Can a Good Football Player Be a Good Person?
We live in a violent culture. Just watch the news and you'll see that this is true. Some people argue that our violent culture is reflected in our love of violent sports, especially football. Is this true?
There is no doubt that football is a “savage ballet,” involving a unique combination of beautiful athleticism and dangerous violence.1 For instance, according to the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research, ninety-eight high school students died in the United States as a result of injuries directly attributable to participation in football from 1982 to 2005.2 But is the violence in football symptomatic of a general societal trend that we should find troubling? Does the violence in football encourage more violence in society? Should we prohibit children from watching football, for example, in the way that many parents prohibit their children from watching boxing or ultimate fighting?
These are all good questions, but they are not the questions I will try to answer in this chapter. Instead, I want to ask a question about individual morality and the violence involved in football. We often think that, in general, people who engage in violent behavior are doing something morally wrong. Does this suggest that individual football players are doing something morally wrong by playing the game? I will argue in this chapter that the answer to this question is “Yes, sometimes.” But first I need to clarify a number of things.
So Much Violence, So Little Time
First of all, in this chapter, I will talk only about violence that occurs as part of the game, when the ball is in play. This means that I will not discuss cases of violence that just happen to occur on the field of play, such as fights between players after the whistle has blown, or the infamous case involving Albert Haynesworth and Andre Gurode. In that incident, on October 1, 2006, Haynesworth stomped on Gurode's face as he walked past the line of scrimmage, long after the whistle had blown, leaving Gurode with multiple lacerations on his face that required thirty stitches.
Second, I will focus exclusively on violence that occurs within the rules of the game. Football includes a number of rules designed to protect players in vulnerable positions. For example, there are penalties for roughing the passer, roughing the kicker, and interfering with a player's opportunity to catch a punt. The idea seems to be that players should have a right to expect that they will not be harmed when performing certain activities that require them to be in especially vulnerable positions. These are good rules, and it is good that various football officials continually discuss them in order to find new ways of protecting players. But I will not discuss cases of violence that involve breaking these rules, because they do not indicate a problem with the game of football in itself.
Third, I will focus exclusively on violence that is intended, as opposed to accidental. Accidents happen in life, of course, and as long as people take reasonable precautions, what happens by accident is not morally wrong. Football players know that they can be injured accidentally, and presumably they undertake this risk voluntarily, in light of whatever benefits they receive in exchange for playing. Of course, it is not always easy to tell whether something that happens on the field of play is accidental or intentional; I will return to this point later.
Violence and Morality: Where Do We Draw the Line?
Before we can turn to our main question, we need to know something about what is morally right and morally wrong. Without going off the deep end into moral philosophy here, let me suggest a simple principle: if a person intentionally causes violent harm to another person, knowing that it is not necessary to the accomplishment of a greater good, then this person has done something morally wrong. Let's call this the Violence Principle for easy reference, and let's consider some examples to see how it works.3
Imagine that you walk across a bridge over a highway, and you accidentally bump into a man and knock him down, causing him physical harm. Have you done something wrong here? Not according to the Violence Principle, since it requires that you intentionally cause violent harm to a person, whereas in this case, you did not intend to harm the man.
Now imagine a different case. Suppose that you tackle the man on the bridge over the highway, causing violent harm intentionally. But imagine that you do this to prevent him from throwing a brick off of the bridge onto the traffic below. In this case, since you accomplish a greater good (namely, protecting the people driving below on the highway), and you have no other means at your disposal to accomplish this purpose, your action is not counted as morally wrong according to the Violence Principle.
Now imagine yet another case. Suppose that, as before, you are trying to prevent the man on the bridge from throwing a brick onto the highway below. But instead of tackling the man, you shoot him in the leg with a gun. Let's suppose that you decided to shoot him because you thought that he had a gun himself, so that you thought that trying to tackle him would involve serious risk to you. But suppose that he didn't have a gun after all, at least not a real one: he was carrying a realistic-looking toy, so shooting him turned out to be unnecessary for stopping him. Have you done something morally wrong here? Not according to the Violence Principle, since it requires that you must have known that shooting the man was not necessary to accomplish a greater good (and you did not know this, since he appeared to be carrying a gun).
Finally, imagine again that you are trying to prevent the man on the bridge from throwing a brick onto the highway below. You can tell that he's not very big or strong, and you know that you could stop him by tackling him. But since you would rather not get your clothes dirty, you decide to shoot him in the leg instead. This would count as excessive violence. You did accomplish a greater good here, the protection of the innocent people driving on the highway below, but your pursuit of that end involved more violence than was necessary, and so you have done something wrong, according to the Violence Principle.
