Can football produce righteous warriors? 

I know almost nothing about football.

I have experienced the fully-alive feeling of playing it in the autumn months with guys in college. We would inevitably start a game when I visited the Chicago suburbs. I ran hard and fast with the smell of leaves and smoke lingering in the crisp air. I huddled up, knowing that I didn’t really need to listen because I would never be a part of the plan. I was just the last-picked warm body. Five-feet of dead weight. No one would ever pass the ball to me, but I would end up being taught four times each day how to correctly throw the ball by well-meaning Wheaton guys.  “You put your fingers on the laces, like this….” (My friends from my college knew better than to try to explain something so ridiculous to me.)

Football was a fun game. A chance for mansplaining. And football was what men in our family watched during holidays while the women worked like servants to cook and clean up after them. It was what college administrations sunk their money into in a high-stakes gamble to excite their alums into giving more money. A generation of students went into debt, while coaches soaked up millions. Colleges spent Sallie Mae loans in order to lure television deals (perhaps not directly, but indirectly, the ecosystem seems apparent). Football became the brand of our colleges, outweighing the worth of classes, professors, writing and research.