Football Influence On American Culture

One of the most prominent sports in modern day America is football. There are hundreds of thousands of football fans nationwide, who watch their favorite teams go at it each Thursday, Sunday, and Monday night. This sport has an enormous following and generates billions of dollars a year. However, most football fans never stop to think about how football really is affecting them, on both a cultural and psychological standpoint, and some do not notice that the sport affects them altogether. Football culturally and psychologically affects America in both advantageous and detrimental ways. Football is advantageous to American culture because it brings an assemblage of people together to discuss the sport, it creates friendships and long lasting …show more content…
Football culture creates a misguided outlook on gender and promotes a culture of violence in our nation. Football is a more aggressive sport and it is also a male dominated sport. Since it is male oriented, it has become a gender norm that women are not capable of playing football the same way men are. It also reinforces the ideal that women are weaker than men, and do not possess the ability to get aggressive like the sport calls for. Recently, the formation of a Woman's World Championship has begun to break those barriers, but we have yet to see a woman play in the National Football League. Football promotes a culture of violence by endorsing grown men to train for running and hitting each other with all of their force, and not thinking about the potential harm they may cause until after. Early versions of football were much more dangerous than modern day football, however, because players were not allowed to pass the ball. A player had to take the ball and run down to the goalposts, where they would kick the ball through the posts to score. To stop the offender, the defense had to create huge mass plays, which were that led to 180 seriously injured players and 18 deaths in ten years. Today, many players are still seriously injured even with the many safety procedures in place. Middle school children who play football can get concussions and their brains can become seriously damaged because of football, yet this is the sport that America proudly declares their own. In order to move up the ranks in football, you need to be gifted with the skillset football requires, but a huge component is that you need to remain aggressive. This suggests that America is proud of the fact that our main sport promotes aggression and violence. That as long as there are some regulations in place, it is okay to teach the children of our nation to harm other people to win, but it’s