The Violence Principle seems to be true. It gives us the right answers in the hypothetical cases just considered, answers that seem grounded in our common framework for morality. Also, I can't think of any cases in which the Violence Principle gives us the wrong answer. It isn't the only true principle concerning the relationship between violence and morality, of course, but it seems to be true as far as it goes.4
In what remains of this chapter, I will use the Violence Principle to argue that sometimes football players intentionally cause violent harm to players on the opposite team, knowing that it is not necessary to achieve a greater good, so that sometimes what they do is morally wrong.
The Violence Inherent in the System
Let's consider more carefully how the game of football works in order to see what role violence plays in it. Football is often defined as a “collision sport” because in order to prevent a team from scoring by advancing the ball, it is necessary to tackle the player with the ball.5 Of course, there are limits to the methods that can be used in order to tackle opponents. It is against the rules to grab a player's face mask, for instance, or to trip, punch, kick, or spear a player by leading with one's helmet. There are also complicated rules that specify what methods can be used by offensive players in order to block defensive players.
Since tackling and blocking are essential parts of football, an element of violence is essential to the game. Without this element of violence, football would cease to be football. Just to be clear, I am not arguing in this chapter that all of the violence in football is morally wrong. I want to distinguish the “ordinary” violence that is essential to playing the game (and playing it well) from the excessive violence that sometimes occurs within the rules of the game and can result in serious harm. Let me explain.
To tackle or block a player, it is necessary to exert a certain amount of physical force. Of course, it is not always clear in a given situation how much physical force is necessary; a good running back has the ability to run through tackles, for example, so defensive players typically use as much force as possible when tackling. Also, sometimes players are unable to refrain from using excessive force because of the momentum of their bodies and the timing of the play. But there are many cases in which it is clear that players use excessive force that results in serious injury. And when that harm is intended, the player who causes it may be doing something morally wrong, as the Violence Principle suggests.
Some Notable Examples from the Field of Play
On August 12, 1978, in a preseason game, Darryl Stingley of the New England Patriots was attempting to catch a pass when he was hit by Jack Tatum of the Oakland Raiders. The hit injured Stingley's spine, permanently paralyzing him from the chest down and ending his football career. Tatum claimed that “it was one of those pass plays where I could have attempted to intercept, but because of what the owners expect of me when they give me my paycheck, I automatically reacted to the situation by going for an intimidating hit.”6
Tatum, who was celebrated for his violent tackling, earned the nickname “the Assassin” and even participated in an informal contest with his teammate George Atkinson to see how many players they could injure by means of the now illegal “hook tackle.”7 With regard to Stingley's career-ending injury, Tatum later expressed regret: “When the reality of Stingley's injury hit me with its full impact, I was shattered. To think that my tackle broke another man's neck and killed his future …well, I know it hurts Darryl, but it hurts me, too.”8
Some of Tatum's hits almost certainly satisfied the Violence Principle. “I like to believe that my best hits border on felonious assault,” Tatum himself once said.9 But in part because of the tragic results of tactics like Tatum's, the NFL introduced a series of rules designed to protect players by restricting the ways in which people can be tackled. For instance, today spearing is illegal, where this involves the use of “any part of a player's helmet (including the top/crown and forehead/‘hairline’ parts) or facemask to butt, spear, or ram an opponent violently or unnecessarily.”10 The rule also states that “game officials will give special attention in administering this rule to protecting those players who are in virtually defenseless postures,” and it empowers referees to eject players guilty of especially flagrant spearing.11 These are important improvements in the rules, and they are intended in part to make it clear that injuring opposing players should not be one's goal on the field of play.
Here is another case. On November 24, 2002, Brian Kelly of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers intercepted a pass from Green Bay Packer quarterback Brent Favre. As Kelly was running the ball upfield, Tampa Bay defensive tackle Warren Sapp leveled Green Bay's offensive tackle Chad Clifton, sending him flying to the turf with no feeling in his extremities. He spent four days in a Tampa hospital with a sprained pelvis, a sprained back, and internal bleeding. According to Green Bay trainer Pepper Burruss, Clifton's career-threatening hip injury is often seen in auto accidents but had never been recorded on the football field.12 Replays showed that Clifton never saw Sapp coming and that he probably had no play on the ball, either. There was no flag on the play, and NFL officials ruled that no fine would be levied against Sapp because the hit was legal.
