Offensive Play Essay

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Summary of “Offensive Play” In the article “Offensive Play” by Malcolm Gladwell, the idea that dogfighting and high contact sports are not so different is presented. It is a thought provoking article that investigates the integrity of high contact sports. Through out the article Gladwell covers topics involving football, dogfighting, and science. Gladwell uses personal anecdotes from retired NFL players, professional opinions from respected people in various related fields of study, and a story of one NFL player’s troubles with the law. We are first introduced to Kyle Turley, an ex-professional football who was an offensive lineman for many different teams. After passing out at a bar in Nashville one night while with his wife, he describes what the experience felt like. I had never passed out like that before, and I started becoming really paranoid. I went into a panic. We get to the emergency room. I started to lose control. My limbs were shaking and I couldn’t speak. I was conscious, but I couldn’t speak the words I wanted to say. (Gladwell 50) Turley goes on to tell us about the multiple big hits he ad been involved in on the football field. After such hits, he would go cross-eyed, get blurry vision, and in one particular case he was knocked unconscious. He described the night he passed out in Nashville as the exact same feeling as being knocked unconscious on the football field. In the next section, Michael Vick is talked about for pleading guilty for his involvement in dogfighting and an extremely graphic description of what dogfights are like is explained in “The Social Milieu Of Dogmen and Dogfights” an article written by sociologists Rhonda Evans and Craig Forsyth. Two dogs are placed in a pit and forced to fight one another, most of the time to the death. “In a dogfight, as soon as one of the dogs ‘turns’-makes a submissive gesture with its head-
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