The Highlight Reel of Marxism in American Football

Abstract During me rattling weeks in 2010, the footb every(prenominal) plot of ground game plight started to arise as a societal issue in society. natural elevation the marvel of what should be d i if any by the National football game compact to prevent traumatic and several(prenominal) prison terms deadly hits on the field. varying degrees of opinions as to what should be done questions include inquiring on the ethical motive of the NFL and their lack of safety toward satisfyers as any kind of progressive move man causet. swig would be the suitable term to drug abuse as describing the action interpreted by the NFL. Since the years of President Theodore Roosevelt, who wanted football outlawed in the 1900s.The president himself could not enact the needed changes. Ameri give the bounce football is one of the largest industries in the nation with an everywherewhelming copiousness of financial re ascendants. So the question arises, why has there not been any fundamental ch ange in the game or even changes in the guidelines that govern the skylark? The exercise would be Marxism. This paper go away define NFLs match to the bolshie perspective in their handling of players and their stagnant snuggle to change. This is a cordial a problem that relates to every aspect of society including the demise of the American family.This paper pass on also define the Marxism possibleness in similarity the American football and the mental health pestiferous cause by the dangers of the game. In recent weeks, the full contact frisk of football has do headerlines in America. there throw away been an overwhelming get of injuries due to eminent concern contact to the head, which leads to various head injuries such as, concussions, spinal cord injuries, and deaths. accord to Barry Wilner, The National football game League scarcely represents a fraction of men performing the deadly pastime.Colleges, universities, laid-back schools, and middle schools ha ve an overwhelming amount of young men who argon amateur players. Many of these players suffer from some of the same forms of injuries and deaths as their pro counterparts playacting in the National Football League. Leaving many to wonder the lag in the responsiveness for the NFL to coiffure drastic changes after all the NFL is only has approx 1,900 players a succession, leaving the recrudesce class social organisations such as high school football and college football to absorb the volume of injuries related to football ndustry. In an article confuse by Paul Tenorino in, The Washington Post, he inter plentys George Atallah the assistant executive music director of external af seemlys for the National Football League Players Association introduces, He hoped the recent actions mootn by the NFL and its players would help create a trickledown magnetic core about the proper way to handle a concussion. Based upon the actions and the structure of American football and NFL the majority of change is needed on sink aims inwardly its system such as high school and middle school that represents more(prenominal) than 3. million players. Statistics do not lie. The numbers be the numbers. The vast majority of injuries are occurring outside of the National Football League. In a recent report published by Richard C. Senelick M. D has determine that there are only 1,900 active NFL players each conciliate in that location are more than 3 million children vie football at the youth level and 1. 2 million more play high school football levels This report does not count the numerous collegiate athletes that play the sport.Colleges and universities along with various secondary education institutions have an epidemic on their hands and something needs to change, he has estimated that a college lineman experiences over 1,000 sub-concussive head hits in an aver geezerhood season. He further goes on to say that a line man in the 3 point military strength is the most vulnerable of all the players to a brain injury.Explanation in the lack of commitment in the prevention of injuries from the National Football League can be related to the need for power and the valued frugals of the sea captain athletic system that is described as the Marxist Theory, by f etceteraing that approach to football the National Football League essential system that only benefits them. According to Barry Wilner, The National Football League has begun education fines for flagitious hits from the average $5,000 to $10,000 to now $50,000 and $75,000 and has even accomplished suspensions for repeated illegal blows. Raising fines and illegal hit, but not changing how the game is played, taking specie from the players/ earners in army to promote change but not implementing change or being specific to what hits are no longstanding allowed. Is the money that is taken from fines of players at the overlord used in question to groom safer equipment in assure to create safer play? No, it is given like a shot to the pockets of the NFL, and its governing organization.In Marxist theory, human society and community consists of 2 parts Base and Superstructure. The base structure is the material relation and look into of production division of labor, property relation, employer/employee, slave/master condition and relation. The traffic of the base structure fundamentally determines and influences societys other ideas and conditions, namely the Superstructure arts, institutions, state, habits, customs, cultural representations like, law, philosophy, science, sports and etc.We can see this example portrayed out in the foundation of football in America linked to society at heart in its class structures of football from pee wee, to middle school, to high school, to college to NFL. According to Imani Cheers, Studies have shown that amateur players run a high risk of head injuries that those in The National Football League. tout ensemble lin king classes are a step up from the other one allowing the National Football League to arrest upon the fashion of varying football players.Example at the age of six particular insurrectionist and his father sit together and enjoy a game of Monday night football, mavericks father emotions become ecstatic when lowly maverick announces to everyone that he now wants to play football. Little Johnnys father begins constituteing with him showing him passes catches , the proper way to tackle and in conclusion how to become a corporeal man by playing football. Soon, Johnny is registered for peewee alliance and in now fully indoctrinated into the system delineate up so well to train that allows the National football league to groom and condition them into their system.Playing in leagues that are not low any sea captain governing authority, regulations are not decided ground on the protection of the younger player, medical guidelines are not found on the requirements set by stan dards from any medical organization who would recognize that the bone plates in a young childs head does not full fuse together till after the age of twenty. This allows the younger players to be very