That Gladwell article changed how I watch football. It just did. I can't relish the big hit the way I used to. It's weird, because I think this is the argument that football is about more than just smashing into some dude. I still love watching the game. I still like the quarterback play, the sacks, the running back play etc.
But I watched Felix Jones lay some defensive back out yesterday. Normally I would have been leaping up in the air. But it just didn't feel the same. I don't see football going away. But I do see change coming.
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I feel the same way. I played football all the way through college at a Div. 1-AA program and had a shot at the pros (if only a small one). And that Gladwell article has definitely taken some of the shine off. Furthermore, it's got me reassessing the periodic migraine headaches that have developed since then.
As I've gotten further from the game, I get more and more appreciative of the fact that I was one of the ones that couldn't cut it in the big time.
I got my first migraines after my first concussion. Now, I hit puberty at about the same time, but my doc thought it was a pretty direct correlation.
Agreed. When they went into the booth at one point during the Packers game, I found myself watching Aikman and worrying that he's going to have msjor troubles at some point.
If this article continues to have the kind of impact I've seen thus far, sport historians may look back at Mike Vick's trial as the opening of a subconscious veil over sports violence in the American mind. Gladwell masterfully seized the moment. How much brain damage can we applaud before we become dog fighters?
What's also been amazing is the stories I've heard from friends and family. My dad got knocked out in the first quarter of a high school game but only "came to" in the last minutes of the second, while in the huddle. Had no idea he'd played the last thirty minutes, had no idea what he was doing in the huddle. So many stories like that.
I think it's even worse than you write. The upshot of the Gladwell piece wasn't necessarily that the big hits are the ones that cause the most damage, but rather the ceaseless smashing and grinding at the lines over the course of every player's career. Line play is at the fundamental core of the entire game, and I've honestly been struggling with being able to watch, knowing that what makes every play possible is what's putting players' lives in jeopardy.
The bit about the little hits is what really struck me.
I remember playing tackle football for the first time in 3rd grade and the big thing for us was having some "meat" on your helmet. You got "meat" when your helmet struck another one hard enough to show some sort of visible damage, usually a discolored streak. For 70 pound little boys it was difficult for us to generate enough force to get more than a couple of little streaks on our helmets over the course of a 6 game season.
Contrast that with the end of my senior year of high school when I looked at my helmet as I was turning it in and the entire front half of the helmet was covered in "meat." The thing looked like it had been hit with a multi-colored shotgun blast. Now I know that each one of those bits of paint and plastic was a testiment to a violent collision that was damaging my brain.
My senior year helmet has the color streaks and the pieces of the face mask plastic shorn off. I have a headache just thinking about this stuff.
The bit about the little hits nags be too. Mostly because they still seem to have no clue what the materiality threshold is for a hit. The UNC scientist threw out alot of numbers but didn't say "and here's the range that really concerns us" or whatever.
It was so hard to watch Kevin Boss get lit up play after play yesterday. I'd been finding it harder to watch football even before the Gladwell article because the pas few seasons it seems like someone got hurt on every 3rd play.
Gotta admit all the discussion about the concussions went out the window when I saw Ed Reed lay out Knowshon Moreno. Then again I still get hyped about bullfights in Spain, so I guess I'll be doing time in Purgatory
Me too. The potential of the big hits, most of us knew already, if you took the time to think of it. When the player passes out, and has to be carried off the field or helped off. We knew that was bad, but it doesn't happen all that often.
But the Gladwell piece underlined the real problem: the many many "little hits." I watched a game over the weekend, and it really wasn't as much fun as it used to be, because on every single play, there were these huge guys impacting one another, and now I'm thinking, "how many brain cells - in both guys - died that time?"
I don't find that reflection entertaining.
I feel the same way about boxing, only more so. I was watching the Agbeko and DeMarco fights this weekend, and it wasnt as much fun. I think the big question for both sports is, as Gladwell asked, is it dog fighting or stock car racing. I think that requires further research, because it would make sense that the families motivated to donate their loved ones' brains to science would more likely be families of those who'd shown signs of dementia. If it really is more than 20 percent of the football players who are headed for dementia (I think that was the suspicion of one of the researchers)...I dont know, it feels pretty uncomfortable. I dont see football disappearing either, but people surely felt the same way about gladiators and dueling different points in history.
