Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.

 

14 September 2014

Fall is the season for cheering brain damage

Millions of Americans will spend this sunny September Sunday watching professional football, some in loud and crowded football stadiums, some in loud and crowded bars, the rest at home where the beer and potato chips are cheaper. Most will pay attention to, and cheer, the violence on the field.

Few will pay attention to recent news reports on the dark side of the game, reports on the players who beat women and children, reports on the players who end up with scrambled brains from the hits they took.

Running back Ray Rice beat his girlfriend unconscious in an elevator. She married him anyway, which was stupid, and now defends him, which is even stupider. Another running back, Adrian Peterson, beat his son with a tree branch. Peterson called what he did a “whooping.” The grand jury that indicted him called it child abuse.

These are hardly the worst off-field incidents involving professional football players. The game attracts immensely strong men for whom violence is a way of life, and for whom football is a way of earning millions and sometimes a way of escaping a life that would have led to prison for lowbrow crimes. A lot of fans and coaches and educators believe that football builds character. Actually, it builds characters and rewards and reinforces behavior that can lead to the slammer.

Equally appalling is the physical toll the sport takes on those playing it. According to attorneys representing ex-players, three in ten former NFL players will develop serious neurological disorders long before they become old men. Indeed, because of those disorders, some won’t become old men. And those who become old, and become old with their brains intact, are candidates for early knee replacements and other treatments for the injuries they suffered on the field to entertain millions of cheering, violence loving fans.

Professional basketball leaves players with wrecked knees and ankles, but usually not with concussion addled brains. Major league baseball also is hard on knees and ankles, and especially hard on the elbows of pitchers who throw too hard for too long, but does not leave 30 percent of its players with damaged brains. As for hockey, I’ve always thought it requires brain damage just to play or like the game, so who knows how many brains are destroyed by a sport in which the main activity is fighting. And don’t get me started on soccer, which hurts heads, hurts knees, is known for players who bite their adversaries, and is mostly running without scoring. But football is by far the most dangerous team sport.

Football venerates violence and injures its players. The longer one plays, the greater the risks of terrible brain damage and a shorter than normal life. The impacts of the injuries are cumulative, and they begin when young men make or receive their first tackle. The costs are known and awful. Yet the stadiums fill every weekend, the fans cheer, and the brains of the players suffer more damage. What does it say about the American people that they so love a sport they know is so dangerous?