There is a peculiar sensation that affects many of us this time of year. It’s a combination of butterflies in the stomach and pure adrenaline racing through the muscles. People are going insane and loving it. It is football season, Hotty Toddy.

For me this means itching all week before I can finally get on my red dress and set up my grove tent. As my best friend always says, we have to dress in our best to send our boys off to war. It’s the spirit of the game that gets me going, not necessarily the actual game. If I’m alone when a game is on television, it seems so pointless for me to tune in. I need to be surrounded by friends screaming and cheering. I need the ritual.

But recently, I heard an NPR program that took a critical look at football. It got me thinking about what we are actually doing when we watch a game and support our teams.

To take a step back and analyze the football culture that has been created is a gut-wrenching experience. It’s like finding out that Soylent Green is people or that Bruce Willis is actually dead in the Sixth Sense. Millions of people are getting together to watch players hit and tackle each other, causing serious brain injuries, which makes money for giant corporations. It’s not as wholesome as we like to think it is.

Every year the players are getting bigger and stronger, and we, as a society encourage it, with little thought as to how badly these men are hurting each other. They are slowly killing their opponents and Americans are loving it. Not that we like watching people get hurt, but we do cheer when someone makes a big hit or sacks a quarterback.

What’s even more troublesome is following the money. College athletics and the NFL are pretty corrupt businesses.

The NFL is literally a monopoly. It has dominated its market and may be the greatest monopoly in our nation’s history. Since the AFL and NFL merged there has never been any real competition for the football giant. The NFL has complete control over ticket pricing and merchandizing, in addition to their power over cities that the teams inhabit. Imagine if the Saints threatened to leave New Orleans?

The NFL has gone so far as to receive nonprofit status for tax purposes. Is this not a complete abuse of power and manipulation of the government? The league is a conglomeration of bullies that take advantage of their players as well as the powers that be.

The NFL has been able to actually buy off the hundreds of players that have been victims of brain injuries as a result of their careers. Athletes have become commodities who were never informed about the extreme dangers of their career. They are used and abused by a mega corporation. I would venture to say that if any other major company were causing extreme physical harm to their employees, we would not continue to support them. We would stop buying from the local grocery store if the manager was taking advantage of his employees. But, we still watch with a kind-of blood-thirst for the sport.

College Athletics is not exempt from its own bundle of problems. Finely tuned college athletes are put through the same combat-like abuse as the NFL players; yet lack that million-dollar paycheck at the end. Even worse, they are being completely swindled by university athletics. The young men are brought into a university setting and promised an education or the dangling carrot of an NFL career.

Unfortunately, some of them would never be considered college ready academically under normal circumstances (Not all – I know several who are perfectly capable, but I also know of some that were babied through summer school with the hopes of one day making it big). Some struggle through remedial classes to barely qualify for admission, then are put in the general population of students where they are expected to graduate with a degree while spending their free time practicing for what many would see as a more important endeavor.

What happens if those students are not able to make it to the NFL? What are they left with? Severe physical ailments that have the capability of haunting them down the road. People are making millions off these guys and they don’t see a cent. It’s crazy and terrifying to think about.

Then consider the behavior of football players at both the college and professional levels. The NFL is made up of men who are bred to be violent on the gridiron, and the violence seems to ooze over into real life. Remember Adam Jones who left a man paralyzed at a strip club, Lawrence Taylor who was charged with rape of a 16-year-old call girl, the notorious dog killer Michael Vick or O.J. Simpson who was “not guilty” of murdering his wife and her lover?

Bad behavior can also be seen at the college level. An article was published on NOLA.com last May that reported that about 50 players in the SEC were arrested that year for everything from drug possession to burglary and assault.

I am not trying to condemn all football players. There are several wonderful young men at Ole Miss, whom I’ve had the pleasure of knowing and even more NFL players who are doing great things, all of who should be commended.

I am also not a football hater, but next time we cheer our men off to battle, it may be worth thinking about these issues. Football can be a great sport. I would never say Americans should stop playing; that would be a futile.

What I would like to see is a reformed football program. As a start, we can stop throwing so much money at a corrupt event. Maybe if we all take note and begin to look at the issues we can come up with a solution for our beloved football.

After all, isn’t it more about the adrenaline rush of cheering with friends for your team than it is about watching men break and paralyze each other for some fat cat to profit? Let’s take back our sport. Let’s clean up the game, protect our players and break the monopoly.

Katie Williamson is a news reporter for The Daily Leader. Contact her at katie.williamson@dailyleader.com.