It's the final Sunday of the 2013 regular season, and I've dragged Mom and Dad in front of the TV. OK, maybe Mom only came downstairs because '60 Minutes' comes on after the game, but that's not the point. I sit on the edge of the same futon that's occupied my parents' Ann Arbor basement for seemingly an eternity, transfixed by the action on the 32-inch LCD screen in front of me.
I practically announce the action as Kansas City converts a crucial third down, informing Mom — not that she cares — that the Chief will now be able to run the clock all the way down before kicking a game-winning field goal that will send the Chargers to the offseason and the Pittsburgh Steelers to the playoffs.
Then improbable happens — as it so often does in this riveting, unpredictable sport. A field goal sails wide right. Overtime! The Chargers fake a punt at their own 30-yard line and get the first down ... barely. San Diego wins. Steelers fans lose their minds.
I only see half the plays in overtime, though, because I'm driving Mom and Dad crazy with a serious thumb workout — switching back and forth between the Chargers game and the Bears-Packers winner-take-all affair on Fox.
Green Bay converts a fourth-down to save its season. Green Bay faces another fourth down. Aaron Rodgers, arguably the sport's best player, evades a strong Bears pass rush, keeps his eyes upfield, and throws a perfect, spiraling ball into the hands of Randall Cobb. Touchdown Green Bay! Packers win! (after a last-ditch Bears Hail Mary is unsuccessful).
How can you not love that? Is there a more entertaining and gripping 30 minutes of television?
I think not. I love football!
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Late Sunday night, I think back to that Rodgers pass. Gosh, it was perfect. And he was so coordinated, so attuned to what was going on around him, able to avoid the 300-pound bloodthirsty Bears and calmly, stepping to his left, unleash the impeccable ball.
Aaron Rodgers, when healthy, is amazing. But will he always have such a presence of mind? Will his brain always be so healthy, even after retirement when he doesn't have to memorize a playbook and the tendencies of NFL defenses?
"I don't remember my daughter playing soccer, playing youth soccer, one summer. I don't remember that. I got a pretty good memory, and I have a tendency like we all do to say, 'Where are my glasses?' and they're on your head. This was pretty shocking to me that I couldn't remember my daughter playing youth soccer, just one summer, I think. I remember her playing basketball, I remember her playing volleyball, so I kind of think maybe she only played a game or two. I think she played eight. So that's a little bit scary to me."
"For the first time in 44 years, that put a little fear in me."
-- Brett Favre, 44 years old
Favre, now that he's officially retired, is no longer in the American public's spotlight. But he's still relatively young. And he's a bit scared that the 321-game playing streak we all glorified and we're in awe of during his playing days may now be having adverse effects on his health — symptoms such as memory loss that he can't control and have been linked to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a disease that has been found in the brains of several former athletes who suffered repeated hits to the head during their careers.
Could Rodgers, seemingly invincible on Sunday, end up vulnerable like Favre in his mid-40s? It's doubtful, but possible. After all, what you see on your television screen on Sundays is no representation of the damage the sport of football has on its athletes, especially at the highest level.
This was summed up perfectly by former player Nate Jackson in his tell-all book about life in the NFL, 'Slow Getting Up.'
“Consuming the product through a television screen, at a safe distance, dehumanizes the athlete and makes his pain unreal. The more you watch it, the less real it becomes, until the players are nothing more than pixelated video game characters to be bartered and traded.”
This is why football is still, overwhelmingly, America's favorite sport. This is why millions of Americans plan their Sunday afternoons and nights around huddling in front of the television, drinking beers, eating snacks, making chili, and watching figures on the screen do extraordinary things.
We cringe when there's a 'big hit,' and clasp our hands together in prayer when a player is taken off the field on a stretcher. Ten minutes later, that's forgotten; the next big play is about to happen, and the fallen player's replacement has a job to do. We've moved on. We live in the moment.
We don't see the injections of Toradol hundreds of players take before every game just to survive the three hours pain-free — before it returns to make them miserable Sunday night and into Monday, and maybe Tuesday. If only the average fan saw what occurs in an NFL training room to get players ready to batter their bodies every Sunday, maybe football wouldn't be so popular.
Or maybe the American public simply doesn't care. Football is just entertainment after all, right?
