advertisement

Maybe break from NFL would be good thing

Maybe the NFL should go ahead and shut down for a season like a labor dispute is threatening to do next week.

Would American civilization survive?

Perhaps not, but a few players might that otherwise would wind up with their brains being probed like biology class frogs.

What is a year without football, 16 or 18 fewer games? Thousands fewer collisions? Countless bells not rung?

I don’t mean to be flip about this. Not after the reports surrounding Dave Duerson’s suicide last week at age 50.

As you know by now, Duerson shot himself in the chest so his brain would be preserved for science to study.

The suspicion is that Duerson, a safety on the 1980s Bears, suffered depression and dementia from too many football blows to the head.

At this point it remains to be seen whether the game was the culprit. Scientists at Boston University School of Medicine will determine that.

However, as a football fan and chronicler of the game I’m frightened by recent developments. It’s scary to think that I have been asking men to sacrifice their brains for the sake of entertaining me.

Football’s image is going from a gladiator movie to a horror flick in which minds are scrambled on otherwise bright autumn Sundays.

It was bad enough that the game forces strong young men to walk with limps, ache all throughout their bodies and need myriad joints replaced before they reach their senior years.

It’s even worse to think that their brains get so mushy that they can’t think straight and might kill themselves because they aren’t thinking straight.

It’s time for drastic measures. Whenever any sport — any activity or occupation, for that matter — starts being associated with chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

The condition is difficult to spell, more difficult to pronounce and most difficult to know the definition of.

For all I knew before Duerson died, chronic traumatic encephalopathy was being allergic to sunflower seeds.

Easier to spell, pronounce and define is degenerative brain disease.

Mind blowing is what that is, both to the football player who suffers from it and the persons who hear that he does.

If studies prove that Duerson and other football players directly or indirectly died because of the occupational hazard of hits to the head …

Well, shouldn’t we all be ashamed? How ashamed should we be if in 20 years there’s an epidemic of degenerative brain disease among players we’re cheering today?

So I’m seriously suggesting that it wouldn’t be bad for the NFL to shut down for a year.

Club owners could take the time to ponder what they’re putting players through. Players could ponder why they defend going through it. Fans and the media could ponder why they worship this game.

Everybody could begin the process of figuring out how to repair football so football players aren’t irreparably damaged.

The NFL actually might be shut down next week, but not because of safety issues. The reason would be that labor and management couldn’t agree how to divide billions of dollars.

That’s OK, too. If there’s no football, for whatever reason, even greed, Americans could step back and ask what exactly this sport that they love is really all about.

Yes, a year without football would be worthwhile as people smarter than us study how to minimize the carnage.

mimrem@dailyherald.com