The sport's incredible popularity has turned players into national celebrities and has made their mental and physical deterioration front-page news. In 2012, the former All-Pro linebacker Junior Seau killed himself. The autopsy confirmed that he had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., the cause of the dementia that is increasingly prevalent among former players. A whole new crop of retired stars, including Tony Dorsett and Brett Favre, are just beginning to report symptoms like memory loss and depression.

There are two basic rationalizations for fans like myself. The first is that the N.F.L. is working hard to make the game safer, which is flimsy at best. The league spent years denying that the game was causing neurological damage. Now that the medical evidence is incontrovertible, it has sought to reduce high-speed collisions, fining defenders for helmet-to-helmet hits and other flagrantly violent play. Its most significant response has been to offer $765 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by more than 4,500 former players, but a judge recently blocked the settlement. It simply wasn't enough money.

The second argument is that players choose to incur the game's risks and are lavishly compensated for doing so. This is technically true. N.F.L. players are members of an elite fraternity that knowingly places self-sacrifice, valor and machismo above ethical or medical common sense. But most start out as kids with limited options. They may love football for its inherent virtues. But they also quickly come to see the game as a path to glory and riches. These rewards aren't inherent. They arise from a culture of fandom that views players as valuable only so long as they can perform.

But if I'm completely honest about my misgivings, it's not just that the N.F.L. is a negligent employer. It's how our worship of the game has blinded us to its pathologies.

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Pro sports are, by definition, monetized arenas for hypermasculinity. Football is nowhere near as overtly vicious as, say, boxing. But it is the one sport that most faithfully recreates our childhood fantasies of war as a winnable contest.

Over the past 12 years, as Americans have sought a distraction from the moral incoherence of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the game has served as a loyal and satisfying proxy. It has become an acceptable way of experiencing our savage impulses, the cultural lodestar when it comes to consuming violence. What differentiates it from the glut of bloody films and video games we devour is our awareness that the violence in football, and the toll of that violence, is real.