Football Brain Injuries A Dilemma For Fans

When I was in seventh grade, going out for the junior high school football team, I remember running a drill that seemed designed to help coaches figure out who, as they put it, “likes to hit.” Basically two players would collide with each other at top speed. I put my head down and went helmet-to-helmet repeatedly, sometimes with guys much bigger than I was. I made the team. I also remember I had a bad headache for a few days.

I look back on that now, and wonder if I had a concussion. There’s a lot of research coming out now about the long term damage to the brain that frequent collisions—and frequent concussions-- can cause for people who play football, from youth leagues all the way up to the NFL. Up until recently, I, like most fans, was able to play that down in my mind; football’s a tough game, after all, and people who play it have to be ready to get banged up, just like people who watch it have to put that aspect of it aside to enjoy the “combat.” Right?

Well, I’m not so sure I can do that as a fan anymore. Serious evidence is mounting that football players—many, many of them—expose themselves to serious brain injury and damage from playing the game even a brief amount of time.

Last week, I read this article from The New Yorker, by bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell. It’s an eye-opener:

“Much of the attention in the football world, in the past few years, has been on concussions—on diagnosing, managing, and preventing them—and on figuring out how many concussions a player can have before he should call it quits. But a football player’s real issue isn’t simply with repetitive concussive trauma. It is, as the concussion specialist Robert Cantu argues, with repetitive subconcussive trauma. It’s not just the handful of big hits that matter. It’s lots of little hits, too.”

Football fans, I warn you, you might never feel the same way about the game again after reading this. It is not a pretty picture, and as I found when I sat down to watch the Giants and Jets games last Sunday, it was NOT something I was able to forget about as I watched the players on the field. With each big hit, I found myself worrying about the players and what this was doing to them. I know starting NFL players get huge money to take those hits, but is it really worth it to exponentially increase the chances of dementia, depression, and Alzheimer’s by the time they reach middle age, if not sooner?

I lasted three years in organized football. I broke my collarbone playing on our freshman team, trying to block an opposing player who was twice my size. With all this new research about the dangers of playing football...I'm wondering if he didn't do me a favor.