Football season operates as a celebratory restart for American sports fans, propelled by strategy, television compatibility, spectacle, and betting. The sport produces frequent severe physical and mental harm, including torn bodies, neurological trauma, neck surgeries and potential career endings. Recent preseason incidents included Bayron Matos being airlifted and hospitalized with numb extremities and Alexander Mattison undergoing neck surgery and missing the season. The contrast with baseball underlines football's higher injury ceiling. Preseason games often proceed despite serious injuries. Fans continue to attend, applaud and move on to the next play despite the human cost.
I have enough to feel guilty about in this job. I'm not active enough on social media. I don't catch enough typos in columns. My hot takes are often warm takes. And now football season is starting with its annually conflicted message such that my postgame walk through the locker room conjures the final scene of the classic movie "Patton." "I love it,'' the imperial actor George C. Scott says, while looking over a charred World War II battlefield. "I love it so."
The dark side of football is regularly darker, as the Miami Dolphins unfortunately learned even in summer of controlled football that ends with Saturday's game against Jacksonville. Offensive tackle Bayron Matos was airlifted by helicopter from the Dolphins' first practice of training camp and hospitalized for a week after a collision left him with little feeling in his extremities. He has since mostly recovered and wants to play again.
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