I think this is just another cult technique, not a sincere belief that football is bad. This is a classic dub tactic--take something that's popular and fun, and make it wrong. This creates divisions within the org--the weak and the obedient. The weak are pressured to become one of the obedient ones, and the obedient ones receive in-group social rewards.
To those who haven't been familiar with the org over the decades, this seems unique. Those of us who've seen it for decades know otherwise. In the 70s it was the YMCA and disco. In the 80s it was skinny ties, Pac Man, dancing in any form, and pretty much all popular music. In the 90s it was baggy pants and pencil skirts.
- TACTIC 2
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Establish control over the person's social environment, time and sources of social support by a system of often-excessive rewards and punishments. Social isolation is promoted. Contact with family and friends is abridged, as is contact with persons who do not share group-approved attitudes. Economic and other dependence on the group is fostered.
- ..TACTIC 4
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Make the person re-evaluate the most central aspects of his or her experience of self and prior conduct in negative ways. Efforts are designed to destabilize and undermine the subject's basic consciousness, reality awareness, world view, emotional control and defense mechanisms. The subject is guided to reinterpret his or her life's history and adopt a new version of causality.