And I can only imagine it's more for boxing. There was a study of Turkish amateur boxers not too long ago, and it showed that even fighting only a couple of rounds with months off between fights, the boxers were showing excessive chemicals of a chemical that is often associated with brain damage. Again, more research is necessary, but if a substantial fraction of amateur boxers are at risk, what chance to the rest of the boxers stand? I mean, it's so much Ali, who obviously held on way too long, but of someone like Hagler, who retired at 32 without ever taking a real beating. If people like him are suffering high rates of dementia, I don't know...as a longtime fan of boxing and football, I kind of don't want to know.
Amen on boxing. I can't watch it any more. It's not fun any more.
For me, Ali was the turning point. The guy was the best, you know? And now he can't complete a coherent sentence. I just can't stomach sitting there and watching that happen to anyone else, even if - especially if - he's doing it voluntarily. There have got to be better uses of my time, if not of his.
Here's the deal, people. Boxers, football players, they do this because they are being paid very well for it (and the younger players, because they hope to get on the gravy train). In other words, they're doing it because we fund it. That means, we who fund it are partly responsible for the results.
Yes, and when you realize that it's not only (or even mostly) the big hits, that on every single play the players' brains are sustaining subconcussive trauma, it's enough to make you ill. I love watching football, but lately I've found myself walking away during kickoff, or fighting the impulse to change the channel.
Ta-nehisi,
My nephew is physicist in the Biomedical Engineering Department at Cornell University (he is the family genius.) One of his major research grants is to study how microvascular lesions in the brain (called silent stroke) are related to Alzheimers disease. I know that he has tried to get a grant from the Department of Defense to study the effects of these types of injuries in soldiers who have been exposed to explosions but show no signs of brain injury using testing methods currently available, but he did not get the grant (at least not yet.) Right now they are using lasers on rat brains to cause and study the effects of these injuries. Presumably, someday they will repair these injuries with lasers.
Someone on this blog in one the threads on this subject mentioned that they need to study the entire population of former NFL players who are still out there. I agree. My gut feeling is that there is a great deal of silent suffering out there and also a very strong possibility of undiagnosed brain injuries. Maybe only the worst cases result in early dementia but inbetween that and the way one used to be there could be a whole range of problems.
They need to get all over this. As you say, football is not going away.
you know what should really be wrenching your gut?
brain injuries to our troops in iraq and afghanistan.
there's a couple hundred guys in the nfl, and they are getting paid a lot of money.
there's a couple hundred thousand guys and gals in the middle east, and they are paid a pittance.
and a lot of them are accumulating brain trauma. ieds do it, even if you survive them.
thousands of these cases of mild to severe brain trauma. sometimes no outward signs.
that's another legacy of the war for bush's vanity.
true, but the context of this post was things that TNC used to "relish." I'm pretty sure that's not the case for troop TBIs.
yeah, this. it's not an either/or.
Meh.
No one is forcing these guys to play football. They can always walk away and get a regular job like the rest of us. They assume the risks, and get paid a lot of money to do so. I'm not really sympathetic in the least honestly.
I agree with you to the extent that (a) adults are making the decision to play, and (b) are doing so with full understanding of the risks involved. I mean, people do stupid, reckless s**t all the time, and that's really their perogative most of the time. (See: smoking, riding motorcyles, deep-frying turkeys in giant metal drums 5 ft. away from your own home, etc.)
The difference with football is that an entire culture has risen up around it. We have 6-year-old KIDS out taking hits and taking them all season every season all the way up through high school. Lord KNOWS what that does to young, elastic brains. Same thing with college ball. Some people play in college because it's the only way they can afford to go. Pop Warner, high school and college ball are what trouble me, and that's where the consent argument you're making doesn't seem to fly.
Exactly, its not about the full grown behemoths at the top of the Ponzi Scheme, its about the young tots being seduced at the entry level.
Parents forcing kids to play a sport, like football or boxing is wrong. But you can't tell me it's because American society fawning over the big time athlete is what solely drives kids(specifically boys) to want to play football. Little boys, whether its cops and robbers, cowboys and indians, knuckles, back yard football have always played such games. There has always been a need to be the alpha male, or kid as long as the human species has existed. We, and again specifically boys, have always been a comptetive species. More often than not that has manifested itself in a physical nature. Simply banning the NFL, or not showing games on tv will not prevent a high percentage of little boys from wanting to show how much better they are than other boys, physically.
