In Defense of Football

“Football tells us that violence can be beautiful when performed for the sake of a greater good. As American society has become more genteel, that premise has become a cultural fault line—the assumption from which all other assumptions flow. You either believe violence can, in fact, be beautiful, or you don’t. Violence, for good and ill, is the beauty of [football]. Except perhaps boxing, no other sport asks so much. That’s why people pay to see it. And that’s why so many of us won’t go to a book-signing or gallery opening, but stay home—and up late—to watch a ridiculous-in-the-best-possible-way, eight solid hours of Monday Night Football tonight.”