I like football as much as the next guy. I played as a senior in high school and have attended five or six pro games, including home games for the LA Rams, Kansas City Chiefs and San Diego Chargers. I've gone to quite a few major college games, at USC, UCLA, Fresno State, and even one at Syracuse. I've usually attended one or two community college games a season here in Visalia to see the College of the Sequoias Giants. I played in fantasy football leagues for about six years. The last few years I haven't paid much attention to pro games until the playoffs, but I've been a regular for Ohio State games on television and most of the bowl games too. But I'm taking the plunge this year. I will be paying no attention to football.
That's because of the increasing evidence of serious brain injuries associated with football. The massive class action lawsuit and payout by the NFL is the tip of the iceberg. It seems recurrent concussions and resulting dementia have been pretty common and are now coming out in the open. Junior Seau's suicide and donation of his brain to research provided a watershed moment and an undeniable wake up call about what's been going on.
I just can't patronize a sport that is so destructive to people anymore. It's worse than the ruined knees, for brain injury robs a person of who they essentially are, and it doesn't get worse than that. I haven't paid any attention to boxing and am repelled by the anything-goes cage fighting and "mixed martial arts" combats too. That sort of thing is reminiscent to me of the Roman Colosseum, a reversion to primitive bloodletting. But football has a lot of redeeming qualities: the grace of the receivers, the strategy, the teamwork, the cat and mouse of play selection and defensive anticipation. But it's all undone when too many young men become the equivalent of drooling octogenarians in their forties and fifties. I can't countenance my time, attention, support and money going to advance that cause. No game is worth that, and until they find a way to truly protect the brain from that kind of abuse they're just going to have to get along without me.
2 comments:
One of the doctors that monitor LAUSD high school games was quoted as saying in the LA Times a couple of years ago. He said the single biggest thing to reduce the number of head injuries in football would be to eliminate the helmet.
Sounds counterintuitive, but his reasoning, which I agree with, is that boys and men would be less likely to lead with the top of their heads if they didn't have that "protective" barrier on it.
I've played many games of tackle football when I was younger, sans helmets, and the worst injury I ever saw was when one of my friends got a bloody nose and that was because the football hit him in the face, not because he got hit by someone else.
I heard that from a rugby player once. It might be true, or maybe not. What happens when a 300-pounder falls on your head in a pileup or two guys crack helmetless heads together diving for a fumble? I'm sure we'll never find out either way because it is, as you say, so counterintuitive.
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