Sapp claims not to have tried to injure Clifton, regardless of his celebration with teammates after the hit, and it's not my place to speculate about what Sapp's intentions were.13 But suppose that we imagine a situation just like Sapp and Clifton's, except that it is clear that the player in Sapp's role deliberately injures the player in Clifton's role through excessive force. Although such a hit would be legal according to current rules, the Violence Principle implies that it would be morally wrong because the force employed would be unnecessary to accomplish any greater good. In the actual case of Sapp and Clifton, for instance, a much less violent block would have accomplished the legitimate purpose of removing Clifton from the play. Sapp's hit was unnecessarily violent, and it could very well have ended Clifton's career.
In another case, on September 10, 2006, the first game of the season, the Kansas City Chiefs’ quarterback Trent Green ended a third-quarter scramble by hook sliding feetfirst near the sideline. But before the rest of Green's body made complete contact with the field, Cincinnati Bengals defensive end Robert Geathers hit Green's upper body, bouncing Green off the turf and rendering him completely unconscious. Green was unable to play for over two months, and the long-term effects of his severe concussion will become evident only with the passing of time. NFL officials ruled that Geathers's hit was legal, so no fine was levied against him, despite the fact that Green was sliding feetfirst (which is a standard way for quarterbacks to signal to defensive players that they are no longer attempting to advance the ball).
Commentators debated whether the Geathers hit on Green was intentional or whether it was unavoidable because of the speed with which the play developed (and because of the possibility that Geathers was pushed in Green's direction by Chiefs receiver Eddie Kennison). It is clear, though, that the Geathers hit involved unnecessary force, since Green was sliding already when it occurred.14
I have not argued here that Sapp's hit on Clifton or Geathers's hit on Green was morally wrong according to the Violence Principle, because it is not clear that all of the clauses of the principle apply in those cases. But because cases of excessive violence occur regularly in football, and some of those cases result in violent harm, it seems obvious that there are cases to which the Violence Principle does apply. Of course, it is not my purpose in this essay to point fingers at particular players. Instead, I want to draw attention to a general trend that highlights a moral danger involved both for those who play football and for those who watch it.
The general trend that I have tried to highlight by discussing these particular cases suggests that there is a moral danger involved in playing football and in watching it.15 For players, the moral danger involves the very real possibility that they will compromise their own moral character by intentionally participating in violence that is unnecessary to achieve any greater good. Coaches share some of the responsibility here as well, especially if they communicate the expectation that maximum force is always appropriate. For fans, there is a moral danger in rejoicing in violence for its own sake, which is certainly morally wrong in itself and also contributes to dangerous levels of desensitization.16
The Role of Intimidation
Many fans will surely object to my application of the Violence Principle to football because of the well-known fact that a well-placed hit involving excessive force can make a big difference in terms of winning the game. For example, wide receivers who are hit while trying to catch a pass in the middle of the field are said to “hear footsteps” the next time they cross that part of the field, since it is impossible to forget what happened to them last time. Coaches routinely train players to make big hits to intimidate the opposing team and thereby gain a competitive edge. Does this mean that the Violence Principle does not apply here after all, since there is a greater good here (namely, winning the game) that is served by the violence in question, even if it isn't necessary to complete a given play?17
It all depends upon what counts as a greater good. On the one hand, there are those who emphasize the importance of winning at all costs. To quote Henry Russell “Red” Sanders: “Sure, winning isn't everything. It's the only thing.”18 On the other hand, we have Al McGuire's perspective that “winning is only important in major surgery and all-out war.”19 Surely the truth lies somewhere in the middle: winning is more important than some things but less important than others.
For example, what is more important, winning or playing by the rules of the game? Is cheating justified if it leads to victory? Clearly not; cheating is wrong, whether or not it leads to winning. More to the point, is winning the game more important than intentionally harming another person?
Suppose you are a defensive end playing in your first Super Bowl, and you have a clean shot at the quarterback, who is scrambling on third down. The outcome of the game is still undecided. The quarterback doesn't see you coming, so you have a clear shot at him. You can tell that you are going to stop him well short of the first down. Should you try to take him out of the game as well (without breaking any rules, of course)?
Those who emphasize the role of consequences in morality might say yes, because many good consequences could flow from taking the quarterback out of the game. Your team could win the game, for instance, and your teammates and coaches would celebrate your key play. Your career prospects might improve dramatically. But do all of these good consequences add up to a morally good reason for trying to injure the quarterback?
