Steve Almond isn't advocating a boycott of football. In fact, he still likes to toss the ball around and it's clear he deeply misses watching a sport he compares to a work of art. But like a number of fans right now — how many, exactly, is an interesting question with no exact answer — he is conflicted about a sport that thrills him on one hand but troubles him on the other.
So he gave it up and wrote a book called "Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto." We caught up with him last week for a Sunday Q&A, but we also went to hear him read from the book (photo from the event taken by us) and take questions afterwards Tuesday night at The Loft in Minneapolis.
The main thing that troubles Almond is the same thing that troubles more than one of our friends: reconciling the fact that, by the NFL's own admission, three of every 10 players will develop some sort of long-term brain problems and are far more likely than the general population to get serious problems much earlier in life.
Even if you are a passive viewer — watching only on TV — you are complicit in the NFL machine, Almond argues, because so much of the league's revenue is derived from those massive TV contracts.
He made larger points about football as a microcosm for America and about the sport's troubling nature in terms of gender roles, race and sexual orientation. But mostly he sparked a good discussion with an audience of 40-50 people, a good mix of men and women, old and young. Plenty of them identified as football fans. Plenty of those fans appeared equally troubled by the things with which Almond struggles.
The overriding sentiment from Almond was not trying to convince people to give up football, but rather examine their motives for watching and take a closer look at the sport they love.
Some of you might have noticed that we've been in the process of doing the same thing. Keeping tabs on the Vikings is part of our job, so we still watch those games on Sundays. But we've cut out all other NFL viewing from what often used to be a 10-hour Sunday diet. We've unofficially called it the Sixteen Sundays Project, and the idea is to do something special each Sunday with the reclaimed time.
For Almond, the tipping point was brain injuries. For us, for some reason, it was a growing sense of distrust that came with the handling of the Ray Rice case. Maybe for us this sense will be fleeting. Maybe it will be permanent. But that's where we are now.
Either way, we are not advocating you quit or cut down on your consumption. Free will is a beautiful thing, and so is football.
But if you are having trouble reconciling your fandom in light of recent events, you should also know you aren't alone — and that some honest reflection, while a little frightening in that it will take you out of a comfort zone, can be a healthy thing.
