Neocon football fans.

• Author: Zirin, Dave
• Position: Edge of Sports

A decade ago, during the Bush/Cheney drive toward the war and occupation of Iraq, few cheerleaders shook their pom-poms with more enthusiasm than neoconservative prince Max Boot. As he wrote in the pages of Weekly Standard, "Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets."

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Now Boot has turned his attention and full lusty support to warfare by another name--the National Football League.

Like the war in Iraq, the NFL is a delightful spectacle for Boot. And just as he cheered for war despite no history of wearing the uniform, he now extols football despite having never donned helmet or pads. Instead he writes, "This is competition--and capitalism--at its finest." He also pooh-poohs those who would say otherwise, writing blithely, "Simply being outside produces more deaths than playing football."

The only problem with these arguments is a little thing called science. The more we know, the more we realize that football is a sport that is unsafe at any speed. (Not that Boot cares about science. He writes that the game must be defended "no matter how many medical studies are cited" that show its dangerous effects.)

The game is by far still the most popular sport in the country. But many football fans are coming to the queasy realization that the highly commodified three-hour burst of violence they consume on Sundays puts an ungodly toll on the human body. That toll is measured not just in sprained knees and bruised ribs, but also in post-concussion syndromes that are destroying the very minds, not to mention families, of the people we look up to as heroes.

Not unlike smoking cigarettes, there is simply no making this game safe. Boot may wish we were still a country of Marlboro Men, but we would do well to remember that the real Marlboro Man died of lung cancer.

I spoke to...