The last time I went to a pro football game, the Boston Yanks were playing someone or other. That must have been sometime between 1944 and 1948, during that team’s short lifetime.

Not having saved the program, I cannot be more precise about the date or the game itself. To recall in detail a sports event occurring some 60 years ago poses a test I cannot pass.   

My father probably had free tickets, available for a newspaperman like him. The game had to have taken place at Fenway Park, awkwardly pressed into service as a football stadium.

Most likely, I saw the Yanks lose because that is what they did most of the time. In their first year, they won two and lost eight. Improving slightly on this record in the other three years was not enough to preserve the franchise.

Since the era when I attended my last one, I have seen hundreds of professional football games. But all of them have come to me via television. My fandom is entirely at an electronic remove.

To believe Adam Gopnik, that means I am missing a lot of the real drama of the game. Writing in the New Yorker, he claims that we TV fans get too restricted a view of the game. By contrast, if you’re there, you can see the development of dramatic situations rather than just their outcome.

“The real excitement of the game on the field,” he writes, “lies in the sudden moments of frenzied improvisation, most often by the linebackers and especially by the safeties, who on television mainly appear at the end of the play to make a hit or swipe vainly at a pass.”

But Gopnik and his like sit in the press box, not the stands. I have sat in both─though not at pro football games─and can witness to the difference. Those privileged to sit on high do not experience restricted views; grandstand viewers often do.

People will stand up in front of you, sometimes at crucial moments, to go out for a beer and a hot dog. Some of that beer may end up on you.

When the game ends, you may have to spend hours getting to your car and navigating your way along the highway, as did friends of mine who recently went to their first Patriots game.

Meantime, however distorted my view, I am enjoying the game in the comfort of my favorite rocking chair. Most important, I am free to pursue other pleasures all the while. I would never sit in front of a TV sports event without a book, magazine, or puzzle to occupy the many breaks in the action.

For fear this behavior seem eccentric, let me cite some statistics. Three years ago, Richard Sandomir, a New York Times writer, compared the amount of actual playing time in a televised college bowl game and the time when the football was not in play.

The game lasted more than three hours; only 7.3 percent of that time was given to actual play. That means a mere 16 minutes and 28 seconds went to football action. During this bowl game, there were 79 commercials and 35 promotions for upcoming programs.

Admittedly, pro games are shorter than postseason college games, but much of the television time devoted to watching the pros does not go into football itself.

However, even comfortably settled before the TV screen, I do not qualify as an untroubled fan. What bothers me is my implicit endorsement of a system that I consider morally dubious.

The sports page last week featured a lineman for the Philadelphia Eagles who has successfully lowered his weight from 397 pounds to a mere 335. The writer praises the player for this achievement.

A system that pressures people to beef up their bodies to even the lower figure strikes me as less than ethical. For young men to fatten themselves like this cannot be good for their health.

And this practice, commonly begun in college if not in high school, has made  injuries a standard part of the game.

How can you be knocked on your head by a 300-pound-plus lineman running at full speed without suffering physical trauma? Or how can such a behemoth land on your leg and not cause you serious injury?

Those who have retired from the game, some after only a year or so, will carry their injuries with them for the rest of their lives. Rare is the footballer who does not have knee problems or other disabling conditions.

Prospective players are confronted with a devil’s bargain. You sell out to the demands for bulk and you reap rewards, but, very likely, you pay for them for the rest of your days.

As of this writing, the Patriots prepare to face the San Diego Chargers, the team with the best record in the league. I will be rooting for the Patriots, in comfort but not without misgivings.

Richard Griffin