A profile in hypocrisy: So many things wrong with the NFL, yet I can’t stop watching the games

The NFL is counting on idiots like me.

Idiots who know that football is a brutal, dangerous sport … and watch anyway.

Idiots who know that the league pays lip service to player safety … and watch anyway.

Idiots who criticize coaches for their callousness regarding the health and well-being of players … and watch anyway, callously.

Idiots who rail against NFL officials for consistently doing the wrong thing, no matter the issue, the incident or the day of the week … and watch anyway.

Idiots who know that there are too many players who haven’t been punished enough for abusing women over the years … and watch anyway.

Idiots who are disgusted by a league that wouldn’t stand up for a quarterback who knelt in protest … and watch anyway.

Nothing brings out the hypocrite in me more than the NFL, which makes me as much the problem as the league. And, yet, this idiot will continue watching games.

Commissioner Roger Goodell is under fire for not quickly postponing Monday night’s Buffalo-Cincinnati game after Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field. The seriousness of the situation was immediately obvious, with tearful teammates kneeling in a circle around Hamlin as medical personnel performed CPR. We would later learn that he had suffered cardiac arrest and twice needed his heart restarted. He remains hospitalized in critical condition.

After Hamlin was taken away by ambulance, it took the NFL a ridiculous 36 minutes to tell everyone to go home. If there had been a way to look more insensitive, the league surely would have found it. It’s what the league does.

This is the outfit that gave quarterback Deshaun Watson a measly 11-game suspension after 24 women accused him of sexual misconduct. Watson settled most of the lawsuits they filed. This is the league that hasn’t acted in Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa’s best interests as he’s struggled with concussions. This is the league that initially made it harder for Blacks to prove mental declines linked to football in the NFL’s $1 billion concussion settlement.

All this (and more), and I watch the game anyway.

Why that is is something I’ve asked myself for a long time and something I’m asking myself now. It has something to do with emotional distance. I know that the players are flesh and blood, know that they have families, and know they deal with problems like the rest of us, but when I see them on TV, all of that falls away. What’s left is a show with bulked-up actors, with heroes and villains, with athleticism and violence, with commercial breaks. It’s phenomenal entertainment.

A football game is real. The hits are real. The blood is real. The injuries are real. And death is a possibility — remote, but still a possibility. It’s not my blood, though, not my knee ligament getting torn, not my day to die. So it’s not real in a way I can feel. I watch boxing and mixed-martial arts, too. I’m drawn to the idea of one person trying to knock out another, as long as neither of them is me.

It’s a strange stew — the sixth-grader who landed on his tailbone in a pick-up game of tackle football and vowed never to play again, and the adult drawn to the brutality of the sport.

All the bad stuff — the league’s tepid response to revelations about chronic traumatic encephalopathy, its seeming disregard for women, etc. – is real. The game – the viciousness and the gore — isn’t.

What is that disconnect all about? How many millennia does one have to go back to understand why a human being would enjoy watching people beat the crap out of each other? I wasn’t comfortable with my son playing high school football (he did anyway) because I was concerned about his health. But I can’t stop watching the NFL, no matter how barbarous it is. And no matter how unfeeling the people are who run the league.

That’s the emotional distance I referred to earlier. People who love murder mysteries probably would stop reading them if a loved one was murdered mysteriously. And people who love to watch football might have a hard time watching again if a loved one was seriously injured in a game.

But free of that burden, and blind to all the warning lights blinking in my head, I watch because the NFL is what I said it was earlier – phenomenal entertainment. Superior athletes. Obsessed coaches. Highs and lows. The occasional tragedy to confront from one’s couch. Bundled in weekly three-hour packages. I’m not proud of it, but it’s part of me.

I cover the NFL because it’s in my job description, but I’d watch the games even if this weren’t what I do for a living. I’m drawn to the incredible speed and the hard hitting, the very things that make the game so dangerous at the pro level. The league knows that there are tens of millions of people like me across the country. People who know all the rational reasons why they should say goodbye to a savage sport but won’t.

We’ll question ourselves periodically, but mostly we’ll just keep watching. We idiots.