In an interview on American Football (and its Dark Side)

Let’s turn to the memoir of a college player turned pro-linebacker for the Saint Louis Cardinals. It was called “the first critical look at the dehumanising aspects” of the sport. Tell us about David Meggyesy and Out of Their League.

When I was a kid I remembered Dave Meggyesy playing. In the United States – when I was growing up and to this day – kids are sold on the notion that sports stars are heroes, coaches are father figures and on the sports field the best man wins, good overcomes bad. There’s this Disney-like idea that if somebody wins, they must be a good person. In his book, which was published in 1971, Dave Meggyesy shatters those myths. He writes about the brutality of the game and the cruelty of coaches. He makes clear that winning comes at a steep price.

Specifically, he talked about the demeaning of players. Sexuality was something that he brought up – the point that in sports, and particularly in football, if you don’t do something you’re called weak, you’re called a coward or, worst of all, you’re called a female. That was constant. He shows how violence was legitimised and how players would do anything to please coaches. He writes, “I developed a style the coaches loved. We moved in Oedipal lockstep: The more approval they gave me, the more fanatically I played. From an early age, I learned to endure violence and brutality as simply a part of my life. But in football, the brutality became legitimate, a way of being accepted on the football field and off it.”

Reading that made me realise that although I loved to play in grade school it was going to get nasty. And it did but I couldn’t say I wasn’t forewarned because I read Meggyesy. He is still alive. He became a left-wing activist and union organiser.

Meggyesy seems to focus on the dark side of the game. What do readers of Out of Their League learn about the essence of football?

It’s a cautionary tale. It reminds you not to let your humanity get usurped by people who can get what they want by being cruel. If you’re a coach for a brief time, you see you can make people do inhuman things. As we’ve seen in wars, you can make people torture and exterminate others. So on the football field you have to be careful not to lose your humanity. I think he was the first guy to really make that clear. It was tremendously influential to me, and I think to a lot of people, to have a guy like Dave Meggyesy writing this stuff because nobody else was.

Did you feel dehumanised as a college player?

Yeah, very much so. Football and boxing, by their very nature, get right to the edge of what human beings should be allowed to do to each other. A lot of people say they should not be allowed. In football you don’t get points for hurting someone but there come times when injuring or blindsiding an opposing player can help your team win. Whether it’s a concussion or a blown-out knee, you can end up injuring someone for life. The sport is dangerous. Our heads are in the middle of our shoulders – there’s no way to tackle somebody without your head being involved. You have to be clear about when you’re acting more like a battering ram than a human being.