**NFL Pre-season Real Talk Update**
I just got back from hanging with a friend and casually watching some pre-season football. Coincidentally, my team the Green Bay Packers was on the tube, playing against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Early in the game, wide receiver Jordy Nelson went out with a knee injury, potentially a torn ACL. I’m no kind of ESPN analyst or whatever, but this is some bleak news. While I’m sure the Pack will be alright, since they draft a shit ton of receivers, it’s still a little dark to think about the team’s ability to make it to “The Big Game” with one of their stars on the sideline for the year.
I was getting pretty jazzed for the NFL season before this weekend, but now I’m starting to rethink a bit of my fandom, especially with this and Carolina receiver Kelvin Benjamin’s season ending injury earlier in the week. Fans seem hungry for so much football, but I think we’re just beginning to recognize what it means to subject players to almost twenty weeks of playtime. What once was deemed four weeks of irrelevant scrimmage games where the team’s could evaluate, and later cut, some of their lesser known players, there’s now an expectation that regular season starters play for more than one or two series. I don’t know, I think we’re heading to point where we’ll see more injuries like the ones from this week. And couple that with the fact that sustained contact for many players is linked to health problems later in life, what are we doing putting people through this? That’s the thing I’m grappling with as a fan: how to reconcile my enjoyment of the game with the fact that the NFL is a completely fucked up industry that favors profit over health, tax breaks over real community engagement, and imbuing a toxic masculinity in our nation’s youth.
I’ll still watch, but damn, it’s getting dark out there, folks. The only light I see is in this Skrillex/Diplo/Bieber jam. This is an emotional tune for emotional times. I think I’ll put this on my Ipod and go for a walk along Lake Union in Seattle, even though the air is hazy from the horrifying Eastern Washington wildfires. Preach, Bieber, and take the darkness away.
• Jack Ü : http://jackuofficial.com
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