A violent sport which will leave a lot of people crippled.
by George F. Will
Are you ready for some football? First, however, are you ready for some autopsies?
The opening of the NFL training camps coincided with the closing of the investigation into the April suicide by gunshot of Ray Easterling, 62, an eight-season NFL safety in the 1970s. The autopsy found moderately severe chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), progressive damage to the brain associated with repeated blows to the head. CTE was identified as a major cause of Easterling’s depression and dementia.
In February 2011, Dave Duerson, 50, an 11-year NFL safety, committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest to spare his brain tissue for research, which has found evidence of CTE. Brain tissue of 20-season linebacker Junior Seau, who was 43 when he killed himself the same way in May, is being studied. The NFL launched a mental health hotline developed and operated with the assistance of specialists in suicide prevention.
Football is bigger than ever, in several senses. Bear Bryant’s 1966 undefeated Alabama team had only 19 players who weighed more than 200 pounds. The heaviest weighed 223. The linemen averaged 194. The quarterback weighed 177. Today, many high school teams are much bigger. In 1980, only three NFL players weighed 300 or more pounds. In 2011, according to pro-football-reference.com, there were 352, including three 350-pounders. Thirty-one of the NFL’s 32 offensive lines averaged more than 300.
Various unsurprising studies indicate high early mortality rates among linemen resulting from cardiovascular disease. For all players who play five or more years, life expectancy is less than 60; for linemen it is much less.
[.........]
Not that this has prevented smokers from successfully suing tobacco companies. But, then, smoking is an addiction. Football is just an increasingly guilty pleasure. Might Americans someday feel as queasy enjoying it as sensible people now do watching boxing and wondering how the nation was once enamored of a sport the point of which is brain trauma?
[.......]
Still, football has bigger long-term problems than lawsuits. Football is entertainment in which the audience is expected to delight in gladiatorial action that a growing portion of the audience knows may cause the players degenerative brain disease. Not even football fans, a tribe not known for savoring nuance, can forever block that fact from their excited brains.
Furthermore, in this age of bubble-wrapped children, when parents put helmets on wee tricycle riders, many children are going to be steered away from youth football, diverting the flow of talent to the benefit of other sports.
In the NFL, especially, football is increasingly a spectacle, a game surrounded by manufactured frenzy, on the grass and in the increasingly unpleasant ambiance of the fans in the stands. Football on the field is a three-hour adrenaline-and-testosterone bath. For all its occasional elegance and beauty, it is basically violence for, among other purposes, inflicting intimidating pain. (Seau said his job was “to inflict pain on my opponent and have him quit.”) The New Orleans Saints’ “bounty” system of cash payments to players who knocked opposing players out of games crossed a line distinguishing the essence of the game from the perversion of it. This is, however, an increasingly faint line.
Decades ago, this column lightheartedly called football a mistake because it combines two of the worst features of American life — violence, punctuated by committee meetings, which football calls huddles. Now, however, accumulating evidence about new understandings of the human body — the brain, especially, but not exclusively — compel the conclusion that football is a mistake because the body is not built to absorb, and cannot be adequately modified by training or protected by equipment to absorb, the game’s kinetic energies.
After 18 people died playing football in 1905, even President Theodore Roosevelt, who loved war and gore generally, flinched and forced some rules changes. Today, however, the problem is not the rules; it is the fiction that football can be fixed and still resemble the game fans relish.
Read the rest – Football’s problems with danger on the field isn’t going away
Tags: George F. Will
given the physics, the rules will have to be changed to prevent any hits above the top of the shoulders.
this is one of the unbreakable rules in rugby, the ‘high tackle’ foul is always called as it is a safety measure.
if idiots lead with their head when tackling ejection may have to be the threat.
@ coldwarrior:
I would never let my son play football and Joe Namath said the same thing.
The liberal Effeminates always want to change American (and for that matter, Canadian) Football into an Effeminate Sport!
Macker wrote:
or replace it with that utter bore of a game soccer.
Speranza wrote:
football is religion out here. i was fortunate and was able to play rugby instead, otherwise i would have played football.
there will have to be some rule changes. these guys are too fast and too large to keep getting whacked in the brain pan.
@ coldwarrior:
:puke:
It’s a bit of a conundrum for me; I love football, but you can’t spend more than five minutes around the sport without understanding that there’s likely long-term damage to all parts of the body involved. Even if you eliminate the brutal hits via rule changes, it will still be a contact sport and it would seem that just the constant jostling during a lifetime of playing the game, beginning in early grade school, would have a cumulative effect.
Macker wrote:
Junior Seau and Dave Duerson are unavailable for comment.
coldwarrior wrote:
“Religion” -- that’s rich. You could have been paralyzed playing football like Darryl Stingley (remember him?). Count your blessings you did not play it.
coldwarrior wrote:
With soccer, the action is in the stands and the streets outside the stadium, not on the field.
Yobs Save The Queen!
