Brief Summary Of Against Football By Steve Almond

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Steve Almond published his book “Against Football” in 2014. This book gave a lot of information about the cons and negativity that is associated with football as a sport in America. Some of them are racism, hyper-masculinity, health hazards, the exploitation of the NFL, and the support of the consumers despite the violence in the game. He talks about how football can lead to traumatic brain injuries, shorter life span of football players, and even causes death, despite all this, the consumer are still supporting the game. Almond also discussed how gender is defined in a very narrow way especially in relation to African American males who have been hypersexualized and expected in behave in certain

It requires the players to be muscular and strong, so they can defense themselves on the field. Almond states, “The logic seems to be that football is a domain of hyper-masculinity, a physical and psychological space where alpha males do battle. And gay men can’t be alphas has because they are fragile and frighten and weak, which is to say feminine,” (Almond 89). In his statement, he talks about how football is think to be all macular men game because they are physical and mentally capable of protecting themselves. If the men are gay than they are seen as weak because they cannot protect themselves like the other does. I agree with his statement because we view and think football players as muscular and strong men by the way they tackle and knock down the opponent players. We know football player are tough and they can handle the opposite opponent, but

Almond explain what football really is and “It is the epitome of corny capitalism, a corporate oligarchy that has absorbed or crushed all potential competitors, that routinely extorts municipal, and state governments, and openly flouts its tax obligations while remaining, in the words if the Atlantic’s Gregg Easterbrook “walled off behind a moat of antitrust exemption” (Almond 73). Basically, the leaderships of the company has the power over their team and everyone else. They make money from the government to help them build their arena and if they don’t receive huge amount of revenue, they plan to leave the city and move their team. Also, Almond talks about if football was Marxist, “Employees would be paid according to the Marxist edict: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” (Almond 71). He is saying everyone would get paid according to their own needs to support their family. Besides, I agree with what Almond said and I know employees, the players, and the owners would never earn the same amount of salaries. The owners of the company would make lots of money and become billionaire. They exploit their consumer and players just so they can earn money. Making money is what they are going for and they are not concern about other things unless it related to them. I know NFL company owner are making millions of dollars each year just buy