sustepiable to head injuries vs their much older headmaster counter parts.Eventually, Johnny is known for being dedicated to his favorite sport, in middle school Johnny respect for the game and his training teaches him to take risks on the field trying plays that he has neer been fully trained on how to carry out. Soon developing the approach to allow risk taking is a permissible and even do-or-die(a) if you just win the game. High school for Johnny brings more challenges and hazard hoping to be spotted by a college scout and achieving the status of real man an occasional injury occurs from time to ime, but nothing Johnny cannot walk off and and so return back to the game.Finally, a goodly college notices Johnnys dedication and, determination to the sport, they offer him a reco gnition if he will play for their school bringing with it the dream of perhaps being drafted into the National Football League. Johnny declares his value as a man to society, with the show of wealth and riches by his multimillion-dollar contract he at last receives as represent to participate in his loved sport. Johnny begins his college football career with high hopes.As a college freshman he does well at practices and the coach decides to make him a second draw in lineman allowing him the opportunity to develop his football skills and sharpen his aptitude on the field. His second year playing college ball he is allowed more playing time during game but is not move up and a first string lineman, bad him even more opportunity to develop his tackling regimen, after a couple of head injuries he is benched for the season, hoping he will re blanket by the start of the next season.The next season, Johnnys junior year, he is watched even more by coaches and supporting module to mak e sure here are no issues from the previous seasons injuries. After a few games Johnny is finally moved up to first string lineman, allowing him the opportunity to achieve higher stats, he is further conditioned to play hurt, walking off the field and permit anyone know that he has just had his bell rung will only reduce the chance of him being able to play. Without pay, Johnny continues to play, sacrificing all for stats and the aspirant future of being drafted.Finally, Johnnys senior year, he makes regular lineman and is allowed to start the game, giving him even greater need to cover up injuries. During the middle of his senior year, he is injured and benched only for the chase next play, he returns to the line of scrimmage back playing he is knocked around, proving to himself that being a man content to play under any circumstance no matter what. Eventually, he is noticed by professional scouts who take an interest in him because of his dedication to the game and his sacrif ice of playing hurt for his team.After all the hard work he finally is a third round draft pick. Placing Johnny in the reach ninety men eligible for recruitment after college, by the professional league and finally earning wages for the sacrifices to his body he has made all these years. The system within the football structure shows a varying vaunting of the various class categories within the professional football league that bone up in the same way as the Marxist set up of workers.Starting at the bottom and functional your way up by means of promotions or to the top, the difference is that the football system requires years of hard work and sacrifice without pay until you reach the very top or professional level. The lower class levels in the system are not monitored by any labor board or governing body to date the safety of players, because all players go without pay until the professional level is reached. All levels have the same positions same amount of players on the field, and safety equipment.The majority of the rules are the same with the exception of weight limits in the peewee league. There are not weight limits in any of the other categories of football. In the peewee league, in order to play you can weigh up to a certain amount for position in which you carry the ball, and past after that weight is exceeded, you can only be a meat guard or tackle. Meaning, you can have a seventy- five drill in quarterback, which is at the top of the weight get over, and the tackle can weigh ii hundred pounds. Varying weights depend on each league rules, within that division.Those divisions is not monitored, by any professional division, only until you play sports within an educational system does a league have governing bodies, acquire rules, medical restrictions. Allowing football to decent more and more dangerous of a sport as the chain of classes develops up the line of class structure by allowing bigger players and no regulation or guidelines m onitored by professionals. Marx would fall apart you, that the type of sport that plays in a given society would but reflect its economic/production basis.All of this given in higher economical societies (superstructure) are reflected and directly influenced by their historical material/economic means Marxism, the doctrine that the state throughout account has been a whatchamacallit for the exploitation of the masses by a dominant class. That class difference of opinion has been the important agency of historical change, and that the capitalistic system, will after a period of dictatorship of the project, be superseded by a socialist order and a classless(prenominal) society. Marxist sociology is based around five main theories that hypothesis as to how a society functions.Historical materialism, which portrays human history as a series of conflicts endpointing from an old systems reshaped to fit the interest of the online society. The theory of surplus value, which describe how the capitalist make a turn a simoleons from those who they employ class division and struggle . Which, examine the cautious and the proletariat and how they conflict alienation of the proletariat through the means and methods of the buttoned-down. The theory of government activity explains how the inevitable transition of capitalism to communism in a society.The theory of surplus value explains, the way in which capitalists exploit consumers and make a profit from the goods that they sell. The capitalists own the raw material and the means to work with them. Profit, is then added to the raw material through necessary labor from the payment of workers to work with the raw material labor and the payment of labor, longer work hours and cheaper pay for the workers, which together allow the production of more for less. The goods are the sold for more money that was received, was paid to receive, and was paid to have the goods produced.This process means that capitalists make a profit from the workers and consumers that both produce and consume their products. These capalists methods are clear visible in professional football as identified by Brohm, as the spectator sport of commodity, which sells football along normal capitalist lines. Examples of these capitalist processes are illustrated and disputeed in the text, Sport a prison of heedful time, authored by J. M Brohm.In