A thought about football

So there's been a lot of talk about football these days, and I actually have many thoughts about the domestic violence discourse in the nfl context, but I'm just too drained right now to put them together.  I have become overloaded in my head, my back has given out again, and I just don't feel compelled as I had recently.  But as I listened today about the latest information on the Sayreville (NJ) high school football hazing scandal,  I thought of this poem by James Wright, who captured small town america of a long time ago, and yet maybe not so long ago. 

Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio

James Wright, 1927 - 1980

In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.

Therefore,
Their sons grow suicidally beautiful
At the beginning of October,
And gallop terribly against each other’s bodies.

There are many places in our country where high school sports transcends all else; young men dream of getting out of a future of slow-death hard labor, or quick-death-drug-trade-violence.  Being teenagers, and of course believing themselves to be immortal, they may still be choosing a shorter path to the grave by playing sports.  But they may not have any other luxury in a country where so many of us are really expendable. 

I think of some of the servicemen and women I know, who also had few options; the army gave them a sense of purpose, and if they can survive these endless middle-east wars, they can actually have a chance at the good life, if they don't let their memories and madnesses wear them down.  I've seen it on their faces; sometimes you know which ones will make it okay and which ones won't.  

Those of us who choose certain professions, even those that come with physical damage as a price, can't quite grasp, except at a distance, what those high-profile, high-risk-high-reward jobs like football player means when there are no options. And Wright's poem just simply nails it.  And so when you read about this scandal at Sayreville, or read about the NFL's troubles, I hope you reflect on the images Wright creates here.