Sports Editor
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| Columnist Adam Mancini |
Football
is nearly a religion in American culture. Approximately 111.5 million people
tuned in to watch the Seattle Seahawks dismantle the Denver Broncos in Super
Bowl XLVIII. That’s over a third of the United States. But are we simply avidly
rooting for our favorite teams in the great American sport each weekend, or are
we witnessing the destruction of the bodies and minds of hundreds of young men?
In
a ground shaking report from the Department of Veteran’s Affairs brain repository,
76 of the 79 former players’ brains studied showed evidence of chronic
traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a degenerative brain disease associated with
impulse control problems, memory loss, and progressive dementia. The brain
bank, one of the nation’s largest, would go on to study the brains of 128
deceased football players and find that a whopping 96.2 percent of the former
NFL players in the study suffered from the disease.
To clear things up, the data is quite skewed due to the fact that the brains in the study were largely donated by players and the families of players who suspected the presences of the disease while alive, as CTE can only be confirmed after death. However, the findings show an obvious link between football and traumatic brain injury.
As
the NFL begins to recover from its domestic violence issues, the league now has
to deal with a $765 million class action lawsuit from over 4,500 former NFL
players and their families against the league for allegedly concealing research
that would show a link between football and brain disease. The new findings
from brain repository in Bedford, Massachusetts, will only further bolster the
arguments of the players. The NFL has now stated in federal court that it
expects nearly a third of former players to develop prominent cognitive issues
at significantly younger ages than the general population.
Two
recent notable cases of NFL players that have been discovered to have had CTE
include retired linebacker Junior Seau and Kansas City Chiefs’ linebacker Jovan
Belcher. Seau tragically shot himself in the chest in 2012 after years of
erratic and uncharacteristic behavior, according to family and friends. Belcher
shot and killed his girlfriend in 2012 before driving to a Chiefs practice
facility and committing suicide in front of team officials. Former linebacker
Dave Duerson shot himself in the chest in 2011 to preserve his brain for
scientists to study. The damage goes beyond the NFL, all the way down to the
high school level. Three high school football players have died in the last two
weeks as a direct result of playing football. Alabama teen Demario Harris Jr., New
York high school student Tom Cutinella, and local Rolesville High School player
Isaiah Langston all passed away. Harris and Cutinella both died as a
consequence of hits to the head, while Langston collapsed due to a blood clot
in his brain.
All
of this begs the question, is football too violent? Do we need to soften the
game more and somehow make it safer for players? In a nation obsessed with
watching these violent collisions on the field, is it worth considering that
the futures of these men are at stake? The answer will lie in the way
commissioner Roger Goodell and the NFL respond to the uproar that has been
caused by this recent turmoil.
