After reading the article "Sacking the Superbowl," I have decided that Steve Almond, the author of this article published in the latest edition of The Rotarian, is trying to start some type of campaign against the NFL and professional football as a whole. He starts out by trying to appeal to the readers' emotional side by telling a (most likely untrue) sob story of his mother being suddenly struck with dementia. After trying to touch base with the readers' sensitivity, he then makes this connection to football, saying how the inevitable end for so many who choose the path of professional football leads to this horrible place that has just become so real for him. After his mother's delirium, his "devout fandom" for the game turned into so much more than just entertainment. Now seeing the moral and ethical issues of the game, he decides to research more into the game. This is when the article turns into facts, numbers, and statistics being hurled at the reader for the sake of proving that the NFL is a greedy, uncaring, and corrupt organization. It concludes with him saying how he is now completely against supporting football and how he has no "grand agenda" with his new moral code. If that were true, why not be content with distancing oneself from the thing that brings up so many ethical issues? I believe that this author is trying to bring down one of the world's largest monopolies, the NFL. He is trying to cause people to make their own decision about whether or not they should watch football. He makes it sound like watching football is, in some way, against a moral code that most decent humans should live by. Almond wrote the article in a way that he hoped to make people think they were making the "right" decision by choosing not to support the game, and also by playing it off like he's just bringing up all these issues to fully inform the reader, when the entire article is just a long, well thought out persuasive essay. Although he brings up several good points about issues with the game and association that controls it all, I don't believe this article will change the minds of many reading it. That in itself shows the devotion of the people to this game. Almond could have provided evidence proving the heads of the NFL are downright criminals, and I still don't think it would change the minds of the countless amount of people that are addicted to football. After reading this article, I am certainly not going to stop watching football. Although I agree that some things the NFL do are questionable, if not altogether wrong, it is still not enough to stop me, and the countless others around the world, from watching football.
