Tonight’s the night that football fans have been waiting for since the final gun ended last season’s Super Bowl. For me, it’s doubly exciting, since my beloved Minnesota Vikings are looking to exact a measure of revenge from the New Orleans Saints for last season’s NFC Championship Game. It’s Opening Day, when all things are possible and everyone’s a Super Bowl contender.
As much as I love football, though, I find it difficult not to be concerned about what happens to the gladiators we adore are shuffled out the door. When bodies break down and skills diminish, those who’ve played the game in the NFL are all too often left with serious and lingering long-term effects. When preternaturally large, unbelievable strong and fast men spend a football season colliding at full speed, there are a lot of things that can happen…and very few of them are good. The game we love has a disturbing tendency to use people up and spit them out, too often broken and diminished.
Football is a tough game. Anyone who has played the game at any level understands that basic reality. A former NFL once described the contact from a single game as experiencing the impact of an automobile accident…on every play. Do that for 16 games (plus preseason and playoff games) a year for a few years, and it’s not hard to understand how and why some players experience significant, lingering long-term effects long after their playing days are over. Concussions and damaged joints are things that, if incurred often enough, tend not to heal properly…if they heal at all. I suffered seven concussions my last season playing soccer in college, and I’m here to tell you that almost 30 years later I’m still suffering the consequences. And I didn’t even play football past high school.
While NFL teams are at least giving lip service to the potential seriousness of head injuries, the biggest concern is always (and will remain) getting a player back on the field as soon as possible. I can attest to the reality that head injuries are the gift that keep on giving. When you have 300-lb. men with world-class speed running into each other at full tilt snap after snap…well, the human brain just wasn’t designed to sustain that sort of repeated violence.
The math is cruel. Studies estimate that an NFL player will lose an average of one to three years of life expectancy for every year he spends in the league. Is 40 the new 65 for pro football veterans? Many recently retired players find themselves rehabbing in the company of geriatrics because of the damage inflicted by a 16-game season. “We think we can play forever,” says Rich Gannon, the 2002 MVP who played 17 years at quarterback and suffers from chronic pain in his knees and neck, among other areas. “But the thing that’s really dawned on me is that I’m 44 years old and I’ve already had two knee surgeries, two shoulder surgeries and I broke my neck in 2004. I really felt like when I retired I was out of the woods, but I’ve had all kinds of issues.”…. Does it matter what the players surmise when commissioner Roger Goodell, in his almighty Oz voice, keeps saying, “The fans have spoken”? Clearly, fans detest preseason games, but the owners have selective hearing—fans also loathe seat licenses, long lines at stadium restrooms and TV blackouts. Fans experience the game, not its repercussions.
Now NFL owners want to increase the season from the current 16 games to 18 and reduce the preseason from four games to two. While fans will always welcome more football, a reasonable person has to wonder at what cost more football will come. How will this impact the already short career of the average player? What long-term health effects will be exacerbated for players engaged in a longer season? This is no abstract question. Retired players can and do experience significant and lasting effects on their long-term health. There’s evidence that shows that playing in the NFL can shorten a player’s life expectancy. Yes, playing in the NFL is an elective career pursuit, and no one holds a gun to a lineman’s head to force him to suit up. Even so, NFL players are useful to the league’s owners and fans only so long as their bodies holds up. Once their health and skills diminish, a player is tossed aside and quickly replaced. The NFL is a business, after all, and business is GOOD.
Except that human beings aren’t disposable commodities. Yes, players who make it to the NFL understand and accept the risks…but should not the NFL accept responsibility for the long-term damage that the NFL game inflicts on some, perhaps most, of its alumni? Fans see the games; they don’t see the aftermath. They don’t see the former players hobbling on artifcial hips and knees, or dealing with the increased risk of Parkinson’s Disease from multiple concussions. They don’t see the deformed, malfunctioning joints that can’t be fixed despite advances in modern medical technology.
As much as I love football, and I truly do, I’m concerned that the people being shortchanged over the long term are the players who entertain us on Sunday afternoons. The way the NFL is structured, players, no matter how charismatic or talented, are ultimately disposable parts, useful only as long as their body and their skills hold up. In a league where the the average playing career is just barely over three years, NFL football can best be described as a meat grinder. With a never-ending supply of fresh meat willing to head to slaughter, the NFL is in no danger of finding qualified and talented employee/players. The question, and it should be something that concerns all of us, is what the future holds for a player who may be washed up and irretrievably broken by the time he’s 30.
Game on, eh?
