Why I Stopped Watching Football and Became a Sports Monk

I watched the Ice Bowl on December 31, 1967, between the Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys.

Every snap, every down, every tackle as the players rose ever more slowly throughout the game — the freezing temperatures doing to their limbs what a freezer does to a pork chop.

For those born after 1980 or so, this was a championship game played at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin where the temperature at game time was minus 13 degrees with a wind chill of minus 48 degrees.

As a point of reference, the average American home freezer is factory-set at 0 degrees. Imagine hanging out in yours with a beer and chips. (Warning: This is not a request to try it — just saying.)

I was a diehard Green Bay fan.

I loved them.

Loved Bart Starr, Jerry Kramer, Marv Fleming, Jim Grabowski, and all the others, and Vince Lombardi (he was Italian, what can I say).

Brooklyn was cold that day in 1967 but not as cold as Green Bay. Maybe Antarctica was colder, but I have my doubts.

Streams of chilled air escaped from mouths and nostrils as the players tried to warm up before the game. I think they were just moving around so as not to become frozen in place.

Even during the game, NFL announcer Frank Gifford uttered these words, “I just took a bite of my coffee.”

The booth he was in was open to the elements so he brought in a hot cup from inside and before he could have his first sip, there was a thin layer of ice on top.

I heard him describe it.

I didn’t stop being a football fan after the Packers won; after Kramer made that awesome block against Dallas’ Jethro Pugh and Starr sneaked across the line for the winning touchdown.

Score 21–17 Packers.

Over the years, as was fairly common during my teens and such, I became emotionally unstable when watching an NFL game.

I wasn’t the only one.

Most of my friends climbed walls, fist-pumped, cried, tossed bowls of popcorn across the room, and generally acted like crazed Picts attacking a Roman Legion.

It was nuts. We went nuts. I was already a little unhinged (just a little) before the game and went to a whole new level during it.

It couldn’t last.

It didn’t last.

I watched my last American football game as a true believer around 1972 and have abstained ever since.

Why?

I played contact football during my youth. Banged and twisted my knees, groin, and neck, wrenched my back, and had my bell rung like Quasimodo during Sunday Mass.

I also played touch tackle football in neighborhood leagues. Touch tackle football is a euphemism for playing crazy football on concrete like it doesn’t hurt when you fall on it — it does.

Nine guys pretending we were the Packers vs. Cowboys only we weren’t, but we had fun, won games, and had something to talk about when we partied on Saturday nights.

That our games were always the following Sunday morning somehow didn’t matter. Maybe it helped us get through the pain.

And ultimately it was the pain that turned me off.

The broken limbs and battered bodies. Athletes walked off the field never to return in that game or ever.

Concussions were doled out like candy but never called. Pretending that walking to the wrong side of the field after a play or asking your quarterback to throw you the ball — when you’re the center — didn’t mean you had a problem.

Everybody forgets where they are from time to time.

Somewhere between 1972 and 2023, I realized that I still liked the game of football, I just disliked the NFL and what they did to the game even more.

And that was the problem.

Continuing to watch NFL games on Sunday would be like going to your in-laws’ house when you know the food will be terrible and he’ll be drunk by noon.

At some point, you have to call it.

So, I did.

And funny enough there was no withdrawal period. No night sweats or awakening in the early a.m. shouting — “I miss you, Bart.” Or so my wife assures me.

The period passed pleasantly enough. I got on with other things. Read more books. Watched some soccer (the other football) from the English Premier League and more and learned to like it.

A lot more action. No huddles. No yellow flags flying — though they do have yellow cards, but they stay in the ref’s pocket most of the time.

Took me a while to get used to scores like 1–0 or 0–0.

Who knew draws were so popular?

But I didn’t miss the pain.

Once in a while I went and watched an NHL game. Football on ice. Elegant, fast, exhilarating, until it wasn’t.

Until the players got bigger and faster and started looking like NFL tight ends and linebackers.

Six-foot-four and 240 pounds of fleet-footed enforcers smashing smaller players into the boards, while former players in the announcer’s booth shout — “Great check, now that’s how you do it “— as the other guy is stretchered off the ice.

