Super Bowl question: Does Football Have a Future?

Why this question?  All because of one word: concussions.

It is no longer tackle football, but collision football, writes Ben McGrath in the New Yorker..  Collision that involves, and increasingly so, players fast for a big person and unusually big for a fast person. 

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., is the name for a condition that is believed to result from major collisions—or from the accumulation of subconcussions that are nowhere near as noticeable, including those incurred in practice. It was first diagnosed, in 2002, in the brain of the Pittsburgh Steelers Hall of Fame center Mike Webster, who died of a heart attack after living out of his truck for a time. It was next diagnosed in one of Webster’s old teammates on the Steelers’ offensive line, Terry Long, who killed himself by drinking antifreeze. Long overlapped, at the end of his career, with Justin Strzelczyk, who was also found to have C.T.E. after he crashed, fatally, into a tanker truck, while driving the wrong way down the New York Thruway.

 Even though the harsh impacts on the health and well being have been known for long, Alan Scwarz of the NY Times is credited as the guy who relentlessly followed up with reports that has forced the NFL, and other sports too, to investigate this issue.  So much so that apparently he is sometimes sarcastically referred to as Alan Brockovich by those who don't like what he is doing.  Here is an example of the long-term effects:

retired N.F.L. players are five to nineteen times as likely as the general population to have received a dementia-related diagnosis; that the helmet-manufacturing industry is overseen by a volunteer consortium funded largely by helmet manufacturers; and that Lou Gehrig may not actually have had the disease that bears his name but suffered from concussion-related trauma instead. (Since 1960, fourteen N.F.L. players have had a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which is about twelve more than you would expect from a random population sample.)

And, remember that other sports too have the concussion crisis:

“Hockey, by the way, has a higher incidence of concussions than football,” Dr. Maroon told me. This is true of women’s college hockey, at least, which doesn’t even allow body-checking. (Women, in general, seem substantially more prone to concussions, and explanations vary, from weaker necks to a greater honesty in self-diagnosis.) And in December, 2009, Reggie Fleming, a New York Rangers defenseman in the nineteen-sixties who was known more for his fighting than for his scoring, became the first pro hockey player to be given a diagnosis of C.T.E. Hockey may now have a concussion crisis on its hands, with the N.H.L.’s best and most marketable player, Sidney Crosby, having been blindsided during the sport’s annual Winter Classic; attempting to play again, four days later, he was drilled into the boards, and he hasn’t played since.

So, what are we looking at?  Over at Slate, John Culhane writes:

At least two class action lawsuits by recent players against the league are in preparation. These suits are expected to allege that the league knew, but suppressed, knowledge of the long-term neurological risks of playing football.

There is a good chance, according to Culhane, that the suits will be tossed out.  But, 

Football isn't tennis; it isn't even basketball. It's violent by design. But that doesn't mean the violence and injuries must escalate without end. If the NFL accelerates the proactive approach it's demonstrated lately, the results won't just redound to the benefit of current and former pros. Given the league's prominence and influence, its safety stance could cause a safety dance to break out: Everyone from college and high-school football players to athletes in other contact sports will begin to get the message.

Think about these when you watch two players colliding at the Super Bowl.