The Mises Institute Blog recently published a similar sentiment to this. This was originally published on this site on August 15, 2005. 
My high school didn't have a football team. I'm certain that I would have made a good running back. The loss of a future college or NFL career didn't seem so striking when in all likelihood I wouldn't make it anyway and a job was a certainty with a degree. Current advocates for a team are passionate in their quest. If I'm required to pay property taxes to pay for other children's education, does that include their entertainment too ? After all, couldn't a private club suffice for those so inclined ? Teaching every child the three R's is one thing, discriminating against them based on ability and talent is down right mean. Jock culture sucks, no matter how good you are, ask Ricky Williams. No matter how good you are, you must conform in order to function as a team.
To promote their pro football package, DirectTV has a really annoying commercial. Your typical middle age suburban slob starts singing in a Broadway chorus-like production as old and current players feed his frenzy for the Sunday afternoon activity. As a self-employed person who works on Saturdays, has an old house and prefers a pick-up game anyway, this has no appeal to me. Half-heartedly following the Vikings the last decade, after Gary Anderson missed that field goal and Randy Moss wouldn't go away, I gave up. Having seen the Red Sox win a World Series, the simple childhood attachment has been lost for professional sports. So when an earnest parent talks of a denial of opportunity when it comes to sports funding, one wonders if they understand what the opportunity cost is to me, if my taxes support a blatantly biased endeavor.
Banning football is not such a whacky or unprecedented idea. Teddy Roosevelt considered it in an effort to change the rules for a safer game. Despite voluntary rule changes, 33 players died in 1908 alone. King Edward III, England 1349, felt the game distracted from the sovereign's need for more archers just after the Plague. Between 1324 and 1667, football was banned in England alone by more than 30 royal and local laws. The inconvenience that this leisure presents to the State could be solved by a simple ban based on the health and welfare of the community. Certainly there's a safety politician or a overly zealous family values politician from either the donkeys or the elephants that could unconscionably introduce such legislation. Certainly the federal powers to be could wrest the decision away from local school boards with the snap of their fingers. Hooligans help too.
Think of the results, fathers could spend time with their kids on Sunday afternoon. Perhaps playing a game themselves. Young athletes could train for military service rather than sporting careers that used to entertain all those who couldn't make the team. Schools all over the country would realize the inherent injustice of making a man work another hour so another man's child could play a game. With the exception of The Longest Yard, have you ever seen a football movie that wasn't rife with simplistic emotions of heroism and pluck ? I'll punt, pass and run with any group on the field despite the imminent approach of the age of forty, but do I have to work on Saturdays so some lard-ass can sit on his couch on Sunday and dream about putting his kid through college with my tax dollars ?