This one was not as bad as last week's. Actually, I agreed with Deford this week. We have that kind of chewing gum relationship, it seems. Stretches thin at times but never quite breaks.
This week's piece on Morning Edition was about cuts to athletic departments--focusing on non-college sports. Deford argues that cuts to sports are just as damaging as to other extracurriculars such as art and music, especially given the increasingly sedentary lives of many American children.
And then he says that the sport that makes the most sense to cut is football. (I love (sarcasm) that Frank Deford can get away with that suggestion while when I or other people who identify as feminists do so get raked over the coals in (im)personal attacks, but anyway...)
Why? Because it's expensive and its dangerous and only boys play it.
Yep.
Though let's recall that there have been earlier attempts to eradicate football. When the game was in its infancy, certain moral types wanted the game to go away because of the violence/danger and the potential negative crowd behaviors (drinking, gambling). But a manly man stepped in to save it. Thanks, Teddy Roosevelt.
And I--and Deford--am pretty sure that lots of people would step in to save football should anyone (or ones) even come close to scaling the sport back. It "saves" itself every day by demanding (and receiving) funds and facilities and other amenities that no other sport--men's or women's--dare ask for.
And thus American masculinity remains safe and intact. Now if we could just get Tom Brady to stop wearing that damn headband and shaking his booty we could plug up that leaky hegemony.
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