The "day the music died" for my low-profile journey writing about football was October 22, 1989. After that day's otherwise unremarkable game between the San Francisco 49ers and the New England Patriots at Stanford Stadium outside Palo Alto, California - part of my covering Joe Montana for a New York Times Magazine cover story -it became no longer possible to consume the sport without a core cringe. Early on, a hard-hitting 49ers safety named Jeff Fuller took down the Patriots' running back, John Stephens. Fuller either used poor tackling technique by leading with his head instead of his shoulder - or, as participants and observers have come to articulate to a fare thee well, the speed and territorial demands of this sport don't allow the time for textbook form on every play. The players' helmets collided head-on. In the kind of aftermath serially captured in the 1975 dystopian movie Rollerball , Fuller was the one who didn't get up. He was partially paralyzed. He'd never again have full use of his right arm.

A second disturbing sight stemmed from a decision to redesign procedures after an earthquake five days earlier closed down the 49ers' stadium, Candlestick Park. At Stanford Stadium, the print media writers had to be herded down from the press box to the sideline with about five minutes left in the fourth quarter, setting us up for a quicker hop to the locker rooms for timely postgame interviews. The game was a blowout win for the 49ers. But in football there's no such thing as "garbage time"; there's no playing at half-speed, even after the rout is on, since almost every block and tackle, by definition, has a baseline of violent contact, often from a peculiar angle. Indeed, according to the creed of these athletes, easing up can be the most dangerous formula of all for injury, as well - relaxing best practices might confuse muscle memory and leave you more vulnerable rather than less. It bothered me to watch so intimately the inexorable, primitive cycle of the gridiron play out in the meaningless last minutes of a one-sided game - snap the ball; the equivalent of half a dozen car crashes in a few seconds; huddle up and do it again. The capper came when the 49ers' running back Roger Craig swept left end and into the usual chaotic pile out of bounds. This scrap heap of hulking male humanity landed perhaps seven feet away from me.

The robotic pornography of the violence was unsettling in a way that, as a fan or journalist, I'd never before processed quite so intimately. In the locker room, while I was chatting with players, Mike Holgren (later the Super Bowl-winning head coach for Brett Favre's Green Bay Packers) tapped my shoulder to say hello. Holmgren had given me a lengthy interview for my Montana article. Shaking my head, I said to Holmgren, "That Jeff Fuller play - that was scary." Holmgren replied, "They're all scary.".