@ coldwarrior:
@ Speranza:
Yep. “Religion” is what football is in Texas. Even the tiny little burgs in West Texas play. There are some schools that play 7 man ball with most of those players going both ways. I’m glad to have played FB from the 8th grade through my senior year. We played flag FB in the Army and my right knee got whacked. The VA still sends me a monthly stipend for my “heroic” service. At any rate, I sadly agree that changes will have to be made in order to bring down the serious head injuries. I’m actually surprised that we have not yet witnessed a death on the field, but that event is out there lurking.
As I have said before …there are more dangerous jobs with a lot less pay. I don’t know WHY you want football to go flag football. My husband puts his life on the line everyday at work and many others. So what lets not do dangerous jobs because someone might get hurt?
I do feel sorry for those that do get hurt…but there are a lot of un-famous people who are dead or have many injurgies because of their work and oh wait..lets not forget that these men do not retire with millions of money.
Let’s make football all girly then because someone might get hurt.
Oh and yeah a guy who my husband worked with killed himself and his whole family, another had to quit because pulling the wire screwed up his kidneys..another one was electricuted…what make that two were …so yeah there are more dangerous jobs out there than playing football..oh and by the way IT IS THEIR CHOICE TO MAKE A LIVING PLAYING FOOTBALL. CHOICE!!!!
@ huckfunn:
Go in the private sector of dangerous jobs and you will get your wish to see someone die in their line of work.
Speranza wrote:
Good grief want to see my husbands ankle scars from falling and tearing all the muscles???? Yet my husbands continues to work to put food on the table. You are blowing this out of the water.
Name 5 more dangerous jobs out there ? Bet you can’t.
I can name 5 more dangerous jobs.
1. Our soldiers who are in theater being shot at or IED’s
2. Our policemen/women who happen to pull over the wrong person or who go to the wrong call.
3. Our fishermen who put fish on the table or crabs.
4. Our men and women who work on oil platforms.
5. Our men and women who work at petro/chem plants.
(and I didn’t even google this!)
Lily wrote:
What the hell are you talking about? Where did you get that BS from? I love football. All of it. I’m just being realistic. Rush was just talking about this topic. I don’t like it, there will be changes. It’s not my idea.
@ Speranza:
It’s a personal choice.
@ huckfunn:
That comment was not directed to you.
Rodan wrote:
Yes it is and they know the risks.
@ huckfunn:
Don’t have to be ugly. I’m only saying there are more dangerous jobs than playing football.
Lily wrote:
Hey. I wasn’t being ugly. I’m the best looking guy in the house.
Sorry if I jumped the gun. I know there are more dangerous jobs. I was the derrickman on a drilling rig while working my way through college. I was an MP. When I worked as an insurance adjuster I climbed up on about 10 roofs per day. The only one I ever fell off was my own.
@ huckfunn:
LOL! This subject just riles me up because ..my husband works a dangerous job and he doens’t complain. Football is a choice.
{{huck}}
@ Lily:
Back at ya {{Lily}}
Lily wrote:
Football is not a job -- it’s a sport. Jobs are what is necessary.
@ Speranza:
It’s a job…and a sport. Because if they didn’t want to play football well they could use their degrees they earned in College
or they can race cars in that safe sport.
/football players are payed well to do a job .. play football..no one is forcing them.
Lily wrote:
Football is a sport,not a job. It’s like saying I have competitive stress syndrome from typing all day and it is the same occupational hazard as football is. These football players have life spans that are a lot shorter then most and many of them become drooling vegetables. Too many of them are afflicted with brain disorders, memory losses (see former Bears QB Jim McMahon) depression and are barely ambulatory. I saw Joe Namath on TV and he was slurring his speech when he said he would not want his son (if he had one -- he has two daughters) playing football.
huckfunn wrote:
Quite concur. All I want is for folks to be aware of the incredible physical hardships these guys (Earl Campbell can barely walk) have after the cheering has stopped.
I look at it as just another punkification of America. Soon, there will be no risk allowed, no new ideas, no freedom unregulated and only membership in the socialist proletariat as a future for all. It’s a lot further along than most realize.
From federal and state business regulation squeezing entrepreneurs to local code enforcement, parking and traffic infractions to HOAs sucking money out of individuals, there no longer is any individual freedom in America. Think about it.
Rodan wrote:
Some people make foolish choices. If I had the athletic talent I would much rather be a baseball player.
Nick Buonaconti’s son became paralyzed playing High School football.
Lily wrote:
I’d rather be a policeman then a football player.
Lily wrote:
Their degrees in what? Dexter Manley of the Redskins graduated from Oklahoma and it turned out he was illiterate.
@ Speranza:
Know what? My husband doesn’t want our two sons to work where he is at.
Sorry…these guys have made a choice. What is the difference between being payed to play a sport and being payed to do a job? Nothing.
/you and I know we differ very much concerning this.
How many plumbers have bad backs? How many men/women who work at petro-chem plants been exposed to chemicals(my husband was one).
How many cops have died in the line of duty.
