A recent New Yorker magazine had a wonderful short piece about football players and their use of unsanctioned drugs to enhance their performance on the playing field. I will quote, and then explain, one wonderful long sentence. “The NFL, in its statement about the health of its players, had to obscure the fact that there isn’t any appreciable ethical distinction between the profound physical harm caused to football players by playing football and the harm caused to football players by taking drugs.”
As usual, the way it is said is terrific. The writer points out that profound physical harm is done by football players to other football players. Or to quote the writer again: The human body is simply not built to be thrown repeatedly onto concrete-hard playing fields, at top speed, by helmet-wearing, muscle-bound three-hundred pound giants. Someone else said, football is not a contact sport, it is a collision sport. Someone else said sports are a lot like prostitution: the players are ruining their bodies for the pleasure of others.
Of course they are being paid well. Of course no one forced them to ruin their bodies. They chose to do it. Nevertheless, they are ruining their bodies, profound physical harm is being done to football players.
And yet, to go back to the original quotation, there is no appreciable ethical distinction made between the harm they do to themselves playing football & the harm they do to themselves by taking drugs. One kind of harm is allowed, encouraged, admired, the other is forbidden, is given as a cause to dismiss the player from ever again playing football.
The question is complex, and my wife threw another curveball into the equation. The performance enhancing drugs not only harm the football player taking the drugs, they also harm his opponent who is now facing an even larger and more dangerous opponent who is better able to smash him into the concrete-hard ground.
Nevertheless it is hard to sit silently & listen to the NFL warning players against defiling the temple that is their body with unapproved pharmaceuticals, when they are simultaneously egging the players on to week after week smash that temple to smithereens.
The NFL doesn’t really care about the temple, the body, the soul of the players. The NFL is seeking a squeaky clean image, a pure, unadulterated orange juice. They don’t want additives, they don’t want artificial ingredients, but they do want violence. They know the fans want to see this collision sport.
The NFL is treading a fine line, but the whole question is murky since enhanced performance does mean the enhanced possibility of doing harm to others.
Copyright © 2004 Henry Morgenstein