America is living with a disconnect.
You’ve no doubt seen the photos, of those battle-scarred veterans. Some were injured on the offensive. Others suffered from shoring up the defense. Some battled in the trenches. Others fought in the air. They all returned the same way—shadows of what they once were.
I’m not talking about our military veterans. This is about football players and brain injury. Whether we want to hear it or not, football is America’s version of war games. The language of the game speaks to it–battle, trenches, air attack, ground troops, platoons, protect the flanks, etc.
Courtesy: stopcte.org
And with that comes one of America’s biggest disconnects: we love football, but research says it’s dangerous.
What started as a trickle—news about NFL players suffering brain trauma—has turned into a stream. We’re learning that high school and college players are affected, too.
The brain trauma they share almost never shows up quickly. For most, manifestations come years after they last played. By then—with playing days long over and fan interest a matter of memories—they suffer.
What you and I take for granted—remembering details, holding a casual conversation, managing daily hygiene—they can’t do well, if at all.
They’ve lost their minds.
But the storyline for the rest of America is how they got there. We enabled it. And we enabled it enthusiastically.
There’s youth football, for starters, with kids as young as six playing tackle football. And football is embedded in secondary and collegiate education. It’s lauded as a learning lab of character formation—about teamwork, perseverance, discipline, and how to handle success and disappointment, among other things. Safety issues? Well, they aren’t overlooked, but the fact is we still play the game.
Courtesy: IB Times
And playing it brings another storyline, about how “hits”—the trauma incurred from weeks of practice and tons of games—can haunt lives.
The most recent revelations came last week in an article published in Annals of Neurology by a research team affiliated with the Boston University School of Medicine and the Veterans Administration Boston Healthcare System.
The study sample—nearly 250 deceased players who had donated their brains to research—included a number of former high school and collegiate players.
Nearly 86% of those players were diagnosed with CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy), a degenerative brain disease associated with repetitive trauma to the brain. Those findings are consistent with research on the brains of former NFL players.
But this study made another contribution. Specifically, it’s about how “playing young” affects brain development in youth and on brain devolution as players age.
The researchers found that each year of football participation speeds up the onset of cognitive symptoms by 2.44 years and behavioral/mood symptoms by 2.5 years.
The cumulative effect is especially sobering for kids who begin playing football during their pre-teen years.
“It makes common sense that children whose brains are rapidly developing, should not be hitting their heads hundreds of times per season,” said Dr. Ann McKee, study co-author and Director of BU’s CTE Center.
That assertion is being heeded by parents across America. Recent studies revealed that participation in youth football (ages 6-12 years) fell by nearly 30% nationally from 2008-2016. Participation in tackle football in high school dropped by nearly 50,000 boys from 2009-2016. But declines in both cases were unevenly spread out in the general population. Kids from Caucasian families with higher socioeconomic profiles are more likely to withdraw from the game.
Courtesy: Bloomberg
While thousands of parents are taking action, institutional change is slow. One reason is that there’s little if any public outrage. With external pressure light, football associations–from youth football, to high school, to the NCAA, to the NFL–respond on their terms and at a preferred pace.
Another reason is that football is a billion dollar industry. Changing the game’s profile would likely have an impact on all those individuals and organizations that benefit financially from the game as we know it today. Why risk that by tinkering with the status quo?
What should you do? That’s a question each of us can answer—or at least can start thinking about—especially as the football season draws near.
In the meantime, expect that trend line to continue. More players will “come home” wounded.
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An earlier version of this article was published in the Journal-Herald (May 10, 2018).