the text, Brohm provides twenty theses on sports, eleven of which discuss the birth of modern capitalist sport. All the structures of present day sport tie in to capitalistic, capitalist society (Brohm 1978, p. 47). Some of these illustrate how capitalists use the systems present in society in order to make a profit. For a start the very followence of sport on the scale at which it is now played can be attributed to the capitalist bourgeois society, as summarized by Brohm who said, Sport is a direct egress of the level of development under the productive forces under capitalism ( 1978, p. 176).What he means by this, is that due to the mechanization of the workforce by capitalists in order to produce more for less, workers found that they had more free time time in which they took up sport as a form of recreation. This occurred during the industrial revolution, which meant that improved travel and communications allowed newly formed teams to organize, travel and play matches during the free time that they now had. Notice that, the free time, travel and communications that were now uncommitted to the working class were all controlled by the bourgeois, -allowing them to efficaciously continue to profit from the working class population.The way sports operate can easily be compared to how companies operate in the business sphere different sports compete for viewers (who are effectively consumers as they pay money to the clubs for merchandise or viewing purposes), and the relationships with which the athletes have with the team owners are very similar to wage relations between company managers and workers. Brohm stated that, The capitalists of sport appropriate players and athletes who thus become their wage laborers (1978, p. 76). This view on football enhances feelings that it is as an enterprise more than a warring form of game used to entertain the viewer a consequence of football adopted by capitalists as another form of profit. Football players are similar to the workers in the Marxist system who sells their labor to person who is willing to pay them. The capitalist then make a profit from the athlete by using them to create entertainment that will draw large crowds who will pay to watch the player perform.How much the employer makes from the player is determined by the law of supply and demand if the player has a skill which is not found commonly then mint will pay more to watch them and the employer makes a greater profit. Brohm said athletes of, Amateurism ceased to exist a long time ago. All top level sportsmen are profes sional performers in the muscle show, meaning that all top level sport is no longer about playing a fair but competitive game it is about people do a profit (Brohm 1978, p. 176).This action is demonstrated in the NFLs, lack to make epoch-making changes to the structure in which the game is played. Instead of making changes in the structure, the NFL fines players for rapacious tackles, and further pockets the money. Never considering the health of players to be important enough to check off their safety, head injuries are a major concern to the lives of the players.The future lives of players and the forest of daily living is not being considered when the 3 million children playing football at the youth level and 1. million more playing high school football level, are not protected against the sport of football. There remains a significant issue with medical care, monitoring, guidelines and problems with equipment. The NFL kinda for pushing for regulation changes in the lower c lass structure, hope a change in dealing with concussions, will be a result of the NFL fining players. Knowing that the lower structures are where they draw their future players from, they refuse to implement real changes that require the structure as a whole to change. changing the whole structure, as we know it today would ensure healthier players, giving the majority of players, longer playing time. Longer playing times in the lives of professional players would cost the NFL more money in contracts, health insurance, and loneliness pension. No change in the system guarantees the future profits for the teams, and guarantees the NFL an abundance of already trained players, consequently relieving them any responsibility, or commitment in protecting the health of future football players.Football can therefore be identified as just another tertiary sector in the capitalist system where large amounts of money is stood to be made by investors who hire athletes to essentially sell to c onsumers, Economic trusts, banks and monopolies have taken over the financial side of sporting activity, which has become a prized source of capitalist profits Brohm (1978, p. 177). Attempts by capitalists to maximize the profits they are making is shown by the increasing number of competitions and games that are played during each season in order to affix the number of people who come to watch.In addition to adding more game every year, the games rise in costs. It is not just the viewing rights that capitalists make money from, In order to increase profits further, we can see the production of goods and products, produced with necessary and surplus labor. publicize rights being sold for money and the establishment of a sports betting sedulousness all of which are sold for a greater cost than was used to produce them, allowing capitalists to benefit further from the sports industry, Leading to the support of hegemony.Football is a place where we can see the use of hegemony throug h sport is in class structure and social stratification. Sage, defines social stratification as, structures that cause social inequality among groups of people (1998, p. 35). This involves the bourgeois class using various methods of power to persecute the proletariat class football provide the bourgeois with a prime opportunity to do this. The dominant classes control over the working class peoples free time was manifested in sports(Hargreaves 1986 p. 85).One of the ways that the bourgeois established control over the playing and administration of sports was that when sports were initially becoming popular among society. Football first played and taught at schools where the majority of pupils came from families of high social status. According to Sage, Students of these colleges, that played American Football, when it first achieved popularity, were overwhelmingly from wet families (Sage 1998, p. 44). Apart from not being present in the places where sport was evolving and improvin g, people from lower class backgrounds also had another disadvantage in that they had less money.Which limited how much access they could have to sport even if it was available to them, the higher the economic status, the higher the sports involvement (Sage 1998 p. 44). These factors meant that by the time working class people were consistently able to participate in sport, the bourgeois class were already in control of game formats, equipment and location, allowing them to continue to oppress the proletariat class of society through sport as well as other social mechanisms.