perience their bodies as machines designed to produce entertainment and profits for others rather than feelings of pleasure for themselves. (Coakley, 1998) Meggyesy described this phenomenon when he said:I also realized, paradoxically, how cut off and removed I was from my body. I knew my body more thoroughly than most men are ever able to, but I had used it and thought of it as a machine, a thing that had to be well-oiled, well-fed, and well-taken-care of, to do a specific job. (Meggyesy, 1970, p. 231) Unfortunately, maintaining this “machine” often meant that athletes would use drugs such as amphetamines, barbiturates, steroids, or cortisone injections not for the purpose of treatment and cure, but for the purpose of stimulating the mind and body in order to perform more violently as a professional. (Meggyesy, 1970) The prevalence of these drugs in the NFL could be seen in Meggyesy’s words, “Most NFL trainers do more dealing in these drugs than the average junky.” (Meggyesy, 1970, p. 83)Meggyesy’s coaches also treated athletes as machines because their concern for the well-being of athletes was only to the extent that they could contribute to their primary concern of winning games. For example, while Meggyesy was at Syracuse University, the primary concern of the coaches was to win a national championship by any means possible. This meant that they usually enrolled the athletes in remedial courses to help keep them academically eligible. It also meant providing them with answers to test questions, giving them credit for courses never taken, and getting others to take finals or write term papers for them. In doing this, the athletes were left in a real predicament when their eligibility was complete. Since they could no longer contribute to winning, they were no longer supported by the coaches and were faced with a tough schedule of classes because of all the remedial courses taken. This abandonment ...
