Football is Killing People

It seems pretty clear that there is no way to play football without really awful damage to the humans playing the game. We always have been aware that most NFL players spend their retirement in pain, often crippled with orthopedic injuries.

It's now clear that they are also living with severe brain injuries. I can't remember most of the stats I've heard but one is that NFL players have four times the rates of ALS and altzheimers of the general population. There are many other bad outcomes and evidence that it does not require a concussion to cause damage.

Football looks to me like this: We are paying grown men to destroy themselves of the field of valor. For our entertainment, we hire young men to go on a field and ruin their bodies and minds. That sort of makes me sick but, I also have a lot of resentment about their whole culture and also am sort of glad to find out that these arrogant, exulted, dimwitted heroes are getting their just deserts.

But then I remember this: Football is the most popular participatory sport by a huge margin. It is played by children and they are getting injured, too. Not only are there the obvious injuries of the occasional child who blows out a knee in high school but, much more importantly, they are banging their tender young brains viciously.

Youth football programs are run by amateurs. They do not have money for good equipment. The players do not have experience to protect themselves.THey actually do get lots of concussions and they get even more sub-concussive smacks on the head whose danger is not well understaood but is thought to be a really bad thing, at least as the number of incidents mounts.

And they are doing it because, in most of the homes in America, people paying their cable provider big bucks (another reason to hate the NFL) so they can watch young men destroy themselves and call them heroes. Fathers excitedly talking to their sons about the admirable qualities of these players.

Imagine if we had a culture where families were watching porn together and telling their daughters that the porn star women were amazingly awesome heroes. If we exulted in their amazing physical performance, their courage in taking on a dozen men, they incredible determination to rise to the peak of their sport. Imagine if we had a culture where we were making heroes of women who were intentionally destroying themselves.

Nobody can doubt that I am basically disgusted by just about everything in modern American culture. From the way people drive to the environment to the fact that we put up with advertising on everything, I think we are idiots and have created a cesspool to live in so I admit I have a jaundiced view.

But I don't think I am being too extreme in thinking that we are doing a terrible thing by supporting an industry of gladiators with a national network that recruits children at a very young age to strive to prove their prowess and willingness to sacrifice so they can reach the ultimate goal of entertaining us by ruining their bodies and their minds.