Are football fans complicit in the brain damage and other injuries players suffer? Steve Almond worries that he and other fans are: “[M]edical research has confirmed that football can cause catastrophic brain injury — not as a rare and unintended consequence, but as a routine byproduct of how the game is played. That puts us fans in a morally queasy position. We not only tolerate this brutality. We sponsor it, just by watching at home. We’re the reason the N.F.L. will earn $5 billion in television revenue alone next year, three times as much as its runner-up, Major League Baseball.”
[…] Pain and suffering are not just incidental elements of the sporting life: they are at the centre of every game. This could be read as a reply to was it immoral to watch the Super Bowl? […]