A critical examination of contemporary culture, history, and journalism.

October 22, 2015

By Doctor Comrade

The Green Bay Packers line up against the Chicago Bears, October 7, 2007.

For most of my life, I have been a fan of the Chicago Bears of the National Football League. I have a deep intergenerational connection to the Bears, and watching football with my dad was definitely a source of familial bonding. But in recent years, I have had a strained relationship with football, and this season, I have decided that I can no longer support the NFL or watch football.

The Will Smith movie Concussion is set to be released this holiday season. The movie dramatizes the life of Dr. Bennet Omalu, who attempted to publicize the effects of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in football players.Concussion is just one effort in recent years to draw attention to the fact that NFL players sustain massive head trauma every time they participate in a football game.

New studies show that the longer people play football, the higher risk they have of developing CTE. One study found that as many as 96.2% of former NFL players had CTE. Even if that is the upper statistical limit for the number of players with CTE, we must conclude that football is a dangerous sport with terrifying effects on the health of its players. The NFL denied these allegations for decades, and it funded studies that claimed that “no NFL player” had ever developed chronic brain damage.

There are also anecdotal examples of players suffering from CTE. Two terrible cases from 2012 paint a grim picture of CTE’s possible effects: Jovan Belcher and Junior Seau. Belcher killed his girlfriend and then himself; Seau committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest. Belcher and Seau both had CTE, and the disease is linked to impaired judgment, impaired impulse control, depression, and dementia.

Of course, Seau and Belcher are isolated incidents, and having CTE certainly doesn’t mean that NFL players will become homicidally depressed. But consider Hall of Fame running back Tony Dorsett’s story: he says he is prone to violent outbursts around his family and he routinely gets lost driving in his hometown. Despite all being younger than 60 years old, these men felt the effects of a chronic and debilitating disease that affects mental acuity and cognition in some fundamentally dangerous ways.

But CTE is not the only long-term health effect felt by football players. Youth football players’ brain development may be permanently altered by repeated blows to the head, including impaired cognitive function and depression. Football is the only sport in which young men regularly die from injuries. The average lifespan of retired NFL players is 20 years shorter than their peers, and NFL players suffer from Alzheimer’s at a 37% higher rate.

I can no longer support this sport because of its detrimental effects on its participants.

The NFL benefits from a free development system that grooms future talent: football is part of a system that deludes young men into sacrificing their bodies for the potential of multi-million dollar contracts. NFL youth programs deceive young men across the country, from Pee-Wee Football to collegiate athletics, convincing them that football might provide not only life-changing money, but also stable male role models, academic success, and leadership skills. Even if you never make it to the NFL, the league claims that football can pave the way for future success.

According to the NCAA, only 6.5% of high school senior football players go on to play college football, and only 1.6% of college football players are signed by an NFL team. In total, only 0.08%—8 out of 10,000—of those high school seniors will be drafted into the NFL. Young men may be tricked into believing that football—and by extension, sacrificing their health—will pay off for them in the long term. The effects on African-American and Polynesian football players, who often come from impoverished families, are even more pronounced.

Football appeals to young men who grow up in poverty. Football may be seen as a way to escape poverty and make a better life (sports in general are often portrayed in this fashion). The result is a sport that illuminates America’s system of economic class, with men from the lower classes often turning to sports because their options are constrained by economic inequality.

Goodell’s continued intransigence towards the concussion issue has also been a mark against him. The NFL, and recently under Goodell’s leadership, believed it would be more profitable to deny decades of science rather than implement strategies to combat the problem. Dementia pugilistica was first described in 1928. In recent years, the NFL has changed numerous rules to combat head injuries, but the fact is that high-speed collisions and bodily injury are inherent to the game itself. The NFL perpetuates a game of violence that is destructive to its participants, and it actively campaigned against reform for decades.