It just seems that every culture in hisory has had a warrior, gladiator aspect in its male culture that started in young boys since the dawn of time. At least we have progressed to the point to at least put pads and helmets on. And who knows, we may as a species continue to move and evolve to a completely violent-less society. I think its hard to just ignore our own make up as males. In other words, sure not everyone pursues and lives a life of physicality. But as youngsters, running, throwing, and hitting seem to be the natural first step in showing ones prowess of other boys.
keith-- I absolutely agree with you, and I am not at all suggesting that we force kids to stay inside and engage in contact-free sports. Kids SHOULD be out running, jumping, climbing, wrestling, etc. But, I think that "normal" play and roughhousing is fundamentally different than the kind that occurs in football practice or football games. In the first, kids may bump their heads sporadically, but they're not usually actively hitting things WITH their heads. In the second, that happens CONSTANTLY and, more importantly, it's encouraged... it's part of what it takes to be good at that sport.
So, warrior culture? Sure. But even the Spartans weren't going around knocking their heads into things. That's the genius of using spears. :)
tressa-
HA! Touche on the gladiator point, pun intended...
I understand completely, and as adults we have a responsibilty to ensure the safety of our kids. But I have to say, any coach teaching how to tackle with ones head, or spearing, needs to be fired. There is a method to the madness that is football, and sure there is an increased chance of hits to the head in football compared to just plain rough housing, thus the reason for helmets. But rarely in pop warner or any football that takes place prior to say 7th grade, is the hitting that can cause real damage taking place. Youth football is supposed to be where the fundamentals are taught, proper tackling, wrapping up, using shoulders. Push blocking with hands to the chest to use leverage to direct a player in a certain direction. Running with the ball, head up(not down like a battering ram) to see the field. Falling to the ground and rolling to pop back up to avoind being driven into the ground.
Its funny, my mom would not let me play Pop Warner(or Tiger League as it was known in my town) as a youngster out of fear of injury. Hell, I had to beg to play Little League. But she could care less if I was outside playing backyard fball with a bunch of kids and no pads on. The irony is she let me play in 7th grade, exactly when the kids I grew up with started growing muscles and hair under their arms and were able to do real damage. Anyway, I just don't or didn't see the kind of hitting described in the Gladwell article taking place in Pop Warner. Adult football and Kid football are just two different animals.
That being said, parents(like me) are well whithin their rights to make sure their kids aren't playing battering ram, no holds barred football.
I think you all have conflated the issue a bit. Forcing or encouraging kids to play Pop Warner is not the same as consensual adults playing in college or in the pros, as you've noted. But we've played football in this country for over 100 years, and in the old days, the equipment wasn't nearly as sophisticated as it is today. Obviously, today's game is a lot faster and the players are a lot bigger and speedier, which leads to all the violent collisions. I think they may have to change the rules a bit in the future-widening the field a bit would be a good place to start IMO. Moreover, most football careers end after high school. I'd like to see a study on after effects of kids who have long-term injuries from HS football. I have a suspicion that it's not as bad as some of us think it is. I'd wager that nearly as many people have injuries like a bad knee or ankle that was hurt from basketball or some other sport.
FWIW, if I ever have a son, I'm not letting him anywhere near a football field. Baseball makes the most sense to me-the chances of long term physical injury are minimal, and if you do ever get to play professionally, the contracts are guaranteed and worth much more money.
I don't think Gladwell was suggesting that we should necessarily feel sympathy for the players. If that was all, he could have left out dogfighting. Rather, he was asking football lovers (like me)to face the question: am I really any better than Michael Vick's buddies who paid big bucks to cheer while watching two dogs fight to the death?
I don't think anyone's asking for your sympathy. The post stated how I feel--not how you should feel.
TNC and KarenZ
To clarify, I didn't mean that you or Gladwell were saying that either implicitly or explicitly. The gist of what I meant was that the players know what they're signing up for that when they enter the league.
