John Underwood (1) (1934–2023)

In which a veteran football writer-cum-fan bewails the then-current state of the game and what he perceives as its slippage into a dangerous and brutal sport, as opposed to what he describes as a gentlemanly and chivalrous game in the days of his youth, which would be the forties and fifties. The first half of the book deals with brutality and injuries, and is the weakest part of the book; he does little but pile up example upon example of various players and coaches, mostly professional, running their mouths about their brutal exploits. It's interesting that we are now in a period with a level of concern about this which matches his own, but the emphasis has changed over the years. Today, everyone's talking about chronic conditions such as dementia brought on by repeated brain concussion; Underwood's focus is on immediate paralysis and death, as well as, almost quaintly, knee injuries. The second part of the book is better, because it is more anecdotal, and the author is usually interesting as he relates his travels observing college recruiting and junior football. However, the book is plagued throughout by misspellings which are not confidence building; one town gets two different spellings, and some of the players' names which he mangles were very well-known figures back in the day.
As far as the qualilty of his argumentation and predictions, if by the 'death' of the game, he means that the game was changing to something he liked less and felt was harmful to society, then he's entitled to his opinion, though it is very easy to read accounts by other old-timers who are equally adamant that the game has become sissified over the years.. He often seems, though, to be predicting its literal extinction, and that everybody would be playing and watching soccer. Is soccer more popular now than it was in 1979? Maybe. Is football less popular? Not even remotely, and its non-death is probably not attributable to adoption of very many of Underwood's often-farfetched suggestions for reform, few of which have been instituted. From this standpoint, after thirty-five years, it's probably time to call his prediction incorrect, not just premature. Football, as a big business, is run by very media-savvy quasi-corporations and their executives, who can deploy armies of attorneys and public relations sorts to lull any fears the press and public might express about their game, as is being done currently during the concussion debate.… (mehr)