Feels About Football

Photo Cred - Gerry Melendez

I love watching football. I do. Both the NFL and Division I in college. The simplicity of the game itself makes way for incredibly complex interpretations of how to win the game and that results in a beautiful mosaic of playing styles, talent leverage, competition, and an annual sense of hope that things this year will be different for "our" team (unless you're the Browns...). Simple and complex.

I love the conversations around football. Something this popular also, simply put, holds a mirror to "our" society. Recent NFL seasons have exposed what we are willing to be complicit about in order to maintain "our" entertainment that is the sport of football. That list of what we're complicit about is incredibly long. Sports can challenge our understandings of masculinities, race, gender violence, sexual orientation, socioeconomic disparities, mental health, military, and all of those at once even if at times they feel like separate topics. It's one of the simplest ways to engage in important societal issues, and you can do this by simply asking, "Hey, what do you think about Kaepernick and what he stands for?" Simple and complex.

The topics above have been hashed out, re-hashed, and revisited as new information comes out. I'm not here to make a stance (although I have one). I'm here to explore something a little deeper that keeps surfacing for me year after year during football season. What I want to explore is the question: Is football something I actually enjoy or something that I learned to enjoy?