Football, brains and dogfighting

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving to all. Unfortunately, my column topic this week isn’t particularly joyous. I’ve been writing a lot recently about the dominance of the NFL, and for good reason. The NFL does so much right on the marketing, television, scheduling and revenue-sharing sides that it’s not surprising that the league does well. The magnitude of its success is interesting though, especially given recent indications that 40 per cent of self-described baseball fans would prefer to watch a football game than a baseball playoff game and the lacklustre Colts-Titans matchup last night achieved more than double the ratings of the Yankees-Twins playoff game. There are some other factors that go into that, such as Sunday Night Football being over-the-air on NBC and baseball being on cable (but a widely-available cable channel), but it does show that the NFL has a tremendous amount of popularity. That popularity is also true for other leagues; both American and Canadian college football have had some great ratings successes this year, as has the CFL.

Despite the success of football at each of these levels, there is an elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about; the increasing amounts of proof that football is an extremely dangerous activity for all involved. Check out pieces like GQ’s excellent Game Brain for plenty of disturbing information on exactly what a football career can do to your mind.

As I wrote earlier this year, football’s far from the only sport with problems, and progress has been made on how concussions are treated. As discussed in that GQ article, though, much of the damage comes not just from what happens in games or from isolated huge hits, but from the daily crashing and banging in practice. Even with all we know about head injuries now, coaches and players continue to take foolish risks; one such case happened in the CFL this week, where the Toronto Argonauts’ medical staff seemingly initially diagnosed quarterback Kerry Joseph with a concussion, then changed their diagnosis and allowed him to return to the field after backup Cody Pickett got hurt. Another case happened in the NFL this weekend, where 49ers safety Michael Lewis suffered his third concussion of the season [Sportress of Blogitude].

It doesn’t help that football players, coaches, front-office officials and the rest have been raised on a constant credo of toughing it out and playing through pain. NFL and CFL rosters are constantly in flux, too, so the longer you’re out, the less chance you’ll have a job when you come back. Moreover, the NFL in particular has been extremely reluctant to even acknowledge that playing football might cause traumatic brain disorders, attempting to shoot down every study to that effect. They may have to change that policy now after their own study reflected similar results [The New York Times], but initial reactions aren’t promising. Consider this quote from the league, about a study they commissioned and paid for:

An N.F.L. spokesman, Greg Aiello, said in an e-mail message that the study did not formally diagnose dementia, that it was subject to shortcomings of telephone surveys and that “there are thousands of retired players who do not have memory problems.”
“Memory disorders affect many people who never played football or other sports,” Mr. Aiello said. “We are trying to understand it as it relates to our retired players.”

Shooting down their own research won’t get the NFL very far for very long. The key drive towards change may come through education of the players; as that New York Times piece linked above demonstrates, many active NFL players are hearing about this research and becoming quite concerned.

The league and the players’ association are currently locked in collective bargaining, and we might see players press for more independence for team medical personnel, opportunities for players to receive outside medical opinions, more stringent concussion standards, more rules on hits to the head and better care for former NFL players. The players have more leverage to exact change than any outside researcher or journalist, and more potential benefits from doing so, so let’s hope they take advantage of this opportunity.

In the meantime, though, football fans have to cope with the question of if it’s legitimate to watch and enjoy the game. Many would dismiss this right off, but it deserves some serious consideration. Football players are often referred to as gladiators, and there are some similarities between them and those who took to the arenas of ancient Rome; both participated in violent contests of skill for the enjoyment of a mass audience. Moreover, as Malcolm Gladwell looked at in The New Yorker this week, there are more similarities between football and dogfighting than we might like to think about; both feature extensive violence, sometimes-bloodthirsty spectators and can result in serious injury or death for participants. To a visitor from another planet unfamiliar with Earth’s sporting traditions, would gladatorial combat, dogfighting and football really look all that different?

In the end, I believe football remains a much more acceptable spectator activity than either of the other two. To me, the key distinctions are intent and free will. The overall intent involved in a football game is not to seriously injure or kill an opponent; it’s to score more points than them, which doesn’t necessarily even require a lot of violence. By contrast, in gladiatorial combat and dogfighting, the combat is the key element, and the object is frequently the death of the loser.

Free will also is a key component here. Some gladiators chose the arena on their own, but many were forced into it as slaves. The dogs in dogfighting rings didn’t choose that life, no matter how much they might seem to enjoy the violence; they were trained that way and forced into it by their masters. By contrast, no one is forcing NFL players (or other football players) to go out there and risk their health; they do it for the money, for their teammates and for the love of the sport. That’s their decision to make, and unilaterally banning football to take that decision out of their hands wouldn’t be the best solution in my mind.

Just saying “They chose this life” doesn’t abdicate the responsibility of coaches, general managers, training staff, league personnel and even fans, though. Football players need to be as informed as possible about the risks they face. They need to be encouraged not just to blindly play through pain, but to do what’s best for their long-term future. Coaches and general managers need to see their players as human beings, not just as interchangeable parts, to be picked up, used and then cast off. League officials need to stop denying concussion research and start funding it. Everyone involved needs to focus on ways to provide for retired and injured players. Even fans need to keep in mind the very real dangers involved in producing a sport for their enjoyment, and there’s plenty they can do to publicly lobby for change as well.

I don’t think it behooves anyone to jump on a soapbox and start ranting about the evils of football and calling for an outright ban. That won’t accomplish anything; the game is too good, and the demand for it is too strong. What we do need to do is find a way to minimize the risks involved and take care of the players, both during their time in the spotlight and after their careers end. Football doesn’t equal dogfighting or gladiatorial combat, but would it be such a bad idea to move it further away from them?

Tags: andrew bucholtz, CFL, concussions, dogfighting, football, injuries, nfl
Categories: Daily Specials, Domestics, Drunken Ramblings, Non-Alcoholic

This entry was posted on Monday, October 12th, 2009 at 5:07 pm and is filed under Daily Specials, Domestics, Drunken Ramblings, Non-Alcoholic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.