Extreme dangers of American football becoming clearer by the day but nobody seems to care

One current and three former NFL players have died by their own hand since last November. The first two were in their mid-20s, the third was 38, and the latest just turned 40. Men in their athletic prime or just starting out in their promising post-playing lives. Gone. The kind of disturbing pattern that might give any sport pause, especially when three of the victims were reportedly struggling with symptoms linked to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) before their deaths. Not to mention, a scientific study earlier this year established American footballers are three times more likely to die by suicide than athletes from America’s other major sports.

A couple of weeks back, the British Medical Journal also issued a damning report establishing that “nearly a quarter of all former NFL players who died between 2016-21 had CTE neuropathology at death”. Those who drilled deeper into the findings by Boston University and Harvard researchers discovered the real percentage may be much, much worse. In 235 cases where families donated their loved ones’ brains for further examination, 215 of those tested positive for CTE, a disease that can only be diagnosed posthumously. CTE is a progressive degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head injuries and trauma.

“We continuously strive to make the game of football safer, including by implementing strategies to reduce concussions and head impacts,” said the NFL in a mealy-mouthed response. “The NFL remains committed to ensuring that the NFL community has access to a robust – and expanding – set of resources to enhance their physical and mental wellbeing.”

The medical evidence about the deleterious impact of grid-iron grows in direct proportion to America’s love of the game. When the Seattle Seahawks kick off the season against the New England Patriots at Lumen Field on Wednesday night, it will be one of the most-watched television broadcasts of the year. It always is. Fans have been salivating at the prospect of the return of the national obsession since the final play of February’s Super Bowl set up seven tortuous months of off-season.

For weeks now, irritating fantasy leaguers have commandeered water-cooler conversations and clogged up Whatsapp groups with forensic analysis of rosters and prospects. Can anybody stop the LA Rams? Are the Bills capable of going all the way? In a country socially and politically divided, this sport may be the one place where Americans of every stripe still come together each week, albeit to lustily cheer athletes shearing years off their life expectancy and ruining their frontal and temporal lobes with ever more percussive on-field collisions.

No matter how many reports emerge regarding the cruel, unusual punishment football inflicts, the astonishing thing is that nobody cares. Nobody. Not supporters, whose only genuine concern is whether an injured star can suit up the following Sunday. Not avaricious owners planning to extend the campaign to 18 and maybe even 20 bone-crushing, money-spinning games. Not television networks squabbling to pay billions for the rights to this legalised carnage and ratings gold. And, perhaps most shockingly of all, definitely not the players themselves who have signed up knowing fully the potential risks to their future health.

“At this point, there’s a little bit of caveat emptor,” said former US president Barack Obama. “These guys, they know what they’re doing. They know what they’re buying into. It is no longer a secret. It’s sort of the feeling I have about smokers, you know?”

Twelve years have passed since Obama made that comment in the first flush of revelation and scandal about the true extent of brain damage suffered by previous generations. Last week, The Guardian ran a column arguing that the NFL is now indefensible as a spectacle. An argument that needed to be made. Yet, the reaction pieces greeting the publication of every fresh scientific indictment of the game are always accompanied by quotes from former players arguing they would do it all again. Never mind the consequences.

For his part in steering the NFL through this and other controversies across two decades, commissioner Roger Goodell will have earned $1 billion in salary by the end of his contract in 2031. Aside from introducing upgraded helmets and other safety initiatives, his league has paid lip service to compensating those who lost family members to CTE. They have just about fulfilled their legal obligations even as the morality of how the game is played becomes increasingly disturbing. Bigger, stronger players deliver bigger, stronger hits. With predictably horrific outcomes for players’ health.

“Football is a character-forming institution that channels strength,” wrote former senator Ben Sasse in his traditional defence of this carry-on for the Wall Street Journal. “In a world of instant gratification, it teaches perseverance through early practices and aching muscles. In an era of isolation, football creates community. It forms brotherhood through both misery and joy. In a culture of passivity, football privileges action. In times of peace, football prepares us for war. Football simultaneously celebrates and constrains violence.”

Back in the real world, Chris Johnson, the former Tennessee Titans running back, announced earlier this summer he was battling amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and needed a speech-generating machine to communicate. He is 40 years old. Amid the fallout, it was reported that NFL players are four times more likely to be diagnosed with this disease than any other demographic. Research is now trying to definitively establish whether this is because of all the jarring hits they deliver and receive.

In the meantime, enjoy the delights of another NFL season. Gift that keeps on giving. Sport that keeps on killing.

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