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The NFL’s Long Journey to “Inspire Change”

Paul E. Fallon
5 min readFeb 8, 2023

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Here it comes…Super Bowl Sunday!

The biggest unofficial holiday in America!

Have you invited over your buddies?

Got your beer and chips and dips and wings on hand?

Are you psyched for the hype, the commercials…and Rihanna!

Oh, and by the way, there’ll be a football game.

Generald Wilson, USN, singing our National Anthem at AFC Championship Game

By some weird equilibrium of the metaverse, the older I get, the more politically I engage, the more radical my ideas become, the more I love professional football. Don’t seek the logic: there isn’t any. Chalk it up to my endless fascination with the dichotomies of America: all of which the NFL manages to champion.

I grew up wedged between New York and Philly; the Giants and the Jets and the Eagles. I cannot forget that brutally cold winter day, shivering in the concrete recesses of Franklin Field, watching little men in dark uniforms run around on the field below me. I didn’t understand a single thing going on, and didn’t care.

That didn’t stop me from joining freshman football; a feeble attempt to save face before my athletic brothers. I was chunky, uncoordinated, and therefore assigned to play guard. Field practice was gruesome. Blackboard sessions even more debilitating. I was supposed to be this academic whiz kid: why…

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Paul E. Fallon
Paul E. Fallon

Written by Paul E. Fallon

Seeking balance in a world of opposing tension

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