Get out the facts on football dangers

Football's mental health hits just seem to keep on coming this year. The NFL finally acknowledges the game's link to CTE, another pro quits citing medical concerns, youth league participation sees double digit percentage drops. These are some of 2017's most encouraging news/weather/sports stories, and looking ahead, you wonder where the league will stand for its 2020 centennial. But still, what are the 75 to 90 percent peewee parents today thinking, OK'ing their sons banging heads? And certainly for every right-minded pro retiring early, 10 are ready to step in.

Let's speed this relatively slow public awareness progress by spotlighting the unquestioned neck-down consequences, which current media seldom does. As the NFL Players Association originally found in two 1990s commissioned surveys, two-thirds of responding retired veterans had a limited ability to engage in sports while more than half reported restricted physical labor.

A 2001 Sports Illustrated cover story publicized these grim statistics and animated them by focusing on a handful of former pros with significant problems, icon Johnny Unitas among them. A year before his death at 69, he'd lost almost total use of his right hand due to degenerative neurological damage stemming from a 1968 elbow injury.

Bank on it: the 'perils of football' message could be delivered more forcefully by regularly citing the physical post-career dues typically visited years ahead of the mental ones.

Tom Gregg

Niles