by Steve Almond
• Include graduation rates in a college team’s national ranking
My own “solution” to college football would be to eliminate it in favor of a non-profit developmental league—overseen by a public trust—for players from eighteen to twenty-two years old.
But the above suggestion, one of several derived from Gregg Easterbrook’s excellent book The King of Sports, would at least begin to reform the college game, by forcing coaches to make sure players (most of whom will not go pro) earn a diploma. Easterbrook also recommends that the NCAA suspend any head coach for one year if his team graduation rate dips below that of the general student population at his school.
• Prohibit tackle football for high schoolers younger than sixteen
My hope is that lawsuits will eventually induce high schools to drop football altogether. Until then, at least make students wait a couple of years before they play Russian roulette with their brain function. Junior varsity squads can play flag football. Practice time, for all students, should be limited. And no spring football.
• Require a 3.0 GPA to play varsity football
As at the college level, this is the only way to make sure players (and coaches) get serious about academics, and would have the added benefit of influencing coaches at the youth level.
Would this be hard on some players? Yes. But ignoring their intellectual development is a far greater injustice.
• Remember who’s in charge
It’s easy to forget this, but fans are the ones who have given football the awesome power it holds. We can, and should, use that power to reshape the game in ways that make it less destructive to the bodies of the players, to the economic fate of our cities, and to the national soul.
If you agree that the time has come to reclaim this power, please help keep the conversation going. Offer a suggestion of your own, or an anecdote, or simply make your voice heard at www.againstfootball.org.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am indebted to the following authors: Michael Mac-Ambridge (America’s Game), Michael Oriard (Reading Football), Gregg Easterbrook (The King of Sports), Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru (League of Denial), Richard Slotkin (Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860), Robert Andrew Powell (We Own This Game), and Don DeLillo (End Zone). Please go and buy their books. My thanks, also, to numerous journalists, especially those at PBS Frontline and The New York Times Magazine, where Adam Sternbergh and Willy Staley provided astute and patient editing. Special thanks to William Giraldi, Sean Thomas, Richard and Barbara Almond, Pat Flood, Jane Roper, Karl Iagnemma, and Eve Bridburg for suffering through early drafts of this manuscript, and to Dennis Johnson and his team at Melville House. Last and most important, eternal gratitude to my wife, Erin, and our children, without whom I suspect I would still be curled in some dank corner of the Good Time Emporium waiting for the Oakland Raiders to break my heart. Again.