Confucius

1) The central message or thesis of this essay is that pro football players suffer a lot of injuries playing the sport. These injuries are a result of war like sportsmanship, the attitude of coaches, and the cheer of the crowd.

2) When McMurty says organized football is like war he is referring to things such as language, principles or practices, and the imperatives used by the caches and fans. Some of the language used in football is also used by the military such as "Field General", Good Hit", "Take a Shot", and "Front Line". Even the principles and practices of football are related to the military things such as "Mass Hysteria", "The Art of Intimidation", "Absolute Command" and Territorial Aggression". The imperatives use by the coaches and fans are also used by soldiers and their commanders' phrases such as "Hurt'em", "Level'em", "kill'em" or "Take'em Apart" are used in war all the time. You can even find similarities between the two during the game. Look at the players while they are line up at the start of a play before the ball is hiked and you cam find a resemblance to a war, not a conventional battle field but that of the Civil War, you have two groups of people in different color uniforms standing in a formation with the goal of defeating the other group and getting past them for a goal.

3) Authorities ruined football for Mr. McMurty by regulating and institutionalizing the sport of pro football.

4) I consider Mr. McMurty an expert on the field of football because he played as a child and went on to play pro ball in the late fifties and early sixties. He also has an understanding of how the effect of the crowd and coaches impacts the game and how it is played.

5) Mr. McMurty view of men wanting to fight each other is a myth. He states in his essay that" I sometime wonder the violence all around us doesn't depend for its survival on the existence and preservation of this tough-guy disguise" Basically if men did not have a tough-guy attitude in order to prove their manhood their might not be so much violence.

6) The effect of football on fans has a massive impact according to McMurty. Fans come to games wanting to see players get smashed. The fans don't really care about a good play but really go crazy when a fight breaks out, or a really good tackle happens and one of the players can't get up.

7) The one comment that I really agree with is that when McMurty says that "Just as in hockey, where a fight will bring fans to their feet more often than a skillful play". A lot of fans just go to a game to see the fights or to see players get injured. Just ask a NASCAR fan why they watch races and a majority of the time they will tell you "for the crashes, it is what makes the race interesting".

8) The one comment that I disagree with is that when he says "A very large part of our wealth, work, and time is, after all, spent in systematically destroying and harming human life; manufacturing, selling, and using weapons that tear opponents to pieces; making even bigger and faster predator-named cars with which to kill and injure one another by the millions every year; and devoting our very lives to outgunning one another for power in an every more destructive rat race". The reason I disagree with this statement is because there is only a handful of people in society that actually enjoy that kind of activity. As far as making bigger better weapons,