Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is a progressive degenerative disease of the brain found in athletes (and others) with a history of repetitive brain trauma, including symptomatic concussions as well as asymptomatic subconcussive hits to the head. See www.bu.edu.
I’m done with football.
CTE, traumatic brain injuries, suicides, spouse and child abuse, the list goes on. I won’t watch any more football because if we watch, the NFL makes money, and the athletes will continue to play and continue to die long sad deaths because the game is deadly. Many of those athletes will lead violent lives that spill over into their family lives, sometimes with suicidal or criminal consequences. The NFL has no plan to prevent head injuries, so concussions continue. We know that the helmets protect against skull fractures, but not against concussions. To stop these deadly injuries, football would have to change dramatically, but the fear is no one would watch. The players are making so much money that they will never stop playing even in the face of strong evidence that football is inherently dangerous and often deadly. So we as a nation have to stop watching, and find another sport to watch.
Parents: don’t let your children play football. We can’t protect them.
What is it that we love about football? We have to come to grips with the fact that we love the violence–the big hits are repeated over and over in the news. The bigger the hit the better. We want to see them, but don’t want to hear that they are deadly. The Romans also had to come to grips with the violence of gladiatorial contests, which finally came to an end, and maybe we could learn from that.
Here is a list of football deaths and injuries. It only scratches the surface, but the list will keep growing until we stop watching football.
7/1/15
Football players carry 3 times risk of CTE symptoms
Evergreen High School Football head injury death