It used to be that the big moral question I had about watching football focused on the leaf raking, screen removal and other fall projects that weren’t getting done while I watched the game. There was also some soul-searching about what I was doing to my body with the chips and cheese dip.
But now I’m starting to wonder what all this is about. I’m starting to feel like a Roman citizen going to see the Christians get torn apart by the lions.
As the late Michigan State coach Duffy Daugherty famously said, “Football isn’t a contact sport; it’s a collision sport.”
And is it ever. It’s been estimated that there are some 20,000 injuries every season in college football alone. And that’s certainly a low estimate because many players and their coaches don’t report getting hurt.
It’s one thing for fans like me to just accept the broken bones, twisted knees and the lesser trauma of being “shaken up” or getting “his bell rung,” as sports announcers like to put it. It’s a tough sport and the players know what they’re getting into.
But the growing awareness of concussions should make any thinking person who loves football think again about watching the games in person or on television and in doing so contributing to the profits that are driving the game, at least at the professional and big time college level.
As Michael Popke reported recently in Isthmus (“Why I won’t let my son play football”), “In July, Dr. Ann McKee, an Appleton native, UW-Madison graduate and neuropathologist who is director of Boston University’s CTE Center, reported that CTE was detected in 110 of the 111 former NFL players’ brains donated to research.” CTE is
chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which Popke described as, “a progressive, degenerative disease similar to Alzheimer’s that is caused by repeated blows to the head.”
Other studies suggest that somewhere between 43,000 and 67,000 players at all levels of the sport sustain concussions every year. And, of course, many of these players experience more than one concussion in a season. It’s not unreasonable to think that at least one player receives a concussion during several plays in a typical game.
And knowing all that, what’s our role and responsibility as fans? We can stop cheering the biggest hits where the most damage is often done, but serious long-term, cumulative injuries can take place on the most mundane running play in the fourth quarter of a blow out. We might sit on our hands and just hope that the players are okay after an explosive collision, but given that a concussion is a real possibility on every play, should we even show up at the stadium or turn on the set at all?
In preparing this blog I searched online for “college football injuries.” The first 30 hits were all sites (including the NCAA’s own site) that reported on current injuries, mostly for the implicit or explicit purpose of placing bets. That’s right. The 31st site finally was one that reported on the serious nature of college football injuries. That suggests that when fans search on that topic they aren’t concerned about the welfare of the players but about the chances of their team winning on Saturday and whether the point spread can be covered. This does not reflect well on us as fans or as human beings.
Look, I don’t want to smother people in bubble wrap. In fact, as a rule I think our society has become too security and safety conscious. I actually believe that a certain amount of reasonable risk is good for us and makes us better people. But is the risk in football just “a certain amount” and is it “reasonable”?
Increasingly, I’m having a hard time accepting it as such. It used to be that players were just big or just fast, but now they’re all both big and fast, so those collisions are becoming more violent with results that verge on carnage.
Recently, ESPN college football analyst Ed Cunningham resigned his job over exactly this concern. On the website Bleacher Report, Cunningham explained, "In its current state, there are some real dangers — broken limbs, wear and tear. But the real crux of this is that I just don't think the game is safe for the brain. To me, it's unacceptable."
Cunningham, who played center in both college and the NFL, clearly loves and understands the game as well as anyone. And if he finds it necessary to walk away from a job that paid him to watch it, where does that leave those of us who pay to watch the game?
