Football as 'Murder'?
Matty sez, compassionately and logically,
I've been looking at the data regarding our national obsession (baseball is our pastime...football is something else, considering it occurs only weekly and generally involves only 5 total hours of time per week...yet we Americans give it far more money than we give to baseball). This isn't meant to tick people off...just to start a dialogue...I'm becoming very concerned that what we do with American Football is the moral equivalent of ritual sacrifice.
Did you folks know that the oldest man alive today to have ever played at least 4 years of NFL football is 73?
Did you know that football stars who have died in the last ten years have been giving their brains over to medical science for study because, even as they go mad from dementia and and neurological diseases that are fast on the rise in the game's M.A.S.H. unit, they know that football caused their impending deaths? And did you know that those autopsies have unveiled scorched brains riddled with lesions and clear signs of severe internal bleeding long forgotten?
Would you sit comfortably on your couch and watch the NFL if you could see the blood pouring into their brains?
The average life expectancy of four-year NFL veterans is 54.6 years if you look at players who hit their prime in the 60s and 70s, and today's game has a much steeper injury rate, is filled with bigger players and there are five times as many concussion reports and other catastrophic back, neck and head injuries. In the average season post 1995, there've been roughly 82 catastrophic neurological injuries in football each year - that's almost three per team. Per year! And that's just spinal column, neck and head injuries that merited at least 8 weeks on the IL...it's HUNDREDS...PER YEAR...for other skeletal and connective tissue injuries with life-long repercussions such as chronic arthritis, brittle bone disease and joint death.
I think football is no better than the Roman Colosseum or the Aztec's virgin sacrifice...I used to find it fun...but I can't bring myself to even watch - not until they do something about the body count and the human misery they're inflicting on the world. This message coming to you from a man who has always voted republican and thinks liberal attempts to make things like air shows and hand guns illegal are insulting and beneath our collective dignity. Football can seem very heroic, but they used to sing songs about toreadors and further back, it was gladiators...and most of us have moved on and recognized how barbaric and morally depraved such things were. When will we take a harder look at football?
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=== Roundtable, Dept. ===
Did you folks know that the oldest man alive today to have ever played at least 4 years of NFL football is 73?
Did not know. Amazing.* *A little too amazing!, LOL - see MoDawg's comment below.
The average life expectancy of four-year NFL veterans is 54.6 years if you look at players who hit their prime in the 60s and 70s
That one's even more amazing.
Daniel Amen, the guy I listen to on brain research, is also campaigning against football in its present form; he's putting the info out there that EVERY hit to the head, including with high-tech helmets, causes alarming brain damage. Before even commenting on Matt's position, we'd better be fully aware of the extent of the brain damage being inflicted every weekend. It is far beyond what most would imagine. The effect on lives is tragic.
One* difference between football and Aztecs throwing maidens into volcanoes is that the maidens weren't paid and didn't have the option to do something else. :- ) "Murder" implies a certain lack of volunteerism on the part of the victim....
Society envies pro athletes -- envies them with the passion of a thousand burning suns -- and it's going to be hard to drum up the empathy necessary to get federal laws changed. As all good politicians know, mob psychology plays a big part in the battle against political inertia. You put up a video of a 50-something NFL player with Alzheimer's, fine ... but is that video going to be able to overcome the blizzard of images that show celebrities driving hot cars and scoring chicks? Which is going to trump which, as it applies to the mob at large? Which influences the base part of the brain more?
...........................
It's a funny thing. If you asked most 20-year-old men whether they wanted to be Terrell Owens, all the babes and bling and whatnot, but that they'd probably only live to 55, they would choose to be T.O., I think.
America was built on freedoms, so *I* believe that it's their choice. There's a major hypocrisy here on our part, though, since society has signed off on ticketing drivers who choose not to fasten their seat belts, and motorcycle riders who choose not to wear helmets. Most Americans now truly believe that the government can take away your right to do anything they think is demonstrably stupid. Look at the tone in this article: "Helmetless riders freak me out. They make me cringe. We obviously need to pass laws that get them out of our sight." That blogger is coming from a much different place than is Matt, of course.
Me, I'm a freedoms guy, so I would mandate education, with brain imaging pictures, videos from 55-year-olds with Alzheimer's, etc., and then let the young men do what they wanted. I would certainly try to talk my son out of accepting a UW football scholarship, but it's his life.
Kudos to Matt for his humanity and his heart, but I'm not (yet) convinced that voluntary participation in gladiator fights is a bad thing.