This Sunday evening, February 8, two football teams will be playing in Super Bowl LX. I’m not going to argue that you should care or even like NFL football, but I want to suggest two reasons to respect the sport.
1. Play. If you watch the game, you will see the players giving 100 percent to something that they love to do. It’s called playing the game for a reason. How often do we get to watch people working hard and doing their best with exhilaration?
This is true of all sports, of course, and performing arts, and a lot of other professions. Teaching a classroom requires just as much skill and concentrated devotion, and it deserves just as much hype. It’s rarely televised, though. So, rather than cheering as a teacher proficiently fields a surprise question and turns it into a revelation for the class, you can watch a quarterback dodge a sack and complete a long pass. Enjoy the metaphor — and imagine if teachers, staff, and students could come to school every day with the same celebration as taking the field at the Super Bowl.
2. Controlled violence. Football is a brutal, violent sport by design, but it is controlled violence. Players and non-player personnel must obey eight dense pages of regulations regarding their conduct in the NFL Rulebook, which forbids moves that could injure another player, unnecessary roughness, late hits, kicking, tripping, unsportsmanlike conduct, taunting, and violent gestures. The offender’s team can be punished with penalties like the loss of yardage, and the individual can be thrown out of the game.
Players must and can control themselves on the football field. No excuses. This lesson doesn’t always make it off the field and into the minds of fans, but it should. Violence is a deliberate choice. Football shows us how to choose wisely even in moments of extreme emotion.
Sue Burke 