I also think that slightly widening the field and using 10 instead of 11 players could lead to fewer injuries though. I don't think it would be a hard sell to the league either, as it would likely lead to an increase in scoring. And as someone noted below, the NFL "union" is the one of the most ineffectual labor organizations on the planet.
See why I haven't read that article yet? Haha. In all seriousness, I will today.
My girl asked me the question I didn't want hear yesterday afternoon, given Gladwell's premise of the NFL equating to human dogfighting, would I support banning the sport? I didn't know what to say. I love watching the games especially if I have a little money on them, but it's scarey to draw out Gladwell's assertions to their logical conclusions. I still watched yesterday. What does that say about me?
Is it just me or does this kind of thing make you feel like human beings are absurdly fragile? I mean even more fragile than we perceive ourselves to be normally. Every time I turn around there's a new problem out there ready to wreck havoc on the human body. And the kicker is that these problems persist even as technology advances. Sometimes the technology actually makes the problem worse (football players hitting harder because they think the gear makes them invincible) and sometimes the technology illuminates the problem but does nothing to fix it (the medical and armor advances that are allowing soldiers to survive explosions and live long enough thereafter to develop brain issues).
/mildly panicked rant.
Maybe just you.. My feeling is more that some of us subject ourselves to, or have inflicted upon us, levels of violence far beyond what it would be reasonable to expect us to sustain and still survive if we were to be anything close to organic individuals. How could sustaining such collisions, repeatedly, not damage us? I think most of us would be able to take something violent or damaging to our bodies once; it's the chronic nature of the things that hurt us (or chronic exposure to risk, like smoking or living in a war zone) which leads to that appearance of fragility. We could be hardy and also safe as hell if we all lived like Shaolin monks.
we just see the violence in pro sports more, so it's on our minds more, even though the number of people experiencing say, war-related violence is several orders of magnitude greater.
Fair enough. Last time I open a post with "is it just me?"
well, but speaking of 'fair enough'.. i think it's pretty natural to feel weird (i do) about the idea that something as ordinary-seeming as playing tackle football past childhood on a regular basis makes you a candidate for debilitating brain damage not-so-later in life. i never played full on contact football in uniform (just very rarely with friends, it's so much fun!) so it's not as personal to me, but i do watch football regularly and i do think of it as something very ingrained as a part of so many of our lives.
Adults have to be able to make decisions about their own health and well-being. The government has no business telling people that they can't engage in an activity that is potentially damaging to them if they make the freely informed decision to do so, knowing the risks.
The government has no business telling people that they can't engage in an activity that is potentially damaging to them if they make the freely informed decision to do so, knowing the risks.
The problem being that the NFL has been trying to cover up these types of risks from players and fans. It's not like the NFL is funding studies or taking active steps (like making the new anti-concussion helmets mandatory) either. The NFL would set the trend for the NCAA and high school levels to follow suit. While those helmets don't solve all of the problems lessening the force of impact to the head could help the chronic brain injuries since each blow would do less damage.
And they have the weakest players' union in all of sports, basically. What good is a contract if it's not guaranteed? How can the pension system be so woefully inadequate for those that need it most?
What you (and toddbbq) seemed to have missed in this debate is that it's about much more than the decisions that adult men make to play or not play pro football. The kind of sub-concussive events that the Gladwell piece talks about occur at lower levels of the game as well, in college and in high school if not earlier. What now? Are you going to make the argument that minors too have to be able to "make decisions about their own health and well-being?" Or will you say that's a parental decision to be made on behalf of minors and damn the consequences?
As it stands we require adults to do some things on the behalf of minors whether they want to or not, from educating them in school or at home, to providing infants with car seats. Do you draw the line on sports?
If the way football is played changes for safety reasons, those changes are most likely to come at the levels played by kids. Should that happen, and I'm betting it will, that may mean that no one under 18 plays the game the way it's played now and that will have profound effects on the way it's played in college and the pros.
@AMT
According to Gladwell's piece, hits are being measured in the UNC study at forces up to 1g. That's the equivalent of your head hitting the windshield of your car at 25mph.
Thanks for the clarification.
Adults have to be able to make decisions about their own health and well-being.
Granted, Freddie. And I'm not talking about the gummint. I'm talking about whether I, as a free adult, ought to or want to contribute my money (in the form of ticket prices or viewing time) to this enterprise, thus subsidizing and supporting it.
