are you asking them to give up the one chance that many of them have to break the circle of poverty? Are you claiming they don’t exist because a couple of football players had money before?
“Are you asking them to give up the one chance that many of them have to break the circle of poverty? Are you claiming they don’t exist because a couple of football players had money before?”
Uh, I can’t parse what you’re asking there.
Green Eagle:
Also, the ’stupid’ there is in regards to the article in the OP. Unless you wrote that article, I wasn’t using the word stupid in reference to you.
In case that was unclear.
Ty,
I didn’t think the “stupid” referred to me, although the way things are going the last couple of days, I might be talked into changing my mind.