Fall is in the air, and millions of sports fans are pleased. It’s football time. However, I am on the verge of giving up football. This is a shift for me, as I have been involved in sports all of my life, first as an athlete in high school and college, and then as a sandlot baseball player. Later I became an excellent bowler, a level that is still eluding me in golf—although I have been playing forever.
As an undergraduate, I was a sports reporter, and more recently, I was on the Executive Committee of the Athletic Board at the University of Tennessee. This was during the last years of the great Pat Summit as coach of the Lady Vols basketball team.
As a fan, I have been present at the national championship matches of at least 10 sports. As you can see, I have had a heavy involvement with sporting contests. But as a fan, I may be letting go of football. This move has been aided and abetted through the years by my wife, Mildred, who has always called football savage and dangerous. With this attitude, we did not let either of our sons play the sport.
Now the verdict is clearly in: football is savage and dangerous. The Journal of the American Medical Association recently reported on a study of the brains of 111 deceased NFL players which found 110–all but one—had the degenerative brain disease CTE.
People who follow boxing have known about this brain injury for many years. It used to be called “being punch drunk” from having too many blows to the head. It may be just as bad—if not worse—in football.