Editor’s Note: This is in response to “Football promotes an unhealthy, violent national paradigm,” published in the Nov. 20 issue of the Daily Lobo. In his column, Peter Kindilien writes that the spectator sport has caused chronic head injuries and resulted in mental disorders, such as dementia. Furthermore, he draws a connection between the “glorification of gladiator sports” and “the fact that we are overmedicated and increasingly detached and incapable of activity ourselves.” He concludes that football promotes a culture and habits not conducive to a healthy public.
Editor,
Congratulations on Peter Kindilien’s excellent letter of Nov. 20 in attacking the sick values that professional and college football promote, and how such promotion does far more to endanger other more civilized male sports than any women’s athletics or Education Amendments of 1972/Title IX does.
For too long, people, especially many male and white people, have made the mistake of blaming Title IX, affirmative action, etc., for eliminating nonfootball male intramural sports. It was not women’s sports that eliminated these programs for male athletes.
It was the greedy thoughtlessness of violent contact-sport jerks that caused this outrage. If young men want these other sports back, they should take action against the football hogs.
Football, in addition to destroying other men’s college sports, brings the worst out in people — both audience and players alike — with its emphasis on winning at all costs. “Winning isn’t everything; it is the only thing,” said the notorious Vince Lombardi — may he not rest in peace.
I am glad that several young men are finally speaking out on this issue.
William Delzell
Daily Lobo reader
