And I never understood calling a written piece 'pretentious'. The word works fine for a person's personality, but a static written piece doesn't deserve this type of slight. For one, there are probably better ways of stating what's wrong with an essay. Perhaps it's muddled or off-mark but what makes the article more relevant today is that more and more people (especially parents) are realizing that football is far more dangerous than what we once thought. Its dangerous medically, and on the other side, its dangerous financially & politically. Football is an immense business and enjoys deep conservative roots and support (at least in the U.S.). Those concerned with the obvious head trauma implications brought on even by high school football will find themselves massively out-gunned by the deep seated football support system. This article is (partially) an outgrowth of these types of concerns and the concerns are real. Today many of our universities, especially in the South, are football teams (seeking new stadiums) attached to instructional institutions with starved library budgets. Maybe its nobody's fault, and just a circumstance of the market economy, but its a picture that needs to be exposed.

I am not a football fan, and I too just found the article hard to read...

Too wordy, too many tangents, get to your main thesis fast: why is football on TV a sleight of hand?