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Football Safety: Why I Broke Up With the Sport

A sportswriter and longtime fan won’t be tuning in anymore. The reasoning behind his decision is a must-read for anyone who loves the game.

By Patrick Hruby from sportsonearth.com

Football Safety: Why I Broke Up With the SportMitchell Layton/Getty ImagesEagles safety Andrew Waters shot himself at 44.
In 2003, the head of the league’s brain-trauma committee, former New York Jets team doctor Elliot Pellman, a rheumatologist, dismissed a study linking multiple concussions with depression among former players. The committee published a paper claiming that concussions were not “serious injuries” and that there was “no evidence” that concussions produced “permanent or cumulative” damage. Independent scientists strongly disagreed, finding fault with the methodology and conclusions.

When forensic pathologist Bennet Omalu, MD, dissected Hall of Fame lineman Mike Webster’s brain and subsequently published a groundbreaking article in the academic journal Neurosurgery concluding that football-related head trauma causes chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a mind-ravaging disease associated with repetitive head trauma, Pellman and two other committee members wrote a letter to the journal to invalidate his research. In fact, it wasn’t until 2010 that the NFL started warning players about a link between concussions and long-term brain damage.

Football hits pull the brain like Silly Putty, stretching and shearing nerve cells.

That was three years after former league concussion-committee cochair Ira Casson told Bernard Goldberg of HBO’s Real Sports that there was no evidence that multiple head injuries increased the risk of depression, dementia, or early-onset Alzheimer’s.

Currently, more than 3,500 former players and surviving family members are suing the NFL, essentially attempting to hold the league liable. I have no idea if the plaintiffs will win. I know they have a moral case. I also know that the various lawsuits—and anyone who cares about football should read a few—make it awfully hard for me to feel good about the sport. It’s also hard to feel good about all the rationalizations that go into being an informed, socially aware football fan:

• Those money-grubbing, ambulance-chasing ex-players knew what they were getting into. Now they’re complaining? Tough luck. Why can’t they just leave football alone?

• OK, fine. They didn’t know. Today’s players do. And they’re fine with the risk. Who am I to feel differently?

• Football is culturally irreplaceable. It teaches important values, like teamwork and self-sacrifice. It gives young men an outlet for aggression.

• You can suffer a concussion driving a car. Or riding a bike. Life is risky. Football is risky. Sure, we should minimize the risk. But doing so is enough to keep on enjoying the sport, right?

But here’s the thing about football, the thing that separates it from everything else, that makes the sport exciting, the thing that’s so hard for me to reconcile: The hits aren’t accidents. They’re pretty much the point.

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Your Comments

  • Daphne Davis

     I like sports. My favorite sport is track and field. I also like basketball. Sylvester Toe Jr. has an older sister, Cassandra. Sylvester Toe Jr. was a boy in my dad’s church. I was born in 1987. My older sister, Elizabeth, was born in 1985. My dad was born on November 23, 1945. Morgan Bruner has an older brother, Thomas. I have an older sister, Elizabeth. Alex Clark has a younger brother, Greyson. Alex Clark was a girl in my church.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Barry-Levy/1091577549 Barry Levy

    Funny thing is that Rugby plays a similar violent game without pads and helmets and nobody is that concerned, and then their is boxing, which has spawned Mixed Martial arts combat, and that is hugely popular.

    So let’s ban 16 oz. soft drinks, and salt, and lets just control everything, and surprise people will still have problems and die.

  • JYK98

    Thank you, Mr. Hruby, for writing this timely article.  I haven’t been able to watch football for years ever since I found out how horrible the lives of ex-players are except for the very few.  Not everyone retires rich, and often many become destitute and unable to work due to football injuries.  And NFL seems content to continue the use-and-discard policy.  Just think of the wasted lives of these young men in the name of sports.

    • http://www.facebook.com/blackprogressivejr Melvin Satterwhite Jr

      They had a choice to engage in this sport and I do not see anyone putting a “gun” to their heads and forcing them to play. You feel for these players but they did know the risk of playing.

  • Dmuellenberg

    If the author doesn’t want to watch football, then that is his right, just like it’s my right to watch or play football if I want to. That’s the definition of a free country. If we try and ban any sport that may cause an injury, then we are talking about every sport. Yes, football is more violent than most, but as the author pointed out, players know the risks involved. I don’t understand how former players can blame the NFL for their injuries when they knew it was a violent sport and injuries are part of the game. Players aren’t playing it just for entertainment, they are playing it for the big money they make, but again, it’s a free country and it’s their choice. 

  • http://www.facebook.com/rudolph.furtado Rudolph Andrew Furtado

    Every sport has its negative aspects which can be detrimental to the sportspersons health .”BOXING” and Mumhammed.Ali have become famous for the ill-eefects of a sport and the same is the case in “AMERICAN FOOTBALL”.Just because a sport is more dangerous than another sport doesn’t mean that it should be banned or boycotted. Isn’t motogp or Formula-1 dangerous?

  • cv

    I feel the same way about boxing. I wish there would be no boxing anymore

  • Bryson’s Nana

    I know first hand what can happen to football players.  My 17 year old brother died from two brain concussions he received while playing high school football when his helmet came off during a pile-up on the field.  He didn’t die right then……he started having very bad headaches about two weeks later.  My mother took him to the doctor.  The doctor misdiagnosed him as having a sinus infection.  Did my brother tell the doctor about the helmet coming off?  That we don’t know because my brother did not want my mother go in with him while he saw the doctor.  Unfortunately, my brother died while in an ambulance on the way to the hospital after collapsing during  a scrimage game on a Saturday morning about two weeks after seeing the doctor.    My brother’s autospy report showed two brain concussions……..one in the back of his head, and one in the front over his left eye.  Had my brother lived, and had he been able to survive the extensive brain surgeries that would have been necessary in 1962, the doctors told my parents he would have been left in a vegetative state.  While all sports carry some degree of danger, I feel that football in one of the most dangerous sports today.  Yes, many improvements have been made to helments, pads, etc.  However, I don’t feel it is safe for the brain to be bounced around in the skulls of the players.  Damage will be done!  Did my son play football while in high school?  No way!  Will my grandson be allowed to play when he is in highschool?  I certainly hope not!