These men and women know the risks of their jobs..yet they do it anyway. Sports is no different. It’s a job that they love doing.
I would have an exception if they were forced to compete and play.
You can only name a hand full of football players I can name thousands who have died…our soldiers who were not forced but wanted to defend our country and that is only one area.
@ Lily:
Check out the law suit against the NFL from scores of former players, more then 2,000 actually.
And with that I am done.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/nfl-players-file-lawsuit-league-concussions/story?id=16514359
Speranza wrote:
Really you think they have no where to go but play football? What about coaching? Physical Education. Or Sport Casters…sorry they could get a job …anywhere…they just have to look for it.
@ Speranza:
2000? Yes I am very sorry about this. How many soldiers were killed in the last 10 years?
Speranza wrote:
So would my youngest son and that is what he is a policeman.
Lily wrote:
Half these guys come from poor backgrounds (Dez Bryant’s mom is only 15 years older then he is) and are not exactly well educated. In a sense they are exploited like gladiators were in ancient Rome.
But hey football’s a religion and I don’t want to blaspheme against it so I am going to my regular thread on Blogmoc.
Speranza wrote:
What about all the men and women who put their life on the line and get hurt or worse…and these men and women never had any cheering ever. Un-song hero’s.
@ Speranza:
Really Terry Bradshaw came from a poor family? Payton Manning too?
You are cherry picking.
Poteen wrote:
Excatly. No one is forcing anyone to play football.
Lily wrote:
Half these guys and women who serve in the military come from poor backgrounds too. And?
Lily wrote:
I said many of them, not all of them.
Lily wrote:
You are (no disrespect) comparing apples and oranges. Joining the military is service to your country.
@ Speranza:
I didn’t take it as disrespect. But what about all the other dangerous thing people do? No one is forcing these guys to play football. I don’t want to see them hurt either. But this is their choice and they know they could be hurt. What about my son who is a policeman…no one forced him to go into that field? Driving on the interstate is dangerous…how many people have died in car accidents?
Is that a better comparison?
Rush was talking about this afternoon and he suggested removing the face masks, which makes some sense. The helmets and the face masks give the players a sense of invulnerability, and they are on the outside, but they’re getting scrambled on the inside.
Again, I simply cannot imagine that the probability of brain damage is something that has just recently been discovered. I’ve had seats down by the field at a Saints game and was shocked what these people endure when I watched it up close and personal.
Speranza wrote:
You are assuming that just coming from a poor background makes them stupid. Coming from a poor background doesn’t make a person stupid.
@ MacDuff:
I have been to Saints games too.
I give up …do away with football all together..will that make people happy. I’m sure the atheltes will be just all rainbows and butterflies about it.
@ Lily:
I would be upset. There’s nothing to see on Sundays.
Rodan wrote:
LOL! Am I the only one (and a female at that) that sees this as OMGPONIES a scrap knee or an injury.
When I was a kid I rode motorcycles (certainly not safe and have the scars)….where are the guys on this subject expect the ones that don’t like football?????
The fact is that every one of the men involved at any level of pro or college football work very hard to get to the place where they get to risk the injuries that worry so many. It is their choice, they know the risks the first time a teammate blows out a knee. Usually in HS. It is admittedly a violent and gladiatorial sport,,, but so is driving to the store.
Speranza wrote:
Scores of former player’s lawyers filed the suits. In the last 20 years pro football has made an awful lot of money. They want some of it.
Microsoft got big,, they got sued. Big oil got big,,, they got sued. Big tobacco,,,sued.
Sue away but don’t let government or interest groups regulate or ban anymore freedom.
Ban reality TV.//
@ Poteen:
Excatly evening driving to the store could get you killed.
/especially if you are on the interstate and driving.
Poteen wrote:
It’s arguable that Reality TV damages more brains than football, and I’m not being flippant at all.
Lily wrote:
Hey! I like football (and not that sissy Euro crap)!
@ MacDuff:
MacDuff wrote:
Reality TV isn’t great. Some shows like River Monsters are good. But most aren’t. Oh and Deadlist Catch is also good.
for the record, namath doesn’t slur his speech now that he isn’t a drunk anymore. he was just at our CC and could speak just fine, now that he has rehabbed.
i wonder what killed more brain cells, football or booze?
Speranza wrote:
its ‘religion’.
friday HS football, saturday college ball, church on sunday morning then the steelers.
football should have been in the same sentence as guns and bibles when obama described us as bitter clingers here in western PA.
@ coldwarrior:
You know…booze.
Lily wrote:
naaaaaahhhhh…..
couldn’t be THAT!
@ coldwarrior:
@ MacDuff:
{{MacDuff}}!
MacDuff wrote:
It’s demonstrable. Keep people occupied watching those whose lives are more fucked up than their own,,,, and you can steal their freedom easily.
coldwarrior wrote:
Sex. Joe rarely got blood to his brain.
Poteen wrote:
I keep telling people that I’ll start watching Survivor again when they do a series in ANTARCTICA 8)!