Audio By Carbonatix
Steve Almond is an award-winning journalist who wrote for this very paper way back in the ’90s. Then he quit his job and became a New York Times best-selling author of Candy Freak. Now he has a new book out, Against Football: One Fan’s Reluctant Manifesto.
“Football is my favorite sport,” Almond says. “And if it wasn’t so incredibly fucking corrupt, I’d still be watching it.” Among his many gripes with the NFL are that it’s a tax-exempt organization that makes $10 billion a year and has admitted that a third of its players will suffer brain damage. He goes on to say, “The false dream that we all consent to is that for disadvantaged kids, the path to economic salvation, to riches and glory and power, resides not in the content of their character, not in the development of their minds, and certainly not in the development of their moral systems, but that the way they escape from the hood is by entertaining us by playing a beautiful and savage game, by performing for us like animals. And that’s a false dream, because only one in 500 high-school seniors who play football is gonna make the pros.” See Almond speak and read at Books & Books (265 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables) Tuesday. The free event begins at 8 p.m. Call 305-442-4408 or visit booksandbooks.com.
Tue., Nov. 11, 8 p.m., 2014
