How Different are Dogfighting and (American) Football?

Since Anat is going to the US tonight for 10 days, an American-centric topic seems appropriate...

Before we lived in the US, football for me was what Americans call soccer. I knew American football existed (hereby "football" in this posting, for convenience), though without a normal ball and with very little use of the feet. I knew it was popular, and that over a third of Americans watch the Superbowl annually, but that was pretty much it. Oh, I also knew it was brutal, but we'll get to that shortly.

When we got to Pittsburgh, two things happened:
First, I immediately became aware of HOW popular football was. It became very clear when I saw that all the teachers in my daughter's daycare came to work every Friday dressed with Jerseys of the local Steelers. Pittsburgh is indeed one of the strongest fan centers, but by no means the only one. In most places in the US football has long since become the most popular sport, far beyond basketball, hockey and lately also baseball.

Second, over time, with the gentle and very educated guidance of my friend Amir, I learned to appreciate the game. And as a sports fan, I wholeheartedly maintain that this is one of the most sophisticated sports around. I heard someone describing it once as a chess-like sport, where the player is the coach, assisted by the quarterback, and the rest of the players act as the pieces of the game. This is an over-simplification, of course, but it's indicative of the sophistication and complexity of football.

Alas, no matter how much I enjoyed the moves, passes and touchdowns in the Sunday and Monday night games, one aspect kept troubling me all along. The game was exceedingly violent, if not brutal. It felt like the basic rules of the game encouraged plays that were very risky in terms of injuring the opponents. I vividly remember arguing with a friend, who claimed that the game wasn't violent. And since quantifying the violence of a sport is a hard task, I didn't really have a way to prove my point.

Recently, Malcolm Gladwell did it for me.

In a truly fascinating and superbly written article published in the New Yorker, unbelievable data from recent studies about the brain damage caused to football players is examined. The findings are no less than shocking.

As a teaser, a short quote:

"He has an 80-g hit to the front of his head. About ten minutes later, he has a 98-g acceleration to the front of his head. To put those numbers in perspective ... if you drove your car into a wall at twenty-five miles per hour and you weren’t wearing your seat belt, the force of your head hitting the windshield would be around 100 gs: in effect, the player had two car accidents that morning."

And there's a lot more in the (very long) article - http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/19/091019fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all
Despite the length, I warmly recommend reading it. Especially if you care about American football.

Giora

PS:
I hear there was a related "60 minutes" episode, but I haven't watched it.
See http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5377319n&tag=cbsnewsMainColumnArea.5