Muchnick, Irvin. Without Helmets or Shoulder Pads: The American Way of Death in Football Conditioning. Toronto: ECW Books, 2023. Pp. 180. $26.95 CAD paperback.
Reviewed by Łukasz Muniowski
When thinking about the causes of football-related deaths, the first thing that comes to mind is concussions, which continue to be a subject of conversation. However, Irvin Muchnick’s book, Without Helmets or Shoulder Pads, analyzes a different type of death––those stemming from extreme conditioning drills in the cutthroat, competitive culture implemented by high school and college coaches, pushing teenagers and young adults to their limits.
Muchnick writes that 700 teenage football players have died since the 1930s. That is a scary, shocking number. Yet, when he writes “When the full history of football gets written, it may well come across, like slavery, bloody foreign adventures, or other more overt black marks, as a long and unchallenged chapter of American jihadism,” it is hard not to cringe (p. 5). While he admits in the next sentence that he may be exaggerating, the statement is just too strong to skim over, the feeling of discomfort still palpable when continuing to read. And “cringe” is not an alien reaction to the author, as he recounts the football hit which prevented him from enjoying the sport as he was able to prior to October 22, 1989, when he attended a live game and witnessed the consequences of a hard hit on the field.
In his book, Muchnick recounts stories of individual player’s deaths, and coverups thereof by high-profile programs, whose coaches feel pressure to excel despite not always having sufficient resources, talent, or both, to do so. What is most striking in these various accounts is the lack of consequences for the culprits, as well as the participation of so many parties in keeping the causes of death a secret from the general public. Muchnick, a great investigative journalist, doesn’t only describe what occurred prior to the players’ deaths, but also goes deep when detailing how he conducted his investigations, who he was able to interview, and most interestingly, what difficulties he encountered in trying to get to the bottom of things, as well as who caused them. As the author is describing individual cases, I feel I would be doing a disservice to the victims and their families by simply name-dropping the boys who died during football practice, and not providing details of every death described so extensively by Muchnik.
The question that needs answering: Who is to blame? Individuals? Yes, but that’s not the whole story. They’re all part of the ultra-masculine football culture, which expects male athletes to prove their toughness by completing tasks, such as intense conditioning drills, that are unimportant in the grander scheme of things. The book makes for a tough read on various levels. There are the sometimes gross, visceral descriptions of players vomiting on themselves during workouts, pressurized to not stop for a moment to catch their breaths. There are the actions of the coaches, who push the players and force them to perform these drills as if their livelihoods depended on completing them. The toughest to read, though, are the conclusions, where “the bad guys” emerge triumphant. The same people who talk about the beauty of amateurism profit from the labor of young men––who are too naïve, too devoid of power––to stand up to them.
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