Football: The Cultural Evolution Of American Football

A crowd gathers and cheers around the center of the stadium as to watch the violence and bloodshed take place in front of their eyes. Each fan rooting for the strongest contestant, as if they are for sure they have chosen the “man for the job”. The chaos and tension in the air rising as the loser falls to the ground and the winner triumphantly looks towards his fans for praise. With few descriptive words about what the event is, or who all is involved in the event, a violence-induced game is painted in the readers head. What is interesting about this is that the game is something almost every culture and time period has. Sports being something that is integrated into most countries, is an easy umbrella to connect many seemingly different …show more content…
Many can view American football as a modern day example of cultural evolution. Cultural evolution being the idea that human cultural change can be paralleled with Darwin’s evolutionary process of evolution, meaning we being humans can culturally grow and mature as we evolve through the decades. Many cultural evolutionists have this conception of sports being tied with cultural evolution when looking at how modern day sports, like football, can be viewed as a more civilized version of warfare. While this theory can be discredited in some cases, I believe that sports like American football do reflect how we as America and us as human have evolved as a …show more content…
Everything about the team’s aspect displays how we as humans have evolved into more modern and civilized forms of violence, and idolization. On the media aspect, what was once an event only known through word of mouth is now evolved into an event that America society has in developed into commodity displayed in our everyday media based technologies. While watching a UCLA football Pump Up commercial, I witnessed many examples of this. As soon as the commercial begins, one can feel the dramatization of the sport as the players’ storm out with a heroic like energy. It is easy to see how one, unfamiliar with the sport, could view these men as valiant warriors coming to save us from the terrors of the opposing team, or even idolize these men for their almost “God-like” demeanor. As the music intensifies and reaches the climax of the dramatic orchestra, the violence in the commercial follows suit, demonstrating violence in the passing action of one player fighting to get the ball to its respective zone (YouTube.com). While watching the game, though, the viewer is exposed to more violence and can become more involved in the sport. Just within twelve minutes of the UCLA vs. Arizona State university game, there were over ten plays of pure man-to-man physical violence. In one play, cornerback Mossy Johnson moves into