Do NFL players get concussions? Sure, they do. But they don’t start playing the game the day they arrive at rookie camp.
Statistics show that while football is up there as a source of concussions for high-schoolers, it ranks well behind wrestling and hockey for college athletes. Schoolboy athletes also get significant levels of concussions from rugby.
Women also suffer significant levels of concussions from lacrosse and soccer in high school, and from hockey, basketball, soccer and lacrosse in college.
One could speculate that the concussion difference between high school and college for football players has to do with better coaching, better safety equipment and better medical care at the college level, which makes sense, considering the difference in budget.
So basically, if you want to protect your boys and girls (and we should care about girl athletes too, one supposes), they shouldn’t play any of the above sports — or go skateboarding, horseback riding or skiing, all sports at risk for concussion.
But, with the movie “Concussion” now in theaters, we are meant to believe that NFL football is the sport most responsible for head injuries that lead to psychological instability and suicide.
The numbers don’t bear that out either.
A detailed article at Slate takes apart “Concussion,” a star vehicle with Will Smith as physician Dr. Bennet Omalu, dissecting both the narrative of Omalu’s role in examining brain illness among NFL players, and the basic underlying premise of the movie.
Along with showing how the film’s timeline and dramatic incidents are only half-true in many instances, and distorted in others, the article goes at the film’s assumptions about how playing pro football affects athletes long term.
When Omalu’s character says, at one point in the film, that “God did not intend for us to play football” and later warns that as long as we do, “men will continue to die,” he’s appealing not to fact-based objective truth but to an alternate reality—an emotional, spiritual one—that has come to dominate the enlightened person’s understanding of the NFL.
Are we actually watching players kill themselves before our eyes? No, not on average: A 2012 study of several thousand NFL retirees, conducted by researchers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, found that the former football players lived significantly longer than race- and age-matched controls. They were much less likely to die from cancer, heart disease, diabetes, accidental falls, or homicides than anybody else. That doesn’t mean that taking hits improved their health, of course; surely the opposite is true. But still this study gave the lie to a fundamental intuition about football and one that’s touted almost everywhere. There’s zero evidence that playing professional football shortens lives on average. Those are the facts. Take ’em or leave ’em.
Of course, it’s not all invention. Says Slate:
Here’s a more sedate and honest formulation: Omalu really did discover an unusual pathology in the brains of former NFL players, and the NFL’s corrupt administration really did attempt to discredit his research and then for half a decade ignored this important line of inquiry (only caving under congressional scrutiny). But these facts have been spun out, in this film and elsewhere, into a melodrama wherein Omalu’s deadly brain pathology drives football players crazy and destroys their minds. Eventually it leads to suicide.
Perhaps. The fact that football players live longer lives, on average, doesn’t mean they aren’t also subject to an epidemic of suicide. After all, only a fraction of chronic smokers end up dying from lung cancer, but they’re still 23 times more likely than nonsmokers to get the disease. But is football really causing suicide? Again, there’s zero evidence to support the claim. According to the NIOSH study from 2012, ex-players are much less likely to kill themselves than men of the same race and age.
So, why the obsessive focus on pro football, which has taken measures to improve safety equipment and refine mandatory concussion protocols? Why is it singled out? Why doesn’t the media seem to care about all the other athletes — particularly female ones — who suffer traumatic brain injury in different sports?
For one, the NFL is the biggest game in town, by a country mile. Attacking high-school or NCAA football — not to mention lacrosse or college hockey — won’t do much good, if it’s money that you’re after. Even the biggest football-loving college doesn’t have pockets as deep as the NFL. Also, in the recent concussion settlement (I was on a conference call about it), players don’t even have to prove that their maladies were caused by their NFL play in order to participate in the settlement.
In most lawsuits, the injured party has to show that the defendant indeed injured them to get compensated, but not here.
But I believe there’s another reason. Football, from high school up, is an all-male sport. It’s rough and tough and dangerous, and in its mix of intense physicality and strategy, it is in some ways an analog of soldiers in combat.
Basically, it represents a traditional view of masculinity — including both the base and violent, and the noble and sportsmanlike, aspects of it.
There are “progressive” elements in society that can’t abide that, and the massive popularity of the NFL — including among women, who represent the growth in League fandom — puzzles and infuriates them.
I don’t believe any female NFL fan operates under illusions about just how punishing and dangerous the sport is. As a fan myself, I admire the incredible athleticism and grace it takes to play the game at a high level. While I don’t like seeing players get hurt — I saw it happen right in front of me this summer — I respect the decision of these grown men to accept those risks and play the game, for which they are well-paid.
While the NFL has its share of jerks and unsavory characters, so does every sport (you just don’t hear about it as much in sports the media isn’t laser-focused on). At the same time, the NFL also has plenty of altruistic, philanthropic and noble men, representing a non-military expression of the best of the warrior ethic (and many of them are also devoutly and publicly Christian).
But there’s a war on boys, on men and on traditional expressions of masculinity. While only a fool would deny that injuries are common in football, I distrust the intellectual honesty and motivations of those who obsess over the health of NFL players while paying scant attention to the physical damage suffered by other athletes.
For example, female athletes, especially soccer players, have a much higher incidence of ACL tears than male athletes. A head injury is more serious, but as someone who suffered an ACL tear, it’s nothing to sneer at.
There are also women and girls who choose to play tackle football, and their injury rate is high. In fact, among high-school athletes, a 2012 study showed that girls are twice as likely as boys to be diagnosed with concussion.
Where’s the movie about that?
Image: Courtesy Sony Pictures Entertainment
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