By Daniel J. Flynn
If
you base your opinion of football on only what you hear in the media, your
opinion will likely be as follows.
Football is a violent, barbaric game which is inherently dangerous to
all participants with potential for immediate and long lasting bodily harm. The War on Football further examines
the media’s claims and encourages further discussion of America’s sport.
In
his speech to Ivy League students, Malcolm Gladwell suggested “When people die
of a dumb and violent nineteenth-century game that serves no educational
function, I think the obvious thing to do is to stop playing the dumb and
violent nineteenth-century game.” Even
recently President Obama suggested that if he had a son, he would think very
hard about letting him play football. But
in a time where more and more children are being classified as obese, where do
we place our priorities? Is it worth the
risk to let our kids play a sport that the media has so vilified? Surely the skills they learn on the field
cannot outweigh the damage it does to their bodies, and the risk they face each
time they put on their helmet and shoulder pads. This is likely the thought of most parents
and, as this book points out, the fallacy.
This
years’ Winter X games killed more athletes than the NFL has in 93 seasons. Bicycling kills about 700 Americans every
year, but there’s no media attention suggesting parents ban bicycles. In 1970, 23 highschoolers died from hits in
football. Last year, only 2
highschoolers lost their lives. If
anything, football is becoming a safer sport than ever before. Now that we know that football players aren’t
dropping dead all over the country, what about lifelong impacts of playing the
game?
The author investigated further by looking into
concussions, CTE (Chronic Traumatic encephalopathy, which is
associated with repetitive head trauma) and other diseases. Former football players show an increased
risk of Alzheimers, ALS and Parkinson’s.
We’ve all heard the media say
that the average life expectancy of football players is significantly shorter
than average Americans. Fortunately,
this is an outright lie with no scientific basis. At some point, a nonexistent statistic was
quoted and has continued to pop up erroneously in the media. Logically, football players are chosen and rewarded
for being at the peak of fitness. In
most cases, this extends to later life as players maintain a certain level of
fitness. In both 1994 and 2012, the
NIOSH found that NFL players live longer than American males outside of
football.
What
about the concussions, and the lawsuit against the NFL by former players? Well I won’t even go into detail about how
Riddell is the primary helmet manufacturer being sued and how many players did
not actually even wear Riddell helmets.
Or the fact that 10% of the litigants never saw action in a single NFL
game. Or I could mention how the
concussion studies by Mark Lovell are more about profit than science. Read the book, you will be enlightened.
It’s
around this point where you can’t help but cry out “What about all the people
the media has highlighted who have gone crazy or killed themselves because of
lingering effects of football and concussions?!” Autopsies have shown tau protein in the
brains of people who have sustained repetitive head trauma, and tau is
associated with mental problems such as dementia, poor decision making and
depression. But CTE can only be
diagnosed in the dead, and brains are often donated under suspicion of CTE,
which results in selection bias in the studies.
What about the athletes who have killed themselves “as a result of
CTE?” Unfortunately, cases like the
happy go lucky Junior Seau have been misrepresented by the media. What you won’t hear is that Seau reportedly drank
heavily 5 to 6 nights a week, gambled excessively, had an insatiable appetite
for women, and was experiencing financial difficulties after several
investments went belly-up. Several more
examples include: Dave Duerson – shot himself in the chest and asked that his
brain be studied. His business was also
held in receivership, his home foreclosed, and he filed for bankruptcy listing
liabilities of ~$15 million. Mike
Current – his suicide was followed with the subheadline “due to the inability
to deal with the traumatic brain injury caused by concussions.” What was pushed aside was how he was facing a
possible 30+ year sentence for allegedly molesting three children.
Daniel Flynn weaves
history, quotes, and research into a coherent story about football. We learn that football is a sport that has
evolved over the years into the game it is today. Flynn also points out how important it is to
read between the lines of media reports, and to do your own research before you
believe anything. While we do not know
for sure what causes CTE, as football fans we must accept the ever changing
rules of our game. I really enjoyed this
book, as it provided a thorough dissection of many of the current issues
surrounding the game as well as a history of the game itself. I hope that parents who are worried about
their children’s minds being made soft by football will read this book and
learn that maybe a soft body is worse than a hard hit in the long run.
Rating: 4.25 out of 5 Bunsen Burners
Up Next: I’ve
got a huge list of books that need reviewing, too many to list. Stay tuned.