— Nate Jackson, 'Slow Getting Up'
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I've always been a football guy.
Growing up, I attended a Waldorf K-8 school. Sports weren't emphasized. That didn't stop my classmates and I from playing football during almost all of our recesses. At first, we'd play two-hand touch; as we got older, tackling was introduced.
In grade school, I learned about button-hooks, fades, flags, comebacks, quick slants and more.
When my family moved across from Hunt Park in Ann Arbor, my Dad and I would walk across the street before every Michigan football game to predict who would win. It didn't matter if it was mid-November and the temperature was in the 20s — we would give each team four downs, and Dad would throw patterns to me down and around the trees that dotted the hillside to try to reach the end zone (also indicated by a tree).
Finally, we'd decide it was the last possession or each team got the ball once more, only because the real Michigan game — if a home game, just a mile from our house — was starting.
On Sundays, my parents knew not to bother me. I was usually glued to our 20-inch, rounded TV screen. First I'd watch the Detroit Lions, and they'd often let me down (as any Lions fan can attest they still do). I'll never forget the time I almost threw something at the screen (I can't remember what) when Johnny Morton or a receiver I can't remember dropped a pass.
I wasn't just a fan of teams, though. I was a fan of the game. When the 4:15 (or now 4:25) games came on, I'd be back in the basement, especially if it was a game with playoff implications. Mom would inevitably call down around 6:30pm that dinner was ready; she knew what my response would always be — "I'm watching the game!"
My birthday is Christmas Eve and my family always goes out to dinner at an Ann Arbor restaurant. One year, it was an NFL Sunday. We went to Outback Steakhouse. Before we sat down, I insisted in sitting at the bar to watch the end of the Cincinnati-Denver game because it carried playoff implications.
Who does that?
On Mondays, immediately upon returning from school, I would open the Ann Arbor News sports section to the NFL page and browse the standings and box scores (and this was before my fantasy football days). I would analyze internally teams' playoff chances and look ahead to the following week's schedule.
This didn't change during my days at Albion College. I refused to miss games. If my fraternity brothers were going out to eat, I stayed behind to watch the end of the late-afternoon game. One year when they changed the channel to the Lingerie Bowl during the Super Bowl, I almost blew a gasket.
My love of football, and its drama, and its strategies, and its brilliance didn't wane then. And it stayed strong during my first two years out of college in Durham, NC. And my first few years living in Washington, DC. In each place, as my friends got to know me, they realized inviting me to a Sunday dinner during the fall was fruitless. I'd be watching football.
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I have a hard time pinning down when I began viewing the NFL — and, really, football as a whole — through a critical lens, but it wasn't too long ago. One, maybe two years. My change in thinking has been helped by the mainstream media attention that has finally been given to the myriad issues the sport faces, but especially brain damage that is caused by concussions and CTE.
Did you know that:
- Autopsies of more than 50 former NFL players showed signs of CTE
- At least seven former NFL players who were later found to have had CTE committed suicide
- While CTE can't currently be diagnosed in a living human, its signs (depression, memory loss, disorientation, violence, hopelessness, suicidal thoughts) are evident in many former living players, including Hall of Famer Tony Dorsett, who often forgets where he's driving on the highway
"I'm just hoping and praying I can find a way to cut it off at the pass." — Tony Dorsett, 59
Did you know that:
These are just a handful of examples taken from hundreds of cases of former football players who are literally losing their minds. For some of them, the symptoms are severe (suicide); for others, they're bad (a scary level of forgetfulness); for others, at least at a young age, they're minor inconveniences (Favre's case).
Add them all up, and that's why I have a hard time stomaching the sport of football. I can't go a few weeks without hearing about a new case of CTE, a former player saying they can't remember where they're driving, or — the worst — a suicide.
What do you do when a player lands a hit that rattles his opponent's helmet? I used to get pumped up and excited, but not anymore. Now I think about that player's brain, which is rattling inside his skull. It might turn out to be OK, or it might already be deteriorating.
Today, especially after the documentary and book, the information connecting playing football and brain injuries is ubiquitous. There are new articles every week, new disclosures of former players showing signs of CTE. But go back a decade, or even five years, and this was all under the surface — swept there by the NFL.