To take an extreme case, if some demented individual decides to, in the words of the song, "suicide right on the stage," I'm not sure "the government" ought to stop him, but I'm really sure about whether I ought to fund this enterprise. (That would be No.) And I'm really sure, too, that I don't want to. The football game I watched in a bar on the big screen Saturday wasn't any fun for me. I was wincing the whole time.
The sport was "designed" at a time when the biggest players were around 200 lbs or so. The sub 5 second forty yard dash that is now standard for elite players at ANY position, might have been possible for the most explosive player in a league, but no more than one or two.
What has happened is that steroids and a better understanding of the underlying science of training have evolved the players far beyond what the physics of the sport will permit. In 1971 the starting defensive end for Northwestern University (a Will Hemby) weighed 210 lbs. In 1985 William Perry (the Fridge) of the Bears, was, at around 325, the biggest starter in the league. He was FAT. He probably shouldn't have weighed any more than 280. Today every team has several 300+ lb players, with body fat percentages under 20%. There are many 250 lb players who have 40 yd and 100 yd times that would have been elite running back times 20 years ago. At the pre draft camps in 2000, Brian Urlacher ran a 4.59 at 258 lbs. Since then players have continued to get bigger, stronger, and faster.
Rule changes won't help. Equipment changes won't help. It is the physics of mass and speed that is at issue.
Chuck Klosterman illustrated this point very well a couple of years back here: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=klosterman/070319
Shawne Merriman weighs 272 pounds.
This is six pounds less than Anthony Muñoz, probably the most dominating left tackle of all time. Shawne Merriman also runs the 40-yard dash in 4.61 seconds. When Jerry Rice attended the NFL draft combine in 1985, he reportedly ran a 4.60; Rice would go on to gain more than 23,000 all-purpose yards while scoring 207 career touchdowns.
You do not need Mel Kiper's hard drive to deduce what these numbers mean: As an outside linebacker, Shawne Merriman is almost as big as the best offensive tackle who ever played and almost as fast as the best wide receiver who ever played. He is a rhinoceros who moves like a deer. Common sense suggests this combination should not be possible. It isn't.
There is nothing like football on Sunday to do the trick, not CVS and not Walgrens.
They got weak pills ... compared to the game. They ain't got game !!!
So that is why I take two of doze and call somebody in the morning Joe.
Anyone here familiar with the 8-on-8 football that high schools still play in some rural areas? Fewer players on the same field should lead to fewer collisions, and to a game based more on speed than on brute force.
Given how much money the NCAA and NFL make off football, and how much Americans love the sport, I'd be shocked to see any significant changes in the rules. But maybe if you cut a team down to 7 or 8 players, all of whom were eligible receivers, and (like they do in Canadian football) made the defenders line up at least a yard away from the line of scrimmage, you'd have a chance at reducing the constant pounding, as well as the massive hits, that seem to lead to brain damage. The game would mostly be about running, deception, and downfield passing.
I wasn't even aware of the existence of Rugby Sevens until the announcement a while back that it was going to be in the next Olympics. Are any of the rugby players here familiar with it? Are there fewer hits than in standard Union or League rugby?
I wasn't even aware of the existence of Rugby Sevens until the announcement a while back that it was going to be in the next Olympics. Are any of the rugby players here familiar with it? Are there fewer hits than in standard Union or League rugby?
"7s" as it's usually called is a game predicated on speed, not power. As a general rule there are fewer hits because the game is so much shorter (14 minutes for rugby 7s vs. 80 minutes for rugby union), but occasionally you will see someone get blown up in a spectacular fashion in 7s. Also, there are only 3 players from each side in a scrumdown; so rather than being shoved together by their teammates, the front row players are coming together under their own power which makes the scrums much less damaging.
So it sounds like 7s does have somewhat less of both kinds of hitting -- the constant grinding in the scrum, and the big-hit blasts in the open field. When I read about it and first looked it up, I assumed that the game is shorter because the players would collapse if they had to cover that huge field for more than 15 minutes or so.
Do people play either 7s or standard League or Union rugby? Will the people in the Olympics be stars from the 5/6 Nations, or are 7s players a completely different group?
