One of the primary reasons for my lack of interest is the corruption, violence, and lack of sportsmanship widely extant today. Given that we are all human, few of us have the confidence to promise that our behavior would be consistently better if we were the athletes. This isn't about judgmentalism. Health and sports are two very different worlds that coexist despite near-diametric sets of values. As sports medicine practitioners, we might believe the two of them mesh, but that is wishful thinking.
Sports is about winning, entertaining, and making money.
Of course we know that, but it's important to return to that fundamental difference to keep changes in sports in context. Those of us who live in the world of sports medicine, in that crucible between the worlds of health and sport, must guard against complacency toward incremental erosion in sports values. It would be foolish to judge all athletes, and I don't want to bring back the days of leather helmets and peach-basket hoops. On the other hand, the XFL has nothing to do with health or even with the values most of us attribute to sports. We who practice sports medicine need to know where we stand in a culture that permits the erosion of athletics.