Super Bowl Sunday

Hello friends, in The Christian Century magazine (1974) I argued that American football, this great national sport which claims the devotion of a significant percentage of our population, mirrors in a ritual way some of the worst characteristics of our culture. In particular, it interlinks four qualities that drive the American violence machine: physical brutality, maximum-profit commercialism, an authoritarian-military mentality, and sexism. (I was focusing on the destructive elements of professional football, not condemning sport in general.)

Today millions of Americans will watch Super Bowl LVI. The game has only become bigger and more commercialized, more supersized than ever. A sixty-minute game of four quarters now takes four hours to contain it all. Here is a poem from my latest book, “Interbeing,” that considers the hidden costs of pro football – psychological, emotional, and personal. Best, Gene

Superbowl Sunday, 2019

Imagine deluxe box seats high up
in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium
filled with cheering brain surgeons
and dementia specialists.

Preposterous, you say. Okay, then fill
those padded chairs with high clergy
blessing the brutal game. Many clerics
believe in hell, punishment, and pain.

Come on, man, are you a pious reformer?
Poets should be peaceful not provocative.
Why shouldn’t captains of industry profit?
Look at the benefits they bestow on us.

Yet injuries on the gridiron continue
into broken families, to wives who must cope.
The game restages ancient traits
of masculinity molded into deadly force.

Is it such a long stretch from the superbowl
next door to endless wars on foreign soil,
to a mindset glorifying violence
under the guise of American patriotism?