Sports are Only for the Young

We're coming to realize a very terrifying truth about the heavy duty physical contact team sports we enjoy in this country, primarily football and hockey.  With the continued research into the consequences of repeated hits to the head, it's becoming more undeniable the players who play these games are now taking decades off their lives by doing so.

It's no longer just concussions which are the red flags.  Studies have focused on the repeated hits to the head these sports feature, and frankly, encourage.  The reality is stark.  Brain deterioration is happening at an alarming rate, with serious mental cognitive issues at much higher rates for retired former athletes of these heavy contact sports, when compared to the rest of us.  Not surprising, the risk of death is also much higher.

Slightly defending these contact sports, it's not like our current understanding of the warning signs have always been there.  Guys used to talk about player's 'bells getting rung' and 'getting knocked into next week,' and we now know that was actually serious head trauma.  As science made us healthier and extended lives, discrepancies started to get exposed.  The beer drinking, hard partying, 250 pound, 30 pounds overweight, 5 foot 10 player of the 60's and 70's doesn't exist anymore.  Today, the players are 6' 7'', 285 pounds, all muscle.  There's no longer an off season, as these athletes train harder and faster, delivering human beings who can hit you harder than a car going down a street.  Every serious hit today seems to be ten times more vicious than hits from days gone by.

I went to drop off my kid at a sports practice where the 9th grade football players were just finishing up.  A kid walked past who was at least 6'4'', probably 300 pounds.  He had some fat on him, but he also had a lot of muscle too.  I call him a kid because contradictory of his massive girth, he still had the face of a high school freshman.  If that young man would hit me like an opposing player, I wouldn't be getting up anytime soon, and he was only in 9th grade on a .500 team.  I've been told the more prestigious football high schools have kids who are even bigger and faster.  It's scary.

Here's where the organizations which promote these physical contact sports bear significant blame. When these warning signs started to show up, they did everything to limit the medical investigation into what was going on.  They dragged their heels and discredited factual research to continue to maintain their sports are just good clean fun.  Many people within these organizations might not have know the exact medical crisis on their hands, but they sure were turning the other cheek quite regularly, purposely ignoring the ever increasing health issues of former players.  With the latest story from the New York Times about the problems of not just concussions, but repetitive head hits, some contact sports advocates are still saying "nothing to see here."

Another problem the sports have is how their most most visible and vocal spokespeople make bone stupid comments, bad mouthing what they call the 'wussification' of their perspective sports.  They rail against the attempts by these leagues, albeit not enough, to address head injury protocol.  "The sport stinks today because you can't really hit people like you used to,"; a fake romanticizing of the days of yore, where they used to describe a player coming off the field with blood coming out of their ear as good clean fun.

This post is not a demand for football, hockey and all sports where head shots are the norm to shut down, but if these leagues don't start trying their best to make sure their players at all levels don't have dementia by 43, or are committing suicide at 37, the public will shut them down.  Why are we killing these people for sport?

Outside of my three kids, I'm no one else's father.  You do what you feel is best, but if someone was to ask me what my advice would be in regards to sports, I would beg them to not allow their kids to play football or hockey.  They might love the sport, and they may be a great player, but when the trade off is passing away at 45 instead of 90, you are removing half their days for something which should never warrant that price.