Meanwhile, the league, and the bogus committee, released innocuous reports about the number of concussions players suffered — at least the documented ones; there are hundreds more — and developed literature about the risks of playing football and taking hits to the head.
Nothing, of course, noted the link I've now mentioned a dozen times.
So when a friend gives that answer about players knowing the dangers, I disagree. Yes, they were aware of football being a violent sport. But unless they dug deep — and who wants to do that when you've got a dense playbook to learn, a non-guaranteed contract to earn! — they wouldn't have known what the concussions potentially added up to.
Instead, players were ingrained in the NFL's culture, which is so well explained in Jackson's honest, forthcoming and unbiased account of life in the league. Basically, the mantra is this: If you can walk, you play. If it takes Toradol shots before every game, so be it. If you're concussed, get checked out, "remove the cobwebs" (as broadcasters would always say), and get back on the field.
Otherwise, it's next man up. Did I mention the non-guaranteed contracts?
He was just a few blessed hours from having his leg amputated. He played games, plural, with a hidden and taped catheter running from his armpit to his heart. His calf was oozing blood for so many months, from September of one year to February of another, that he had to have the equivalent of a drain installed. This is a story of the private pain endured in pursuit of public glory, just one man’s broken body on a battlefield littered with thousands of them.
— Dan Le Batard, Miami Herald column about former player Jason Taylor
Did you know that:
- Former Denver Bronco Karl Mecklenburg takes a photo of the front of his hotel every morning so he can find his way back to it at night.
- Former San Diego Chargers great Junior Seau shot himself in the chest when committing suicide; this allowed his brain to be studied for CTE, which it had. He's far from the first former player to do this.
- Former Chicago Bears quarterback Jim McMahon, 54, often forgets what he's doing or what he just said or did.
These are just a handful of examples taken from hundreds of cases of former football players who are literally losing their minds. For some of them, the symptoms are severe (suicide); for others, they're bad (a scary level of forgetfulness); for others, at least at a young age, they're minor inconveniences (Favre's case).
Add them all up, and that's why I have a hard time stomaching the sport of football. I can't go a few weeks without hearing about a new case of CTE, a former player saying they can't remember where they're driving, or — the worst — a suicide.
What do you do when a player lands a hit that rattles his opponent's helmet? I used to get pumped up and excited, but not anymore. Now I think about that player's brain, which is rattling inside his skull. It might turn out to be OK, or it might already be deteriorating.
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Whenever I bring up the issue of brain damage in football players to my sports-loving friends, there's a common retort: "Yeah, well, they choose to play football."
They're right, of course. No player in the NFL is forced to play the sport. Just from watching a game on TV, they know what they're getting into at a young age. They see the big hits, they see the dozens of injuries that happen during a given game. Heck, just from playing fantasy football it's easy to realize how violent professional football is based on how often you need to change your lineup. Next man up!
But what most football-loving Americans don't realize is that these players have been misled. By their own league. Despite mountains of evidence by the United States' most established and well-respected neurologists, to this day the National Football League denies the undisputed fact that there is a very clear link between playing football and brain damage.
For the past 20 years, the league has done everything in its power — and it is very powerful — to silence those who have proven the link. This is why the $765 million settlement of a lawsuit brought by 4,500 former players was a huge win for the league, which rakes in more than $9 billion annually — and is aiming for $25 billion by 2027 — and is the most lucrative sports entity in the world. It avoided months upon months of litigation under the public eye.
Since the early 1990s, when stories began reaching the surface about concussions, the NFL has used all its resources — similar to Big Tobacco — to deny what neurologists were proving. The league went as far to create the Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee in 1994, led by a rheumatologist with zero — zilch, nada — experience in examining brains.
I won't go into all the details, but they're all laid out in thick, objective facts in the outstanding book 'League of Denial' and the PBS 'Frontline' documentary 'League of Denial: The NFL's Concussion Crisis.' In summary, the committee refuted all the emerging science that was laid bare beginning in the late 1990s and gained momentum after Mike Webster's brain — following his 2002 suicide — was the first to be found with CTE by Pittsburgh forensic pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu. Until the last few years, even, players were routinely sent back on the playing field after suffering concussions.
