The NFL recently settled a lawsuit by former players for $756 million for witholding evidence of the dangers of football-related brain injuries. There's a lot to say about this issue, but I'll limit myself to this: the contribution to CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) of very numerous sub-concussive hits sustained in practice (as opposed to the specactular* and relatively rare concussions in games) is under-played in the media. But here's a disturbing angle: the NFL now limits live contact practices more than does the NCAA.
[UPDATE, 3 Sept 2013, 8:20 am CDT: Because the NCAA was not grotesque enough, here's a CHE piece on the power plays between coaches and trainers over player brain safety.]
I think this shows two things, neither of which puts the NCAA in a good light. (After these points, I have some thoughts on the political affect of football fandom.)
1) the NFLPA (the players union) was able to negotiate practice limits in their latest contract talks; NCAA players do not have such a collective bargaining opportunity (they arguable have collective bargaining rights, but implementing a mechanism to exercise those rights would depend on the long road of unionization: their being recognized as employees, forming a union, being recognized by the NCAA and / or schools, etc.).
2) the NFL owners recognize the investment they have made in players and are willing to compromise on the culture of the game (I think most coaches did not want the practice limits, fearing a loss of toughness) to protect that investment; the NCAA and its schools haven't made such a level of investment and have a ready supply of high school kids to replace the current cohort of players.
* Where to even start on the political affect of this? It's too easy just to say "mirror neurons," but there is certainly fertile ground to explore in the neuro-corporeal reaction of the spectators to the big hits of a football game. I think there is a thrill rooted in identifying with both the hitter and the hit player while still feeling your own body's unhit status, mingled of course with the shared high of just being in the crowd. (I can remember vividly the times in Penn State's football stadium when I felt my guts vibrate when the crowd roared after a big play; I later realized that this shared vibration, this entrainment, this Spinozist passive joy, must be part of the entrancing, highly erotic-ecstatic nature of the experience).
In any case, any proposals to "reform" college athletics must take into account the addictive nature of the collective joy of attending a game in person, or watching it with other folks on TV for that matter. You can't just run out the stats about college athletic programs losing money or about graduation rates for players or about the economic exploitation of the players' labor, or about the short, medium, and long-term risks to health and welfare of the athletes: you will also have to grapple with the political affect of the fan experience.
And the political affect of contemporary football fandom has to be fit into the context of the creation of a political economy framework that works via atomization, competition, and affect management.
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