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| Player safety concerns did not stop 59, 149 people from watching a Jacksonville Jaguars preseason game last weekend. PHOTO BY Will Brown |
By Will Brown
The newest season America’s favorite reality show will be
kicking off next week. The opening episode will be in Denver, site of one of
the most dramatic plot twists of the previous season.
In case you are curious, the show is the National Football
League. The game is America’s passion no matter how unhealthy the sport may be
to its players, or to our collective psyche.
More than 100 million people watched the Super Bowl this
February, apparel sales are booming and interest has never been bigger. But is
all of that coming at a cost?
For
the National Football League that cost was $675 million. That is the figure
the league will pay to more than 4,000 retired players who brought a concussion
lawsuit against it. The settlement, which was announced one week before the 2013
season is slated to kickoff, will be used for medical exams, concussion-related
compensation and medical research.
It averages out to approximately $170,000 per player listed
in the lawsuit. Various news reports state the most any player, or his estate,
can receive is $5 million.
Those figures may sound massive to the average American.
But, are they?
Today’s players are bigger, faster and stronger than they
were a generation ago. Since 2000, the roster of the Super Bowl champion has
averaged more than 240 pounds 12 times. The 2006 Indianapolis Colts had the
smallest average weight of any Super Bowl champion in the last 20 years at 234
pounds. This girth is much bigger than the size of an average man in America,
which is 5-foot-9 and 195 pounds.
At the 2012 NFL combine a man who is 6-foot-3-inches and 335
pounds ran 40 yards in under five seconds. The person who is the consensus No.
1 pick for the 2014 NFL Draft reportedly ran 40 yards in 4.46 seconds. By
the way, he’s 6-foot-6-inches and 274 pounds.
Even folks who failed physics know mass multiplied by
acceleration equals force.
The orthopedic issues caused by the extreme force applied in
pro football’s constant collisions may be one thing. The traumatic brain injury
that scientists have proven has a connection with years of playing football is
another.
There are inherent risks in athletics. Approximately,
one third of all pitchers in Major League Baseball have blown their elbow out;
ankle sprains and knee inflammation have been the most common injuries for NBA
athletes; ligament
injuries and muscle strains are commonplace in soccer. But those sports
injuries typically do not have devastating long-term effects after an athlete’s
career is over.
Headlines about players suffering with dementia at
uncommonly early ages, not to mention player suicides, has led the media,
public and even Congress to ask questions about the NFL’s position on some of
these brain injuries.
Some of these issues were to be addressed in a partnership
between PBS Frontline and journalists from the Entertainment and Sports
Programming Network. The documentary the two teams were working on was titled “League
of Denial: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis”.
However, ESPN stated it would end its 15-month partnership
last week. This announcement came days after two ESPN executives met with NFL
commissioner Roger Goodell and one other gentleman at a New York restaurant for
lunch.
As much as ESPN, and the NFL, tried to claim the
disassociation was not due to the power lunch, the New
York Times saw through that smokescreen in a damning Aug. 23 article.
It’s worth noting that more than 10 percent of the NFL’s
revenue in 2012 came from ESPN in the form of the $1 billion the network pays
to cover “Monday Night Football”. The
amount of money the NFL receives from networks will skyrocket after this season
as new deals with ESPN, Fox, NBC and CBS all begin in 2014.
It can be argued the no one forces men to play professional
football. One can also claim that football players are handsomely paid to
wrestle muscular men to the ground.
In some ways the football industry — when
an entity has nearly $10 billion in revenue it is more than a garden-variety
business — is like the tobacco industry three decades ago. People were
dying, or at the least, sustaining life-altering consequences from consuming
the product, but the risks were dismissed by a corporate culture that was
resistant to change.
Regardless of Thursday’s announcement, Goodell claims or how
many paltry dollars the league throws at research initiatives, his sport is
resistant to evolving like the men who play it.
When teams subtly pressure players to return from
concussions before they are ready, or when
teams leak to the media that a player may be milking a serious injury or
when someone playing through pain is lionized by fans and media alike that is
proof the game of gladiators has not changed nearly as much as it would like
its fans to believe.
Besides, if Goodell did not have anything to hide, he would
sit down for an interview the “League of Denial” journalists, rather than
having private lunches with executives at their employer persuading them to
back off the story.
Keep in mind this is the same man who has no problem
applying pressure to cash-strapped municipalities in order to build or renovate
stadia across America. South Florida lost a chance to host the 50th
Super Bowl because the Florida legislature would not kowtow to renovations for
the existing stadium in Miami Gardens. Atlanta is ramrodding a $1 billion
stadium initiative less than 25 years after the Georgia Dome was built.
There are other examples of the NFL fleecing taxpayers;
however, the point remains that if pro football can convince communities and
consumers to part with their money, the least these entities could do is demand
the sport protect its players.
Laughs and liveliness,
-Wb