I won't go into all the details, but they're all laid out in thick, objective facts in the outstanding book 'League of Denial' and the PBS 'Frontline' documentary 'League of Denial: The NFL's Concussion Crisis.' In summary, the committee refuted all the emerging science that was laid bare beginning in the late 1990s and gained momentum after Mike Webster's brain — following his 2002 suicide — was the first to be found with CTE by Pittsburgh forensic pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu. Until the last few years, even, players were routinely sent back on the playing field after suffering concussions.
Today, especially after the documentary and book, the information connecting playing football and brain injuries is ubiquitous. There are new articles every week, new disclosures of former players showing signs of CTE. But go back a decade, or even five years, and this was all under the surface — swept there by the NFL.
Meanwhile, the league, and the bogus committee, released innocuous reports about the number of concussions players suffered — at least the documented ones; there are hundreds more — and developed literature about the risks of playing football and taking hits to the head.
Nothing, of course, noted the link I've now mentioned a dozen times.
So when a friend gives that answer about players knowing the dangers, I disagree. Yes, they were aware of football being a violent sport. But unless they dug deep — and who wants to do that when you've got a dense playbook to learn, a non-guaranteed contract to earn! — they wouldn't have known what the concussions potentially added up to.
Instead, players were ingrained in the NFL's culture, which is so well explained in Jackson's honest, forthcoming and unbiased account of life in the league. Basically, the mantra is this: If you can walk, you play. If it takes Toradol shots before every game, so be it. If you're concussed, get checked out, "remove the cobwebs" (as broadcasters would always say), and get back on the field.
Otherwise, it's next man up. Did I mention the non-guaranteed contracts?
He was just a few blessed hours from having his leg amputated. He played games, plural, with a hidden and taped catheter running from his armpit to his heart. His calf was oozing blood for so many months, from September of one year to February of another, that he had to have the equivalent of a drain installed. This is a story of the private pain endured in pursuit of public glory, just one man’s broken body on a battlefield littered with thousands of them.
— Dan Le Batard, Miami Herald column about former player Jason Taylor
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Of all the statistics about the world's most dangerous team sport, this one from a 2013 Washington Post poll of 500 retired players, to me, is the most revealing:
Wow. These are men who dedicated their lives to the sport. Who sacrificed their bodies for their teammates. Who made all kinds of personal life concessions to play football at the highest level. And the majority of them don't think youth should play football.
That's saying something.
It says that those polled are, finally, well informed of the risks directly linked to their former sport. Perhaps they're also aware of the recommendation made by Dr. Robert Cantu — one of the leading neurosurgeons and researchers of brain trauma in former football players — that no child under the age of 14 should play tackle football. Period.
Cantu, one of the many scientists who has studied the effect of head injuries since Webster's 2002 death, made such a claim in 2012. This past fall, not only was it publicized that Pop Warner participation from 2010-12 was down across the country, but an NFL-funded report — yes, the league is doing everything expect acknowledge the aforementioned link — revealed that high school football players are twice as likely as college players to suffer a brain injury.
Worse than that, consider the six documented deaths from football collisions at the high school level in 2013. These five summaries (one death not included) are taken directly from this Nov. 15 BuzzFeed article:
- 17-year-old Jaleel Gipson of Farmerville, La. died in May from a broken back suffered during what coaches called a “textbook” tackle.
- 16-year-old De’Antre Turman of College Park, Ga. died during a preseason scrimmage in August, breaking his neck during a tackle. His uncle told the local CBS affiliate in Atlanta that it was “a regular hit that he’s made 1,000 times.”
- 16-year-old Damon Janes of Brocton, N.Y. died in September after a helmet-to-helmet hit in a game. He staggered to his feet but collapsed once he reached the sidelines. Three days later, he was dead. His teammates took a vote and agreed to forfeit the rest of the season.
- 17-year-old Dylan Jeffries of Lost Creek, W. Va., died in October from injuries sustained during a game on Sept. 27. He was rushed to the local hospital with a blood clot in his brain and put into a medically induced coma. He died less than two weeks later.
- 17-year-old Chad Stover of Tipton, Mo. died just yesterday after being taken off life support for brain injuries suffered during a game on Oct. 31.
