Violence And Brutality In Professional Football

The NFL’s expectation of violence and tolerance of systemic violence is disturbing to think about. Our troubled consciousness, however, can easily shake off the pangs of moral discomfort, and carry on. The hundreds of athletes who experience the consequences of this violence every day can not. They “[regard] their bodies as machines and weapons with which to annihilate their opponents” and deliver pummeling blows with each passing down (Messner and Sabo, 95). A human being is simply not designed to withstand the cruel, punishing hits all too common in professional football. Many players leave the field due to a career-ending injury; those who don’t still pay dearly for their moments of fame. In retirement, the once hulking, intimidating specimens

It threatens to disrupt our delusions of gridiron morality, but more importantly, the lives of the players themselves. And while cringe-worthy injuries are prevalent in day-to-day play, it is not the physical well-being that disturbs me most, but the damage done to the mind. Linemen notorious for their violence and brutality begin to suffer mental degradation soon after they hang up their numbers. Hall-of-fame lineman ‘Iron’ Mike Webster—infamous for his explosive head-spear tackles—began his descent into madness almost immediately (Fainaru and Fainaru-Wada, 25). His son recalls how his father “broke down in tears in front of [him] a couple of times because he couldn’t get his thoughts together and he couldn’t keep them in order” (Webster, qtd. in League of Denial). Webster’s mental capacity had been crippled by 17 seasons of combat, and his family experienced the full force of his disability. By age 50, ‘Iron’ Mike was dead (Lyman). An autopsy preformed by Dr. Bennet Omalu revealed the full extent of the damage; Webster had developed chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. This lethal neurodegenerative disease—common in retired boxers—had never before been found in football players and was a shocking discovery. The possibility that professional athletes were sustaining life-altering brain damage at the nation’s entertainment was a scary thought. Scarier still is the reality that such devastating

Yet the NFL—hesitant to admit that America’s primetime spectacle was wasting its stars—refused to accept the simple truth. Billions of dollars were at stake, and the future of the game rested in the balance. For ten years long, the league’s corporate heart led a crusade against football’s naysayers, establishing sham commissions, denying repeated allegations, and personally attacking physicians prominent in the discovery of CTE (Lyman). In 2004, the NFL’s Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee published Paper Number 5, which asserted that “no NFL player experienced… [brain damage] from repeat concussions.” The paper went on to state that it “did not follow players who left the NFL.” In other words, the study’s sample population did not include those players who exhibited the first signs of concussion-related brain damage (Fainaru and Fainaru-Wada, 167). The MTBI’s delusions were further bolstered by additional papers which posited ever more dubious claims about the safety of the sport. According to one paper, “it might be safe for college/high school football players to be cleared to return to play on the same day as their injury” (Teitelbaum, 156). All the while, autopsies of deceased players continued to reveal the presence of CTE. In 2009, the House Judiciary Committee called on Commissioner Roger