Editorial: Football is America’s game. Its players deserve better protection

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The opening of another season of college football and the NFL are right around the corner, and like most of you we are excited for what’s to come.

Football is an incredible game, combining skill, speed, strength, violence and (perhaps most underrated) the task each and every play of having 11 men working in concert to run or pass the weirdly shaped ball forward while 11 men on the other side of the line of scrimmage work in concert to prevent any such advancement.

So as we wax enthusiastic about this American rite of fall, here comes The New York Times to prick our consciences with an important story on the brutal physical toll this game takes on those who play it professionally. Of all 2,079 former NFL players known to have died between 2008 and 2021, 16.6% had been diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain condition better known as CTE, according to a new study.

The prevalence surely is far higher. About one quarter of the 878 former players who died between 2016 and 2021 had CTE, based on actual examinations of brains from 235 athletes. Of those 235, a mind-boggling 215 were positive for CTE, meaning that at minimum 25% of the 878 who passed away in that period had the disease. The actual percentage may be considerably higher, researchers from Boston University, Mass General Brigham and UNITE Brain Bank, among others, concluded.

This brain disease is tied to dementia and other cognitive disorders. The clear cause of so much CTE in football players is the repeated blows to the head suffered while playing the sport.

The physical price professional football players pay has been well-known for years. You will frequently see former players quoted as saying they would do it all again, even as they walk with limps and suffer lingering joint pain. But degenerative brain disease is hardly in the same league as limited mobility and former players are growing more vocal about the issue. As they should.

Fans should care, too. We’re complicit in allowing an unacceptable risk to player health to persist if we don’t join the players in demanding the league do everything possible to make the game safer. By its nature, football never will be “safe” per se, but there are steps available to better protect players.

Indeed, the NFL has taken some important ones in recent years, an era in which most if not all of the players who were examined for CTE did not play. The league has instituted concussion protocols and sharply penalized injurious actions like helmet-to-helmet tackles, for example. Helmet technology has improved as well, with some players using specialized guardian caps that are said to reduce impact by about 10%.

Will these steps reduce the incidence of CTE in the future? We hope so, for the sake of the players and the game.

What’s clear from this alarming study, though, is that the league can’t stop here. There must be continuous striving for improvement, whether in the rules or in equipment technology. And while those are underway, the NFL must be fully transparent with the public and most of all with players and their families about the state of current research so that they can make informed judgments about whether the rewards of a pro football career are worth the cost.

As to those who grumble that the game has gotten “soft” or rules designed to protect players are “ruining” the game, that point of view should be firmly rejected. And players who retire in their prime, as Bears center Drew Dalman did during this past off-season, ought to be held up as positive examples. Perhaps shorter football careers will allow players to lead long, healthy lives; we won’t be surprised to see many more follow in Dalman’s footsteps.

Year after year, football is an enthralling spectacle. There’s a reason no other professional sport comes close to the NFL in terms of cultural dominance.

But, as hegemonic as the NFL is, we shouldn’t tolerate this level of occupational hazard in what, after all, exists for our entertainment.

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