“The first time we get our hands on the ball, let’s try this one.” He draws a series of flowing patterns, white chalk dust falling to the floor like seconds of life dropping away from the men his lines represent. He’s in the midst of drawing out his second play when a referee knocks on the door.

“On the street, please. Five minutes remaining.”

T.K. stands. He pulls on his mesh gloves, drops his helmet into place and fastens his chin strap.

Carrerra puts down his chalk and dusts off his hands. “Any last words, T.K.?”

For a moment, T.K. stands mute, glancing from one man to the other all around the room. “Let’s tear ass,” says T.K. softly, and charges through the door.

Yelling and screaming, his team follows hard in his footsteps.

The Vicarious Risk Factor in the Viewing of Televised Football:
Its Relationship to Mental Health

An old and well-established tenet holds that individuals, to live a psychologically normal and meaningful existence, must participate regularly in some activity that provides an element of jeopardy. The rationale behind this is quite persuasive. Man evolved by successfully overcoming his natural risks. Risk helped to mold man’s codes of honor, his pride, his loyalty. Studies also suggest risk helped prolong his youth and prowess. In time, the old stimuli, the old dangers, were, for the most part, eliminated. But not the effect. Not the way man feels when confronted with risk or that man is still happiest when physically threatened. Risk is essential to man. A lack of risk causes measurable permutations in his very makeup.

Unfortunately, in today’s world, physically threatening activity is quite hard to arrange. Previous generations could envelop themselves in auto driving, horseback riding, hunting, airplane flying or the like. Today, of course, the shifting format of civilization has all but eliminated such activities. Yet man’s need for exposure to risk still persists. The question is, how does modern man go about fulfilling that need?

The answer is ridiculously obvious. He does so vicariously by watching street football on television.

A frequently echoed condemnation of street football calls for an end to its viciousness. Many critics hold that the bloodshed and death have a morbidly counterproductive effect on the human psyche. I maintain to the contrary, however, that eliminating the threat of palpable censure from the game would strip it of its foremost psychological emolument. Football fans subconsciously view the game to experience the flavor of danger, to receive an essential exposure to the risk they so desperately crave for their physical and mental well-being.