There are some rugby players that are 7s specialists, but you see a lot of players from both codes (Union & League) playing 7s. I'm guessing that with the advent of rugby in the Olympics you will begin to see more players specializing in 7s.
I've been having a hard time admitting this myself. I love football, and I doubt I'll stop watching it any time soon, but I cringe in a way I hadn't before every time one player pummels another player into the turf.
Agree.
Every time I see a guy get knocked silly, or see two linemen bash heads at the snap, I simply think to myself, "early onset dementia"...
For years I've thought similar things whenever a RB gets hit. "He'll have trouble walking by the age of 40..."
Gladwell definitely altered my view of football as well. I tried not to fast forwarded 10 years into their future after each hit that I saw or to think about high tau and beta-amyloid levels on their brains. But Gladwell has succeeded in having me take a second look at the sport.
According to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury, 325 men and boys have died from playing football since 1982.
My high school football team was Massachusetts state champion in 2001--the year before I graduated. I was confined to the sidelines, but as an underclassman, I participated rigorously in practice against man-children twice my size who would go on to D-1 schools and the NFL. I enjoyed playing football, but even without playing time, I had injuries. My sophomore year, I developed a stress-fracture in my left ankle from running "suicides". The starting middle linebacker, a senior at the time, had the same exact injury, yet continued to play. I was called a "pussy" for missing practice to allow my stress fracture time to heal.
Later in sophomore year, I cracked a vertibra. I kept my head down when tackling--in retrospect, a very dangerous style. I had speared a great number of starters during practice and had trouble speaking when my mouthpiece was applied, so I earned the nickname "The Silent Bruiser." One practice, I tackled in my signature style, and suddenly found myself on the ground unable to breathe. After a visit to the doctor, I was told I had cracked a vertibra, and while I never played football with the same ferocity again, I continued to play haphazardly for the rest of high school
When I was 20, in college, I got a call from my dad in the middle of the night. "Coach $%^#^& is dead," he said. He had a heart attack at age 40. No surprise since the average life expectancy for an NFL player is 55; for a lineman, like my coach was, it's 52.
Christopher Carr
www.theinductive.com
I had the same reaction watching Jones steamroll the d-back. It was an absolutely clean play, just helmet to turf. It made me shudder to think about the old astro turf and hitters like Jack Tatum. It was like cement.
It's funny, because my school was state champions of Washington State but we took the opposite approach. You learned to tackle by hitting a guy with a blocking pad in front and pads on the ground to cushion the fall. The other tackling drill was pick a hole which is a lot about technique and less about jarring hits. Some coaches do the line two guys up and have them run straight at each other drills, but our coach felt that you learned nothing from that and players just got hurt. I've noticed with coaches that do the big hitting drills, it's more to get their thrills in than to teach players anything. We focused on hitting guys square, wrapping up and team tackling.
The thing was when game day came, we were always far more hungry to hit than the other team. We'd swarm to the ball much better than other teams, and other coaches would always remark on how well we team tackled. I think a lot of this was due to not having nagging injuries from hitting practice.
The point being that the above method probably isn't helping at high school and may actively hurt your team. If your team has a lot of injuries from practice then it's doing something wrong.
I just read the article, and I don't belittle anyone who feels squeamish about big hits in football. And I am talking strictly adult football here. I think we owe it to youngster to do everything possible to make the sport as safe as possible.
That being said, reading this gave me the opposite effect. I can't help but to have a deeper appreciation for what these guys put themselves through. I have always known that a life of football takes a toll on the human body, and brain. I like to think of my self as a relatively smart person, who values life and wants to live a long and happy one at that. But if I could run a 4.3 40, was 6'2 215 and could run the ball like Adrian Peterson, I would absolutely trade lives with the guy. Hell if I were 6'6 320 and could pass block like Flozell I would trade with him in a heart beat, even after reading that article. I can't tell you why, sure "the money, the money" would be the common refrain. But I would do it for considerably less than what those guys make. I love the sport, and sports in general and sure the money and the fame is great. But I can't help to think that alot of those guys do it for the spirit of competition and gratification of physical dominance. I am sure that alot of my inner depression is due to the fact that I never was good enough or big enough to do the things I grew up loving the most, for a living.
keith, I'm 64 years old. I don't know how old you are.