Not all by themselves, if morality is also about principles and intentions, in addition to consequences. It is common for philosophers to describe hypothetical situations in which a given action would lead to the best consequences overall but would still be wrong in virtue of violating some fundamental moral principle.20 One famous moral principle along these lines involves the idea that persons should always be treated with respect.21 Although football players consent implicitly to the possibility of injury when they play, they do not consent to be harmed intentionally.22 Harming other people intentionally, to obtain some benefit for yourself, seems like a clear case of using people merely as means to your ends, without treating them with respect (as ends in themselves).23 So even if the Super Bowl is on the line, it still would be morally wrong to try to injure the quarterback.
Of course, it is still possible to intimidate opposing players through big hits without intending to injure them. I have not argued that such intimidation is morally wrong, because the Violence Principle that I have defended only covers intentional harm. But there is a fine line between trying to injure and trying to intimidate, and players who do cause injuries to others should ask themselves whether they have become morally compromised by virtue of the role that they played in causing such harm, especially when it involved the use of excessive force relative to what was required in the play at hand.
Fans of Violence?
Of course, different people will react differently to my claim that there are important moral dangers associated with football. Some will not find this claim troublesome at all, whereas those who take seriously the Socratic examination of the soul should be given pause.24
Some people will point out that the celebration of violence for its own sake has a long and distinguished history in football (and in human history in most parts of the world, for that matter). Certainly the violence in football is part of its appeal. Media coverage of football, which tends to emphasize whatever might hold a casual viewer's attention in order to increase ratings and advertising revenue, contributes to this culture by emphasizing violence for its own sake. This is evident, for example, in the current Monday Night Football halftime segment entitled “Jacked Up,” which celebrates especially violent hits from the previous week's games, whether or not such hits played important roles in the outcomes of the games in question. In this respect, one might suggest, the appeal of football is similar to the appeal of automotive racing, which is essentially connected to the inherent dangers of the activity.
In response to this kind of claim, I think we should distinguish different reasons for being a football fan, in the same way that we should distinguish different reasons for being a fan of racing. If people were to enjoy racing only because of the possibility of a crash, then they would be oblivious to the fine motor skills on display; in a sense, they would not be fans of racing in itself but fans of crashing. In the same way, if people were to enjoy football only because of the violence on display, then they would not really be fans of football in itself, since they would be oblivious to the many athletic skills on display.
In other words, the violence that is an essential part of football is essentially connected to the exercise of athletic skills. Making a great open-field tackle, for example, typically requires speed, strength, and quick reflexes. The pure football fan enjoys great tackles because of the skills that they display, whether or not they are especially violent; the fan who watches football in part because of the violence enjoys especially the violent tackles.
Consider what happened on January 6, 2002, when New York Giant Michael Strahan broke the record for the number of quarterback sacks in a single season. Strahan sacked Green Bay quarterback Brett Favre with 2:42 remaining in the final game of the regular season, erasing the previous record, which was set by Mark Gastineau's twenty-two sacks in the 1984 season. Fans were not happy about this, though, because it certainly appeared that Favre did not try especially hard to avoid Strahan, and Strahan did not tackle Favre with any force. The evident friendship between the two players encouraged the suspicion that Favre created the sack just so that Strahan could break the record.
We can distinguish at least two reasons for being unhappy with this play. On the one hand, the pure football fan would be disappointed because there was no skill on display, either in the person of Favre (who did not scramble with any earnestness) or Strahan (who did not overcome many obstacles on his way to Favre). On the other hand, the fan of violence in football would be disappointed because sacks are supposed to be dangerous and violent tackles, and this certainly was not one of those.
Of course, few (if any) of us are really pure football fans. We enjoy not just the athletic skills on display but also the violence that doesn't involve any particular skill. Perhaps this is a morally revealing fact about us, something that should give us pause, along with our apparent preoccupations with winning and domination in general.25 Reflections such as these suggest that it is possible to be a football player or a football fan without falling prey to the moral danger outlined above. They also suggest that the morally cautious fan of football should celebrate those players who have the virtue of knowing how much violent contact is appropriate in a given situation. Such players would realize that it is morally important to treat other players with respect, not merely as means to the end of winning the game or boosting one's career. Although it might not be good for ratings, media coverage of football could emphasize the distinction between appropriate and excessive violence or intimidation, and the NFL and NCAA certainly could do more to emphasize this difference to players. In addition, it might be morally good to give referees more latitude in enforcing penalties for unnecessary roughness. All of these things would help players and fans alike to avoid the moral dangers posed by participation in football, that “savage ballet” of which many of us are so fond, although for different reasons.
