Football is an exceedingly violent sport.
As someone who played and now years later is feeling the latent pain of that past experience, I know it goes hard. I also know that the risk of injury is high. My eldest blew out his ACL and then re-injured the ACL the following season. He done. My mid kid (though based on the 6 he is 5 of six…) is playing at a high level and doing well, as described in the previous post. Still, I worry about injury. He’s had his first concussion already. The ‘baby’ may have sustained a concussion at the youth level in the past season (which is why 12 yr olds generally don’t play 14u). Injuries are part of the story the NFL tells. We make a point to label them as part of doing business with language like, “Oh, he has an ankle” or “he’s out for six with a knee”. This shorthand does wonders for reducing the visceral nature of these injuries. Yet, in contrast, the truly gruesome injuries are treated as rare moments in time and the beginning of an oft incredible comeback story.
The NFL runs on stories.
There is the comeback story. There is the kid from the hood story. There is the country boy turned pro story. There is the hometown hero story. There is the underrated and grew to be that guy story (see Tom Brady). There is the ‘Rudy’ tale of toughness and grit. All of these stories define a sport and are often what makes that sport fun to watch beyond cheering for the people in one colored uniform vs. another. The teams attempt to make these players endearing. They turn them into heroes.
But what is our idea of a hero?
This is the kind of thinking I am seeking to disrupt and analyze. I have a theory that cultures needs heroes and those heroes need to be warriors. I’m seeking to apply that construct to a fantasy setting and then brutally deconstruct the dichotomy between what the idea of a hero is and what it takes to be that hero. I’m going to look into warrior poets, samurai, and the like for inspiration. All of this to construct a world of fantasy that helps me come to understand and question my own reality.
That is all.