If you, at whatever age you are, are willing to die early, or become demented at 50, for the sake of being a great football player, who am I to argue? I'd like to suggest, though, that from my perspective as a (relatively) old man, that from here, it doesn't look like it's worth it.
I don't want, here, to address spirituality, or the afterlife. I just want to talk about life here and now, the life we all understand. When you are my age, the ability to know who you are and where you are and to know who your wife is and who your children and grandchildren are assumes a great importance, and your status or achievements as an athlete back in the day seems to recede in importance.
That is not at all to say that my perspective is more important or more valid than yours. If you are willing to sacrifice 20 years of awareness to running "4.3 40, was 6'2 215 and could run the ball like Adrian Peterson" then who am I to say? If that's worth it to you.
"I am sure that a lot of my inner depression is due to the fact that I never was good enough or big enough to do the things I grew up loving the most, for a living."
Again, I don't know how old you are. But it might just be time for you to grow past this particular position. Your call, of course.
My comment about my inner depression was slightly toungue and cheek. I am 34, married, have kids and live a relatively happy life. But I don't think I am alone, in saying that when I watch football, baseball or basketball there is this inner feeling of, "man, why couldn't I have been that good, why couldn't I do that?". All I am saying.
Your point about spending your latter years in a state of dementia, or crippled, a shell of your former self is certainly valid. Honestly, it causes me to pause and really ponder the question. As you said, not talking spiritually more about the here and now it really makes me think. It seems we see the same thing, obviously through a different lense. Speaking the here and now, nobody is ever promised the "latter years" and I hope to live to be the age that you are and still have my wits about me. At the same time nobody is guaranteed a long healthy life(regardless of profession), so yeah, I would not have a problem if I were winding down a career in the NFL, having spent the last 12 years doing the thing I love most, and have loved since I was a kid. Your perspective seems to be that a life in the NFL means instant dementia, and a life of misery. Sure the chances are much much greater than the average profession, but that is not to say that there aren't plenty of former NFL players that have lived long, productive lives after football. There are, and with life comes chances.
Again, I can't stress enough how much I respect the opinion you hold. It is certainly reasonable, valid and common. For me, personally, I have always had a soft spot with the act of self sacrifice, whether it be for country, community, or yes art and entertainment. The person willing to disregard their own health, rather it be to save others, defend their country, or for the roar of the crowd has always appealed to me. Probably why when I fugured out in High School that I was never going to play rb for the Cowboys, pitch for the Rangers, play pg for the Mavericks or take a punch like Ali I joined the Army. I figured the chances of making that team was better than my chances of making any other. Surely you don't feel the same about soldiers and PTSD, because they are defending our country. I am guessing you don't begrudge their choice to serve, even though they have a higher risk of dementia and PTSD in their latter years. Obviously their is a more nobel quality about risking your life for others, rather than for miliions of dollars and bringing millions of people to their feet in joy and applause. I guess all I am saying is I see a certain nobility in all of it.
Oh man, keith, do I ever get it.
You're talking about excellence. What is it worth? What will you give for it? For me, it was law, not football (I am a congenital uncoordinate), and at a certain point, when I was just about your age, I had to make a choice. I had the credentials, and I had the smarts. So, do I go for it? (What is "it" anyway? Fame? Money?) Or what?
In my field, as in football, the price of excellence is very very high. I listened to the Sonia Sotomayor hearings, and I could not but be impressed at her amazing, unbelievable intelligence. Incredible. She listens to the questions, pauses, and then takes the questioner down, decisively, devastatingly.
But. She has no private life. She was married once, but is now divorced. She has no children. Everything has gone to the law. I'm impressed, intimidated (that could have been me) but ultimately, No.
We all make choices. I could have been on the Supreme Court. You could have been in the NFL. Instead, we chose what we chose.
Like you, I respect your opinion. Like you, I chose not to immolate myself on any altar, be it football or law.