It made me pause. It made me think, had the two sports merged and I didn’t see the announcement?

No, they hadn’t. The game was still elegant but not Gretsky-esque. The game was still fast with everyone on skates — don’t ever lose sight of that fact.

But it became so violent I was waiting for some defenseman to hijack a Zamboni and plow down the opposing side while the announcer shouted, “That’s a legal hit, one for the record books.”

When did I become such a softie?

When did a little pain — me a kid from the streets of Brooklyn where versions of baseball were played while dodging cars and cursing at motorists — stop me from doing something that I enjoyed?

It was a struggle for a while.

Between me and me. Me the football fan and me, the activist cum realist.

Who knew for a fact that the reason the old linebackers talked like marbles were rolling around in their head was because marbles were rolling around inside their heads from all the helmet-to-helmet tackles made over a 12-year career?

And as the NFL commissioner and team owners held hands and in unison stated that there was no viable connection between having one’s bell rung 10 times a game and cognitive problems ex-players were having, I grew fully disenchanted with the game and left it behind.

I didn’t march into the monastery right then, it took a few more years. A few more studies and lawsuits and then the billion-dollar settlement between the NFL and player’s union finally pushed me through the gates, where I have resided ever since.

But now the NFL is bigger than ever. It’s gone global. Games played in London and Germany with soccer fans going, WTF, this is cool. Did you see that helmet fly off his head?

And with the top 49 out of 50 TV shows being NFL games in 2023 — what does that say about me and my abstinence from the game?

That I’m just a wuss who doesn’t like seeing men carted off the field.

That I’m really into flag football and loved Pro Bowl 2024.

Or maybe having no defense is cool in sports like the NBA All-Star game where 700 points were scored.

I’m in the minority, I see that.

The game has gotten really violent — populated by unbelievably skilled and trained athletes who make more money per team than all the accountants in the greater Cincinnati area combined.

But most people don’t seem to care. The beer and Doritos still flow come Sunday and the last Super Bowl was the most-watched event since the Moon landing, or was it the last episode of M.A.S.H?

Anyway, it was huge. It was boring (just an opinion, I still have them). Some 240+ minutes from start to finish, with maybe 12 minutes of action, and 11 minutes of huddles; the rest of the time is filled with crazy commercials and Usher on roller skates.

So, was it a sporting event or a weekend extravaganza at the old Roman Coliseum?

Not sure.

I can envision the floor of the Coliseum rising with water as boats filled with soldiers fighting one another. At least I think I’m envisioning this but maybe it was a flashback from that game against Madison High School in 1967.

Suffice it to say that the sounds of helmets crashing and men grunting as bodies fly into one another at 17 mph just don’t do it for me anymore.

I can’t get that video out of my head where the scientist slices into a head of cauliflower while demonstrating what CTE is and how it’s caused.

But sports are in my DNA. I dream of being a pitcher for the Yankees or a striker for Tottenham Hotspurs while drifting off to sleep at night.

I read sports statistics like business types read the Wall Street Journal. I don’t place bets; I just like to know how the game is going.

Will I venture out of the monastery any time soon? I doubt it. I’m too set in my ways now and too convinced the game of football isn’t good for the human body.

That Tom Brady played the game until he was 64 is an outlier. One in 10,000 are capable of doing that. The rest fit within the average lifespan in the sport of three years or so.

Many complain afterward that going upstairs, putting on a pair of pants, or running after their 3-year-old are things of the past.

Just doesn’t seem right that men should be collecting disability at 38, even if their bank accounts are higher than most of ours.

And I’m not advocating that we should go with the NPBL (National Pickle Ball League) instead. Though I may change my mind.

It’s just that, well, we’ve been to the moon, taken pictures of galaxies 500 lightyears away, and invented a mattress that can be compressed into a one-foot cube for shipping, so heck, we should be able to retool football so it doesn’t make the UFC look like your mother’s quilting club.

But then, I don’t know your mother all that well, so it may be a poor comparison. Just saying.