THE PRICE OF PASSION.

• Author: Zirin, Dave
• Position: EDGE OF SPORTS - On violence and sports

I recently lent a friend a memoir by the late Pat Conroy, about his last year of playing college basketball for The Citadel, a military college in South Carolina. My Losing Season vacillates from Conroy's irrepressible ardor for the sport to scenes of ugly confrontations between father and son.

He begins by waxing poetic about his passion for the game, asserting that, "I have loved nothing on this earth as I did the sport of basketball. I loved to break up a full-court press as much as anyone who has ever lived and played the game,... in the shades of Spanish moss, beneath the roiled heat and sunshine of Dixie." But then the underbelly appears: "Basketball provided a legitimate physical outlet for all the violence and rage and sadness I later brought to the writing table. The game kept me from facing the ruined boy who played basketball instead of killing his father."

I have been thinking a great deal about these passages lately, and about my own relationship with a sports world increasingly on tenuous moral ground. It started with the deep conflict I have in my own heart about my teenage son's desire to play quarterback for his high school football team. It has deepened dramatically following the critical injury to Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin during a Monday Night Football game in early January.

Sports have been the central part of my work and leisure for two decades, but that's not the only reason I watch. For many members of my family, sports are the sole focus of conversation. If we're not talking about football, we're probably not talking. The result is that I've felt a lifelong pressure to follow the game as assiduously as possible so that I can communicate with my in-laws. Therefore, my son has been raised watching football, too, and now he wants to play it.

I understand why. Friends and coaches tell him he has a good arm, so he receives positive reinforcement at a difficult time in life. Also, let's not mince words: For all of its problems, the game is damn entertaining. It is the perfect sport for television, as the pace of play and spasms of excitement require commercial breaks. The NFL might be the last show on television in which people willingly sit through commercials.

This has only made its brand rise exponentially in our digital age. But that's not the main reason for its popularity. Professional football is three hours of highly commodified violence, perfect for an American...