NFL?

When the question of the manliest sport was proposed last week in class, I immediately thought of American football. Our article for this week does nothing but support this conviction. Large males running and knocking each other over, often in violent ways that result in injuries, with a goal to win a few yards.  It basically seems like our civilized version of warfare.  What increases the masculinity of this sport also is the juxtaposition of hyper-femininity beside the players – cheerleaders.  While cheerleaders epitomize the sexy and worshipful ideal, the players hold up the honor of being tough, aggressive, strong, and very good at handling balls.

wait…

But don’t they also use loads of padding and helmets, mouth guards and special gloves, just to play the game?  That’s not very tough-sounding.  So maybe the manliest sport should be rugby, a game of similar style, but without all the protection.  Except, I know that there are women’s rugby teams.  Doesn’t that discount it as the manliest sport, if women have a reputation for playing it? Same with boxing.  I know there are plenty of following and learning opportunities for women’s boxing, which might disqualify the sport in this manliest-race.

Sumo wrestling!  Women do it too, though, which might detract from the manliest, but going off of an initial image of two very large humans ramming into each other over and over again with no protection (except fat) – that seems very tough, animalistic, aggressive, strong, and a bit violent.  It calls to mind an image of two alpha male  animals fighting over dominance of a clan or the ownership of a female. Judging from the history books, that’s pretty manly.