Of the San Diego Chargers 1994 Super Bowl team, eight players are dead before the age of 45.
Think about that.
Disturbing.
This one isn't as exact, but I'm not exaggerating:
Almost every month, we hear a tragic story about a former NFL player taking his own life.
Disturbing.
I'm just getting started. And so is the bounty-gate story, which continues to slam down on the New Orleans Saints with more force than any NFL hit you've ever gotten out of your seat about.
Jonathan Vilma, whom I always heard was a classy, hard-working player who did things the right way, offered teammates $10,000 to take out Kurt Warner and/or Brett Favre.
He was far from the only one. Here in Washington, the Redskins are being investigated for a bounty program. They're not the lone other team.
Sickening.
And yet, despite everything that's come out about this troubled league, the American public eats it all up. That is why 365 days a year, we are inundated with NFL chatter. ESPN's Mike & Mike in the Morning radio show doesn't go a day without a segment on some NFL story. I'm not kidding.
There hasn't been a SportsCenter in the last two years devoid of an NFL mention — and there won't be one anytime soon. ESPN now employs more NFL analysts than there are players in the league (slight exaggeration ... slight).
The NFL Draft is on the verge of becoming a national holiday and will be a week, and then a month, before we know it...
There are certain things I love about football, and the NFL in particular. The game takes so much smarts. The average fan has no idea how many schemes and plays each player has to memorize. I certainly can't imagine having to remember all that while lining up across from a guy who wants to rip my head off. And when a play is executive by all 11 guys, it's a beautiful, harmonic thing to watch.
Quarterback is the most difficult position in all of sports, and those at the top of the profession make it look easy. That's incredible, and a sports feat I'll always appreciate.
And then there's the parity. No league has had more of it than the NFL, and it creates some great drama each season and particularly in the playoffs.
But, I'm sorry, that's not enough for me to be able to forgot about football's evils and just sit back as a fan and watch.
Every week, we hear about more and more players involved in lawsuits against the league for not properly protecting them against concussions. Of course, Commissioner Roger Goodell has implemented strict measures to try to prevent players with concussions from playing, but there's nothing he can do from stopping concussions from initially happening (who knows if there's an evolutionary helmet out there that would make a noticeable difference).
As I've learned more about the traumatic effects this injury has on players soon after their careers are complete, I'm turned off. I can't just enjoy the players while they're on my TV screen and forget about them when they retire into a life of shrinking brain size, mental illness and, sadly, sometimes suicide.
Other studies are widespread that simply detail the trauma caused by repetitive hitting from football — not even to the head. Again, this leads to players losing their minds after the glory days are over.
Am I boycotting the NFL? Am I going to stop watching football completely?
No. Absolutely not. I'm too big of a sports fan, too much of a lurch for drama, to do that. But now I watch and see the game through a different lens. I cringe each time I see a huge hit (often now illegal). I wonder how that hit might affect that player 10, 12 or 15 years from now. And I wonder how many of those hits were, just a few years ago, ordered up through bribery by the other team.
It's America's most popular sports league. And in the past 12 months, it has survived a protracted work stoppage, a bounty scandal (still ongoing), an increasing number of former player lawsuits and tragic deaths.
It dominates our airwaves.
But these days, I usually change the channel or hit mute.
It's simply too much for me to stomach.
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