Despite being the most popular sport in the United States, football may be on the decline. In recent years, the National Football League (NFL) has faced a plethora of challenges among players related to racial inequality, domestic violence and now most notably Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE).
CTE is a degenerative brain disease that stems from repeated blows to the head region. This disease has subsequently affected hundreds of football players during their lives after and sometimes even during their career. The symptoms include mood and behavioral problems such as aggression, and depression, which can consequently leads to suicide. A study conducted at Boston University examined 202 deceased football players and found 87% of them had suffered from some level of CTE. Furthermore, out of 53 college football players, 91% had suffered from CTE. The numbers are staggering. America’s so-called “greatest sport” which practically owns a day of the week (Sunday), likely won’t be around much longer if players continue to face neurological consequences.
The high pay of professional players may sway recruits to the NFL despite the potential health risks of football The average salary of an NFL player is $2.1 million, an incredibly lucrative amount as the average NFL career is 3.3 years. Football oftentimes becomes a passage to wealth for young men as they dedicate their lives to playing the game that will ultimately secure their financial future. However, football continues to be a barbaric and dangerous sport even with its advancements in rules, technology, and protective gear. The notion of one day being able to provide for your family indefinitely may ultimately blind the fact that it could all come crashing down because of the same occupational choice. Even game-to-game concussions exist where players don’t even remember the outcome of the game they just played. Families of these players as well as the players themselves are truly unaware of the real dangers in playing football partly because the NFL as an organization has fought to hide this information from the media. Medical experts working for the NFL denied the reported links between playing football and CTE. Although after recognizing the prevalence of suicides among former NFL players, the NFL officially acknowledged connections between numerous concussions among former NFL players and its effects in their later lives. Unfortunately, this admission came too late and families of these former players have been destroyed. Moreover, because CTE is such a difficult disease to diagnose, it can only be conclusively diagnosed after that person has died due to the intense and close brain tissue examination required.
Even with all this conclusive scientific research published and circulated by the public, football popularity really hasn’t changed. It still exists in full-swing where fans and the media continue to consume football games even with the knowledge that the majority of these players might not even make it to be 40 years old. We, including myself, blindly go on with our lives knowing that we are allowing a sport which contributes to the early death of its players to exist whenever we watch it and even organizations like the NFL are concerned with producing money. I myself am a football fan — a diehard one to be exact. I watch it every Saturday and Sunday at both the college-level and the professional-level, and I’ve become immune to the fact that what I am watching could have potentially contributed to the death of over a hundred former NFL players. •
