Do you follow NFL or college football, why or why not?
Who is your team if you have one, and why that team?
What is your opinion about the glamorization of
American football in the U.S?
1. Brittney Cone,
Communication Major
“No I do not, really I’m not into sports too much. I’m really more like getting involved in the community rather than in sports. If there was a situation, if there came a time for me to participate or go watch peewee [football], then I would go if it’s for a good cause or if it’s going to support little kids—because in this day and age, society is just getting worse and worse—so it seems that being active is good. . . I’ll support it. . . I feel like there’s a lot of hidden aspects to [the NFL], hidden parts—which every organization or club probably has—but I feel like for football players, it’s more hidden, especially since most NFL players here recently have been [abusive]. . . I feel like they’re very aggressive, very abusive, so I don’t really see them doing really any good at all.”
2. Marshall Johnson,
Electrical Engineering Technology Major
“Yes, NFL mostly. I’m a Cleveland Browns fan. Die-hard from the very first day. I was born into it and I’ll never leave. I like football mainly because I played football when I was younger in high school and everything. . . but [I like it] because if you’ve ever watched a Cleveland browns football game—they’re called the cardiac kids—they will literally, in the last three minutes of every game, give you a heart attack, whether or not they’re going to win or lose. It’s what games are all about, the last three minutes, that’s why. . . it’s happening with every sport, but glamorization could be taken a couple of different ways, but I do not agree with the fact that a lot of them can get away with murder, and I mean literally murder. They just pay outright what the next guy can’t afford, he has to go to prison but you don’t, because you make so many millions of dollars. . . it’s allowed to happen. I don’t see a problem with [glamorization]. . . Go Cleveland!”
3. Shelby Pruitt,
Music Education Major
“I watch the Steelers, kind of sometimes. They’re my team. I recently have acquired a new family to live with, so I don’t live with my family anymore, but I live with my friend, and his whole family is really big into the Steelers, so I’ve kind of had to adjust to that, which has been fun. It’s almost like a religion in that household. I do [like that]. It’s a nice change, cause my family didn’t really do anything together, so it’s nice to have like sit down every Sunday, eat dinner, watch the game, kind of thing. . . if that’s what you wanna do, I guess, I don’t get that excited, but I do know that everybody else in my house does get very excited. Like the last game, Ben Roth ended up getting hurt, so now his mcl’s torn and he’s going to be out for 4-6 weeks, which was upsetting for me, but everybody else took it a lot worse. I guess it’s just like a personal thing, I don’t really get that excited, but other people do.”
4. Jacob Hardman,
Undecided Major
“I do not. I don’t know the rules of football. I’ve never really been interested in football. I come from a soccer town, mainly. . . I think it’s kind of interesting since it’s a sport pretty much just here, it’s a little bit abroad, I’ve seen some other football teams in other countries, but it’s mostly here, in the other countries they have rugby and everything. But the glamorization of it? I think it’s mostly just a sport that’s giving an excuse to hit other people, and I don’t really see the point of it, I think it’s kind of brutal and honestly bad. Like yeah there are a lot of injuries with it, concussions and everything, obviously you can get that from any contact sport, like from soccer that happens, but when you really do actually tackle people to the ground just to actually play the game, I think it’s a little bad. I mean the glamorization, we really are just sort of, when we say that’s a good thing and when we say and sort of that’s something to look up to, and we see all the professional athletes on the major football teams, they are a lot of the time very brutal and violent people as well. Obviously I’m not going to say all of them—generalizations are bad and everything—but a lot of the people on various teams have charges of violence, abuse, murder even, animal abuse, all these different things. And I don’t know if it is because of the culture egging them on to be violent and distort, whether or not those are correlated or not. I disagree with it, I think it’s bad.”
5. Thomas Puckett,
Theatre and Performance Major
“I do. For the n.f.l, it would be the Pittsburgh Steelers, and for the college football, it would be the Ohio State University. I’ve been raised around those teams, like my father’s always been a big Pittsburgh Steelers guy, he’s always loved that team, and Ohio State because everyone I live here by is a Buckeye fan, so it’s kind of upbringing. He’s bounced off of different teams before, like he’s watched the Raiders and he’ll watch the Bengals here and there, but he’s always stuck to watching the Steeler’s play for some reason, he’s always just enjoyed that team. . . as far as for the fans, and the people who watch it, I think it’s just fine because it’s just like any other spectator sport, because you look across the pond over in Europe, and people are so big with soccer (called football everywhere but the U.S) with and how glamorous that can be with chants and all that stuff. They do the exact same thing here with football in America, college or national league. For the players, it sometimes can get to their heads, because I do believe that if they get so much money, and I think they get paid maybe a little bit too much, but it kind of gets in their head that they can kind of do what they want and I don’t think they should. But as far as total glamorization, I think it’s just fine.”
6. Jonathan Kelly,
Theatre Major
“Not necessarily, but I do enjoy watching a game from time to time. I just never really cared for it, I don’t know, it’s not a passion like some people. . . I don’t necessarily think glamorizing anything is a good decision, and I definitely don’t believe in the glamorization of a sport, because I think a lot of people are like ‘well, my patriotism is rooted in the team I root for,’ and it shouldn’t be necessarily, you should be an American first and foremost, I believe, and not a Patriots fan, or a Bengals fan, or you know, I just don’t like it, I just disagree with it. I enjoy watching sports in general but I don’t live to watch sports and I don’t live for sports. . . I also feel that as human beings, we should keep in mind that we don’t want to let it get out of hand. . . honestly, right now, football isn’t a big concern for me.”
Maggie Stacey
Reporter