If you had seen me this past Sunday afternoon, you might have thought that I was in need of serious medical attention. I sweated profusely, my hands shook and my heartbeat reached levels it hadn’t attained even during my earlier gym. My New England Patriots — whose star quarterback Tom Brady has been the subject of my idolization for the entirety of my conscious memory — were trailing their rivals the Denver Bronocs, led by Brady’s rival Peyton Manning, 20–12 with just about six minutes to go in the AFC Championship. As the Patriots’ season ultimately slipped away and we failed to go to the Super Bowl for the second year in a row, I felt devastated.
Still embattled with grief over the loss, I questioned why I do this to myself. I’m totally fine being a sports fan in general; with the heartbreak comes moments of sheer jubilation, like when the Boston Red Sox ended their World Series drought in 2004 or when Kevin Garnett famously roared at the rafters as he led the Boston Celtics to their 17th banner in 2008. What I’m really mad at myself for, rather, is caring so much about football, a sport mired in the concussion crisis. During the game, an addict whose heartbeat rose and fell with each of the Patriots’ successes and failures, I jonesed for victory. Yet, I have serious questions about the future of my fandom, the safety of my idols, my school’s support of such a dangerous game and my country’s addiction to this loosely disguised violence.
How do I rationalize my addiction, and make it so that I can sit through four hours of violence on a typical winter weekend? Brady and the rest of the NFL are grown men who put their bodies on the line every weekend during the season but also earn millions of dollars for doing so. They have the right to do so, or at least in my rationalization they do. As time goes by, new football controversies seem to surface every year – from the Carolina Panthers’ homophobic taunting of the New York Giants’ Odell Beckham Jr. to the numerous domestic violence disputes involving players that have played out this past season. In light of all this, both this rationalization and my continued fandom begin to fall apart.
That’s why, when I meet someone who plays on the Big Green football team or talk to friends here who played football in high school, I can’t help but imagine what they’ll be like in 10 or 15 years, when chronic traumatic encephalopathy — a disease that has been found in people as young as 17 — catches up with many of them. I question why my college, which prides itself on preparing students for the future, also prides itself on the conference championship of its football team and question whether Dartmouth and the Ivy League have and are continuing to address the concussion issue. Although we might be able to justify Brady and Edelman returning from the field on Sundays’ banged up but with millions of dollars in their pockets, I find it much more difficult to accept the fact that the articulate linebacker sitting next to me in philosophy class is subjecting himself to the same brain damage.
Even after all of this, I’m sure I’ll still watch the Super Bowl in two weeks and would be surprised if I don’t attend some Dartmouth football games next fall. I can’t just turn my back on football. I challenge anyone to come forward and say that football has meant more to them as a fan than it has to me. I was raised on New England football. I live right outside Worcester, Massachusetts, the snowiest city in the country last year. During the winter, when the sun only stays out for what feels like four hours a day, there’s not much to keep you going through the weekly grind other than the promise of Brady and the Patriots on Sunday. I learned how you sometimes just get lucky from the Ice Bowl in 2001, snickered with my friends after the Janet Jackson – Justin Timberlake fiasco during the Super Bowl halftime show in 2004, and went from desolation in 2007 and 2011 when my grandfather’s New York Giants beat us in the Super Bowl to euphoria in 2014 when we finally redeemed ourselves with a championship for the first time in a decade over the Seattle Seahawks. You could write a movie in the same vein as “Boyhood” (2014) featuring my coming-of-age in conjunction with Patriots football.
I’m addicted to football, and much of American society suffers the same fate. But to get started on our road to recovery, we must admit that we have a problem.