There was a fantastic piece in SI some years (maybe even 15-20, I don't remember) about boxing. It was about journeymen boxers who travel from state to state (if one state hikes their license after a particularly bad beating, they just move to another) basically getting beaten up for a living. The idea being that the contenders and the up-and-comers all need these guys to beat up on as they come up so that they can pad their records to the 20-0 mark they need to hit the big time. The journeymen are deliberately chosen because they are not as good as the guys they fight, they are meant to lose, and they do lose, because they are not in the same class as the young hotshots. They typically compile lifetime records of dozens of losses and very few victories. I dunno if anyone else recalls the piece, but it was chilling. I love boxing, always have, always will. My earliest memory is watching Ali-Frazier III on TV with my family (I was 5) and I could name all the heavyweight champions starting form John L. Sullivan the way normal kids learn state capitals, and to this day I watch all the big fights I can. But, as much as I love it, there is no question but that there is something morally very questionable about the industry. Same goes for football, I think.
I've been a huge college football fan my whole life (nearly 40 years now). But football is looking more and more like eating meat to me. I absolutely love meat. But I've seen the way animals are treated, and because of this I can't contribute to their torture. I'll eat meat if it doesn't cause animals to be killed (e.g. if it's cooked anyway and its consumption won't cause purchase of more meat).
Football probably will be the same for me. I'll watch if no one knows I'm watching so as to avoid contributing to ratings and the like. That way I'm not contributing to the suffering of the subjects who bring me pleasure.
And it seems to me that the arguments for indulging in both will be parallel: "I love it so much that I can't give it up." "It's part of my culture." "We've always done it in my family/group of friends."
Anyway, I don't normally preach my vegetarianism because I know it won't change behavior. But it strikes me that there is an interesting parallel between meat and football--alas, two things I love dearly.
I've never been a big sports fan, but a few years I got into fantasy sports. I started with football (I've always thought that, despite the violence of the game, there was something really intelligent and elegant about a well-coordinated play), then moved into baseball and focused on that for several years. This year I came back to football, and it just isn't fun, largely because it seems like the players are all fat, slow and playing with injuries. So little of the game seems to be about athleticism anymore, and so much of it about simply being monstrously huge. (I have the same complaint against basketball, which I can't enjoy at all -- it's just a bunch of oversize mutants creating traffic jams on courts too small for them and throwing tantrums when they get called on their most egregious fouls.) And now it turns out that the epidemic hugeness is causing not only a ridiculous number of injuries but long-term brain damage as well.
I have two Rules of Gaming:
1. Play a game only with people who take it approximately as seriously as you do.
2. When the game stops being fun, it's time to stop playing.
Invoking rule No. 2, I don't think the Enemies of Reason will be playing again next year. (The Heroes of the Revolution, my fantasy baseball team, will continue to take the field until the World Series and the start of the Christmas shopping season finally cross over one another. In another words, at least another year or two.)
The New Yorker is the only magazine that I'd miss in the whole damn industry. Never a week without a solid article about something, and several times a year there's an article like Grann's Willingham article or this Gladwell one that seriously shakes up your view of the world, and often the national conversation.
The work of actors, dancers, singers and other performers gives me huge pleasure, and I am willing to give them time and (ticket) money in repayment. (And performers get great pleasure from their work and those who care for themselves wisely just get better as they age - take Judi Dench, Meryl Streep and Maddy Pryor as examples.)
But football players are giving - whether voluntarily or pressured by economic factors - too much for me to accept. Pro players are sacrificing 15 years of life expectancy and even longer periods spent in pain and debility, if they survive to 55.
I loved football when I was a girl, but I can't watch it now. Nobody should suffer and die prematurely to entertain me.
At my son's high school in California this past weekend, a sophomore was hit hard in a football game and sustained a brain injury. He is still in a coma and may die. At some point we should ask why we allow this.
This article caused bells to ring for something I read a while back re: traffic signs; that is, the more traffic signs on a road, the less drivers tend to pay attention. And so paradoxically, driving may be even less safe due to heavy regulation and constant instructions and warnings than it would be on just a blank road. Gladwell alludes to something like this when he mentions that better safety equipment (better helmets) might just make the players even more reckless.
So I'm wondering: would a return to leather helmets and no pads result in more (and more severe) or fewer injuries in the long term? And in the context of this article specifically, if injury levels were similar between no-pads and heavy-pads football, wouldn't the slower speeds and less-reckless hits of men playing without pads result in much lower levels of concussions and other brain injuries over time?
Just a thought; I've done no research whatsoever on this.