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And yet, the football machine rolls along, seemingly invincible and immune to any and all attacks made on the sport. Sure, youth football participation is down, but coaches are embracing teaching 'Head Up' tackling — ask any high-level player if keeping your head up every play and surviving a football season is feasible. They'll laugh. There's also the fact that in some football casualties, that proper technique was being used.
There's never been more scrutiny around the sport's safety, yet college football and the NFL have never been more popular. The top TV program in the United States? Sunday Night Football. A stinker of a Monday Night Football game drew a larger audience than Game 1 of the World Series. The Philadelphia-Washington Week 1 MNF game had the most viewers ever for a Week 1 MNF game.
And I already mentioned the staggering — and increasing — revenue.
In a way, it all makes sense. Being a football fan is easy. It's not inconvenient (unless you're an active person on Sundays). The season is short. The games are always at 1pm, 4:15/25pm and 8:20pm. It sure is simpler than trying to follow an 82-game NBA season, and let's not even get into the 162-game baseball slog.
Every game matters. In a 16-contest season, a couple losses in a row could doom your team's chances of winning the division or making the playoffs.
Oh, and there's fantasy football. It's kind of popular — and gaining more participants by the season.
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And the top reason football is still, by far, America's No. 1 sport: It's incredibly entertaining.
I think back to Oct. 6 of this past fall. In August, I had told myself I wouldn't watch the NFL this season. I'd read enough — the incredible volume of injuries, the suicides, the arrests, the ridiculous locker room culture that would later come under the spotlight thanks to Richie Incognito (all summed up by a much better and award-winning writer Thomas Boswell).
As I sat in the Jacksonville airport awaiting my flight back to Washington, DC, from a wedding, I could hear the volume from every TV in the terminal — the Peyton Manning-led Broncos were playing America's team, the Cowboys. And they were engaged in a classic offensive shootout. I checked the score on my phone. The points were adding up, as the game headed to the fourth quarter. Still, I stayed stuck to my seat and consumed myself with a few episodes of 'Breaking Bad.'
It ended up being a tremendous game and finish, watched by millions. A part of me hated missing it. I felt like I was going through a withdrawal of sorts — my Sunday afternoon thrown in disarray.
But how can I talk about the NFL's denial campaign and football's incredible dangers if I'm endorsing the product by watching it and boosting TV ratings? It doesn't matter if I'm viewing the games through a different, cynical lens. Or if I cringe rather than celebrate each skull-rattling hit. I'm still approving of it.
I liken it to the meat industry. You can talk about how much you love farm animals and how you can't stand the hurting of animals. But if you're buying factory-farmed meat — i.e. 99 percent of what's out there — you're at least indirectly supporting the torturing of chickens, pigs or cows (depending on your preference). Of course, you're not standing inside the butcher factory watching the carnage, much like you're not standing on an NFL sideline witnessing the brutality of professional football.
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And yet, as I write this, I doubt I'll be able to avoid the NFL playoffs. Something tells me I'll be in front of a TV this Saturday and Sunday, once again pulled to the heart-stopping drama and late-game heroics of America's pastime (sorry, baseball).
Even if that's the case, I'll consider this season progress in my goal to not just blindly enjoy the game that's only made feasible by rampant drug use; that shuffles players in and out of lineups and on and off teams like they aren't human; and that in no way, as long as helmets are around, is becoming safer. It wasn't easy, but I watched maybe a cumulative five games during the regular-season, only played in one fantasy football league — and only to stay in touch with college friends — and at least started those conversations with friends, never easy, about the game we all so love.
In turning 30, I also have an ever-increasing number of friends with kids. When I see them, I ask another question: Would you let your kid, whether in Pop Warner or high school, play football when there are so many other sports out there with all of the same benefits of being on a team?
The responses lean toward "yes" but not unanimously. That, to me, is a start. No thanks to the NFL — and despite the soaring ratings — people are getting the message about football's dangers.
They must have healthy brains.
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Good Reads about the NFL, brain injuries and more
This blog was influenced by my personal experiences, but also by tons of reading I've done over the past couple years. First and foremost, I recommend reading 'League of Denial,' but here are several articles (and a book) that have helped inform my view on this topic and freed up my Sunday afternoons during the fall.