Notes
Thanks to Glen Colburn, Layne Neeper, Thomas Flint, Mark Murphy, Jacob Mincey, Philip Krummrich, Grant Alden, Jack Weir, Josh Horn, and Mike Austin for helpful comments and questions concerning an earlier draft of this essay. I could not address all of their points to my complete satisfaction, but my efforts to do so certainly led to many improvements.
1. This is according to Lisa the Greek (see episode 14, season 3 of The Simpsons).
2. Direct injuries are defined as “those injuries which resulted directly from participation in the skills of the sport,” whereas indirect injuries are defined as “those injuries which were caused by systemic failure as a result of exertion while participating in a sport activity or by a complication which was secondary to a non-fatal injury.” During this same time period, there were 151 deaths resulting from indirect injuries. For more on this, see the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research's study, which is available at http://www.unc.edu/depts/nccsi/AllSport.htm.
3. It should be obvious from my comments concerning the Violence Principle that I believe that what is morally right and wrong is objective in some sense, not just a matter of a given person's beliefs or a given culture's norms (for example). I will not defend this view about the nature of morality here, but it is important to note that it is a highly controversial view among philosophers.
4. Just to be clear, I have not claimed that the contrapositive of the Violence Principle is true. The contrapositive of the Violence Principle is the claim “If a person has done something wrong, then that person has intentionally caused violent harm to another person, knowing that it was not necessary to accomplish any legitimate purpose.” In fact, this principle is clearly false, since there are many other ways to do something that is morally wrong. So the “if” in the Violence Principle must be understood to be just an “if,” not an “if and only if.”
5. For example, see the definition offered at http://domainhelp.search.com/reference/American_football.
6. See Tatum's book, They Call Me Assassin (New York: Everest House, 1980), and “The Assassin,” the review of Tatum's book in Time magazine, January 28, 1980, also available online at http://www.time.com.
7. The game was scored in this way: “knockouts” received two points, and “limp offs” received one point; see “The Assassin.”
8. “The Assassin.”
9. “The Assassin.”
10. Rule 12, sec. 2, art. 8(g) in the NFL's official rulebook.
11. Rule 12, sec. 2, art. 8(g).
12. For more on this story, see “Clifton Happy That Sherman Confronted Sapp,” available in the archives of ESPN at http://espn.go.com/nfl/news/2003/0306/1519492.html.
13. I am not arguing here that Sapp's block was morally wrong, according to the Violence Principle, since it is not clear that Sapp's case satisfied the clause concerning intention. But it is a good example for purposes of discussion because it clearly involved unnecessary force.
14. It is not clear, however, whether Geathers would have known this in time to make a split-second decision not to hit Green's upper body; Geathers himself claims to have tried not to hit Green with full force. So as before, in connection with the Sapp case, I am not arguing here that the Violence Principle implies that Geathers's hit was morally wrong. But it is a useful case to consider, again, because of the excessive violence that it involves.
15. This is not to say that other activities and professions have no moral dangers, but rather to highlight a moral danger that is especially acute in the case of football (and other violent sports, like hockey).
16. These same moral dangers arise more acutely in connection with sports in which winning is closely connected to harming one's opponent, such as boxing, and in which there are few restrictions on the kinds of techniques that can be used to achieve victory, such as so-called ultimate fighting. The popularity of these sports (along with many other signs) suggests that future generations will certainly look back upon our culture as an extremely violent one.
17. Thanks to Mark Murphy, Tom Flint, Grant Alden, Jake Mincey, Mike Austin, and Glen Colburn for pressing this line of objection in response to an earlier draft of this essay.
18. Sports Illustrated, December 26, 1955, 48. See also Steven J. Overman, “‘Winning Isn't Everything. It's the Only Thing’: The Origin, Attributions, and Influence of a Famous Football Quote,” Football Studies 2, no. 2 (October 1999): 77–99.
19. Tom Kertscher, Cracked Sidewalks and French Pastry: The Wit and Wisdom of Al McGuire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002).
20. For example, see the discussion of utilitarianism in Nils Ch. Rauhut, Ultimate Questions: Thinking about Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006).
21. The most famous philosopher to develop this approach to ethics is Immanuel Kant (1724–1804); see his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), trans. H. J. Paton (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), 4:429. For a thorough and helpful discussion of the notion of respect, see Robin S. Dillon's article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/respect/.
22. Thanks to Jack Weir for helping me to gain clarity on this point.
23. This is the way that Kant talks about these things.
24. “The unexamined life is not worth living for man” (attributed to Socrates by Plato; see Apology 38a).
25. Thanks to Glen Colburn and Jake Mincey for making this point in correspondence (and making it more eloquently than I could have).