The war on football is real. Not sure source but concussion alarmists are loving it. Liberal media loves it. Doesn't matter. It's real.
— Danny Kanell (@dannykanell) December 8, 2015The New York Times published an editorial on Monday that questioned whether parents should allow kids to play football, given increased awareness about the long-term dangers the sport may pose to the brain. To former NFL quarterback Danny Kanell, who now works as an analyst for ESPN, that editorial represents an effort by the “liberal media” to wage a “war on football.”…. There are still unanswered questions about the risks that football and other contact sports like hockey and soccer pose to the long-term health of players at every level. It’s not clear how likely it is that athletes who play contact sports will suffer long-term brain damage, or how and whether those risks can be mitigated. Scientists have called for more research, particularly on young athletes. But what Kanell sees as a “war on football” is not a product of some vast media conspiracy to take down America’s most popular sport.
Baseball may be America’s national pastime, but football is America’s national obsession. This means, of course, that obscene amounts of money are at stake at the game’s highest levels. Like any business, football- and by that I mean the NFL and NCAA- is heavily engaged in protecting its revenue sources. Questions about safety risks, in particular traumatic brain injuries, do nothing to protect the business, so it’s easy to understand why the NFL downplayed the risks of the game for so many years (and why the NCAA ignored it completely). That their denial of the problem and refusal to address the reality of it speaks to an institution far more concerned with making money than protecting the lives and well-being of those who play the game and make possible the billions in profits.
With an average career spanning less than four years, NFL players come and go with astonishing speed. The average player coming into the league after graduating from college sees their playing career over at or before age 26. Even at that young age, accumulated head trauma can, and in some cases does, lead to significant long-term problems. As modern training techniques have helped create players who are bigger, faster, and stronger than ever, the collisions and the speed at which they occur continue to grow in frequency and severity.
I’m not attacking football- though I do have significant reservations about the risks involved and the level of care and commitment afforded to players who suffer head injuries. The NFL moved to address the problem only after it become clear that they’d dragged their feet for years. Most important to the league was the fear that acquiescing and admitting head trauma to be a significant issue would harm the bottom line. Sadly, this meant that former players died after carrying for years the accumulated effects of repeated traumatic brain injuries the NFL refused to acknowledge.
This is an issue I can speak to with some authority. I was a goalkeeper on my college soccer team. Over a six month period leading into the begin of my senior year, I played for an amateur side in St. Paul, MN, and at Macalester College. Over those six months, I suffered seven concussions…that I know of. There could well have been a couple more, but this was long before traumatic head injuries and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) became part of the public dialogue. The truth is that I don’t know what I can expect in terms of my long-term health. I’ve been fine thus far, so I certainly don’t anticipate any lingering issues from traumatic brain injuries…but there’s no way to be certain of that. Perhaps I’ve been fortunate to escape significant long-term issues…or perhaps they simply haven’t yet manifested in recognizable ways. I don’t know, and I may never know, so I’ve chosen to file the questions away and deal with any consequences when and/or if it becomes necessary to do so. It might be denial, but I’ve chosen to not obsess over what I don’t- and may never- know to be the case.
Millions of current and former football players don’t have the luxury to be so cavalier. Traumatic brain injuries that can lead to CTE are very real and devastating. For Danny Kanell- a former Florida State and NFL quarterback to blame “the Liberal media” for a “war on football” is as absurd in its smug denial of reality as it is dangerous.
There is no “war on football.” To claim “[t]he war on football is real” is to display a world-class level of denial and arrogance. Having played Division I football and in the NFL, you’d think Kanell would have first-hand knowledge of the damage that football collisions can do. A friend who played in the NFL once described it to me as being in an automobile collision on every play. Those who’ve experienced that sort of accident even once should be able to extrapolate what that sort of repeated physical trauma can do. At the very least, Kanell should be able to recognize that while he may have been fortunate enough to not suffer head injuries during his playing days, not every player can count on being so fortunate.
The author of the editorial, however, was not a member of the so-called “liberal media,” but rather Dr. Bennet Omalu, the forensic pathologist who first discovered the degenerative brain known as disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in the brain of former NFL star Mike Webster.
This is not “concussion alarmism.” It’s certainly not a “war on football.” And it’s most certainly not being waged by “the Liberal media.” What it seems to be is one willfully ill-informed former player who’s seriously in denial about the scientific reality of CTE. Kanell might want to talk to Mike Webster’s family about that. Or Junior Seau’s. Or the families of an alarming number of former football players diagnosed with CTE, which currently can only be diagnosed posthumously.
Before Kanell ridicules something that’s been conclusively proven to be real, he might want to lose the smug arrogance and pay attention to what’s happening in football today. The game exacts a toll some players will be paying the rest of their lives. I can’t claim to know what the answer or the solution may be, but I can guarantee that ignorance and denial are neither.
It’s one thing for Danny Kanell to smugly ignore medical and scientific reality. It’s quite another to pass it off as a “war on football” being conducted by “the Liberal media.” Sometimes it’s just better to be thought a fool than to compose a tweet, press ENTER, and remove all doubt.
