Yesterday, while enduring my brutal commute home from deep in the West side to the far East side, I was listening to 1080 The Fan. They interviewed a guy named Ben McGrath, who writes for the New Yorker magazine. They had him on to talk about an article that he recently wrote called, "Does Football Have a Future?"It's quite a long, but interesting article to make your way through. But it brings up the point that there may come a time when not as many kids will be growing up playing football of any kind.
McGrath writes, "What we now know, from reading Schwarz, is that retired N.F.L. players are five to nineteen times as likely as the general population to have received a dementia-related diagnosis; that the helmet-manufacturing industry is overseen by a volunteer consortium funded largely by helmet manufacturers; and that Lou Gehrig may not actually have had the disease that bears his name but suffered from concussion-related trauma instead. (Since 1960, fourteen N.F.L. players have had a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which is about twelve more than you would expect from a random population sample.)
McGrath writes, "What we now know, from reading Schwarz, is that retired N.F.L. players are five to nineteen times as likely as the general population to have received a dementia-related diagnosis; that the helmet-manufacturing industry is overseen by a volunteer consortium funded largely by helmet manufacturers; and that Lou Gehrig may not actually have had the disease that bears his name but suffered from concussion-related trauma instead. (Since 1960, fourteen N.F.L. players have had a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which is about twelve more than you would expect from a random population sample.)
In the manner of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Dr. Maroon has delineated four stages in the N.F.L.’s reaction to the reality of brain damage: active resistance and passive resistance, shifting to passive acceptance and, finally, in the past few months, active acceptance. “What we’re seeing now is that major cultural shift, and I think Alan took a lot of barbs, and a lot of hits, initially, for his observations,” Maroon said."
There's a lot more information contained in the article, but suffice it to say that if the NFL really wants to take concussions and permanent head injuries seriously (like they say they do), there might come a day where the rules of the game change pretty dramatically.
[ Does Football Have a Future? -- Ben McGrath ]
