I got my first taste of live American football on my very first date in the US in a packed and roaring Louisiana stadium nearly twenty years ago. I have long thought of it as an exceedingly uncivilized sport, in which violence is endemic to the sport itself—part of standard operating procedure—frequently causing traumatic injury, cognitive disability, and even dementia. I wondered: How can so many enjoy its brutal form and look past its grievous impact on the players? What does this say about its parent culture?

Malcolm Gladwell has written an informative and provocative essay in which he compares football with dogfighting. In a 3QD debate on it, I’ve argued that the comparison is apt in as much as their respective fans have a similar, seemingly blind capacity to get pleasure from violence and the suffering of others. The least one can do as a thinking citizen-consumer, I suggested, is to withdraw one’s monetary and emotional support from the sport, especially when little more than one’s entertainment is at stake.