With each passing week, I hear from football fans saying that it's getting harder to like the game they love. They've spent years reveling in the intense competition and violent collisions so central to the sport, but this is the first time these NFL diehards feel conscious about what happens to players when they become unconscious.
In August, to much fanfare, NFL owners finally acknowledged that football-related concussions cause depression, dementia, memory loss and the early onset of Alzheimer's disease. Now that they've opened the door, this concussion discussion is starting to shape how we understand what were previously seen as the NFL's typical helping of off-field controversy and tragedy. When Denver Bronco wide receiver Kenny McKinley committed suicide, the first questions were about whether football-related head injuries led to the depression that took his life. When the recently retired Junior Seau drove his car off of a cliff the day after being arrested for spousal abuse, questions about whether head injuries sustained during a twenty-year career affected his actions soon followed. Such conjecture is not only legitimate; it's necessary and urgent.
This season, a typical NFL game is starting to look like a triage center. On concussions alone, a reader at deadspin.com compiled the following list of players who have borne the brunt of a brain bruise in 2010:
PRESEASON: Ryan Grant, Hunter Hillenmeyer, Joseph Addai, Mark Clayton, Nick Sorensen, Aaron Curry, DJ Ware, Louis Murphy, Scott Sicko, Mike Furrey, Darnell Bing, Freddy Keiaho WEEK 1: Kevin Kolb, Stewart Bradley, Matt Moore, Kevin Boss, Charly Martin WEEK 2: Clifton Ryan, Jason Witten, Randall Gay, Craig Dahl, Zack Follett, Evan Moore WEEK 3: Anthony Bryant, Cory Redding, Jason Trusnik WEEK 4: Jordan Shipley, Willis McGahee, Jay Cutler, Asante Samuel, Riley Cooper, Sherrod Martin WEEK 5: Aaron Rodgers, Darcy Johnson, Jacob Bell, Landon Johnson, Demaryius Thomas, Rocky McIntosh WEEK 6: Josh Cribbs, Desean Jackson, Mohamed Massaquoi, Zack Follett, Chris CooleyIn assessing the list, the most striking aspect is its randomness. There is a mix of star quarterbacks, shifty running backs, burly tight ends and anonymous linemen. All play different roles in the game, and all wear different kinds of equipment.
Sports Illustrated writer Peter King, after a weekend where he says he saw "six or eight shots where you wondered, 'Is that guy getting up?' " proposed some solutions:
"It's time to start ejecting and suspending players for flagrant hits.... Don't tell me this is the culture we want. It might be the culture kids are used to in video games, but the NFL has to draw a line in the sand right here, right now, and insist that the forearm shivers and leading with the helmet and launching into unprotected receivers will be dealt with severely. Six-figure fines. Suspensions. Ejections."
King's suggestions are not unlike those who told 1950s children to hide under their desks case of nuclear attack. The hits that cause concussions aren't just the kind of helmet-to-helmet collisions that make King shudder but often come from routine tackles. Frequently, brain bruises aren't even diagnosed until the game has ended. In other words, the most devastating hits are often the most pedestrian. This was seen in utterly tragic fashion during Saturday's college contest between Rutgers University and Army. Rutgers linebacker Eric LeGrand was paralyzed from the waste down on a play described as a "violent collision." But if you look at the replay, the only thing "violent" about the play is its horrific outcome.
It's also not, as King writes, "the culture" that celebrates this violence. It's the NFL itself. The video games that the NFL promotes and sponsors deliriously dramatize brutal tackles. Highlight shows on the NFL Network relish the moments when players get "jacked up." Anyone who saw HBO's Hard Knocks, their behind-the-scenes look at the New York Jets preseason, heard it loud and clear. Whenever a player would "jack-up" the opposition, Coach Rex Ryan would whoop and yell, "That's a guy who wants to make this team!"
Here's the reality check to Peter King and all who want their violence safely commodified for Sunday: there is no making football safer. There is no amount of suspensions, fines or ejections that will change the fundamental nature of a sport built on violent collisions. It doesn't matter if players have better mouth guards, better helmets or better pads. Anytime you have a sport that turns the poor into millionaires and dangles violence as an incentive, well, you reap what you sow.
It is what it is. I think it's a waste of time to feel "guilty" about being a football fan. If people are disgusted by the violence visited on these players, they should vote with their feet and stop watching. If people are at peace with the fact that they are enjoying something that wrecks people's bodies, then that's their business as well. But for goodness' sake: if you are to remain a football fan, at least support the players in their upcoming negotiations with ownership. Reject the idea of an eighteen-game season as "good for the game." Reject the idea that players need to have their pay cut for the league's "financial health." Reject the idea that owners shouldn't have to contribute to the medical well-being of players after they retire. Recognize the humanity of the carnage on the field so you can do something to support the humanity of players when the pads come off. That's what I pledge to do... for now. But in the interests of full disclosure: I might be a Desean Jackson-Dunta Robinson moment away from ditching the game for good.
First posted at thenation.com.
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yes, its a physically violent sport.. bodies thrown against each other in a ritual combat to determine dominance and success... Ray Lewis says that everyone is equal, that thier all padded and protected equally... but the reality is that one part of a team does everything it can to avoid contact to achieve success and another part who's only focus it to apply force and 'hits' and pain to deter that success. Ray Lewis applies his craft about as well as anyone on defense does.
But heres a few things i think... One..no weapons are used in thise ritual combat.. but you get the feeling more and more that some players use thier helmits as weapons. Two.. theres an expression about obcenity that its not always easy to define.. but 'you know it when you see it' - and some hits that you see now may not be so easy to define as rightous or not... but you feel it in your gut.. that it becomes more than just a good hit, made in good play... that it somehow went out of its way to be more violent, done with the helmit used as weapon.. and it seems to me that its mean, and dirty, and disrespectful to the professionalism that that these athletes should have in the game.
But what the owners will demand people do so THEY can make hundreds of millions is even more insane. Your exhortation that we "at least support the players in their upcoming negotiations with ownership" is vital.
Jebus, this is an inane position to take.
Another inane position.
We're supposed to help millionaires in their negotiations? And worry about whether or not they will play 18 game seasons?
I'll just die if my favorite player has to take a pay cut from $12 million a year to $11 million a year. And worry about whether or not the owners will take care of their healthcare after they have retired?
Can a man who has a 30 million dollar contract not have the best insurance that money can buy when he retires?.
If it all the same with you, I think I'm going to worry about having enough money to pay my phone bill this month.
The only tragedy is that teenagers in high school emulate their on-field tactics and suffer for it.
Of course there will always be many injuries in football but certainly nobody should argue in favor of leading with the helmet above the another players shoulders.
But I doubt football fans will like having their basic hypocracy pointed out to them. Namely that they are concerned about players being brain injured but any labor dispute is ALWAYS the players fault and even a lockout by owners is the fault of the players' union.
For whatever reason sports fans made up their minds a long time ago: Professional athletes should be paid whatever the owners decide together to pay them.
If the NFL owners decided to cap all players salaries at 30K a year and locked players out until they took that deal, fans would be all over sports radio and the internet screaming at the players for not taking the offer. If the owners decided to re-start games with all new, barely talented players, fans would be back and rooting for their teams full force in less than a month.