There’s only two reasons to play sport. One is that you love it, the other that you get paid fortunes for doing it. These two are not mutually exclusive. You can have both. Or ‘live the dream’ as its known in some circles. Or maybe its then not the dream. That if you spend all day every day hitting a tennis ball over a frikkin net, hour after hour, day after day, that it ceases to become ‘the thing you love’, even though the money’s not bad if you’ve made it that far. But tennis isn’t a dangerous sport. Boxing is. Yet the rewards can be massive. I don’t know why, its a game that does nothing for me, but in a way that’s the whole thing. What excites and pleases YOU as an individual. Running the streets for hours on end? Swimming up and down pools endlessly? Kicking a ball about and swearing a lot? Rowing across a grimy reservoir in Luton on rainy days in January? Ahhhh, the dream.

Some sports involve danger. Motor racing is apparently a ‘sport’ though I’ve never been sure why. The cost/benefit analysis of that event is that drivers can earn millions of moneys but one wrong move and you’re Ayrton Senna. Which adds to the glamour, the glory, the heroics. And attracts the women like fake-tan to a Cup Final party. Or lawyers to a class action suit.

Boxing similarly is, in case you missed that bit, rather brutal. The point of the game is nothing but brutality. Two people trying to beat each other senseless. How Roman. And yet, how pure a ‘sport’ is that? Mano against mano. Big gains for the winners (and often for the losers too, just for showing up and playing punchbag) but it has now been shown (like: doh; we needed medics to tell us) that repeated concussions and being bashed around the head all the time can in fact be dangerous! Who’d’a thought that? Does any boxer, particularly in the last 50 years, really not understand that his work is doing him damage? But its the risk he takes, for which he is often handsomely rewarded and from which he gains too massive pleasure of a combined sado-masochistic nature.

And now American Football, the uber-macho gridiron, where men are men and gays keep really really quiet, has realised that their game can be rather dangerous. Again: who’d’a thought that? A game so tough, so big-hitting, so full-on that the players wear crash-helmets and pretty much full body armour, who’d’a thunk you could get hurt? For your paltry $5 million a year.

So a group of gridironers have got together with Liebevitz, Lipshitz, Litigate and Retire, noted 5th Avenue class action specialists, to sue the NFL for damage caused by repeated concussions from… er… well, playing the game which is big-hitting and big-payout, which is why they got all the cheerleaders at High School. Even the great Miami Dolphins hall of fame (that’s a good thing, in case you don’t follow nfl), quarterback (another good thing) Dan Marino (used to be a good thing, now I’m not so sure) is joining the suit, just in case ‘he develops any problems later’. Or he gets a better lawyer who can get him a few mil even without any sign of damage.

And I hate this kind of litigation. Its horrible, its a clichee and its sadly part of American culture. Bandwagon jumping against BIG corporations or insurance companies for the further enrichment of lawyers. But especially in a sporting context. Because its all about responsibility. No-one forced Dan Marino to be a big NFL superstar, get paid zillions of dollars in wages and the endorsements that accompany his status as a demigod, to suffer ‘that lifestyle’ of never having to buy a drink for yourself, never having to book a table in any restaurant; they’ll always find you one, never having to buy a ticket to any event. Awful. And I’m sure that on some level Dan realised that in playing his game, there was an element of risk. Yet now he (and his lawyers) have decided that the NFL should burden the full responsibility of that risk. For giving these guys a platform upon which to ply their trade, play their game and earn a fucking fortune.

And THAT is why I play bridge.

Happy wedensday

A xxxx