I think there's a couple of reasons that this won't kill football, as gruesome as it is. The first is how much money the players make. Most people will assume that they know of the risks, and that the millions of dollars made during a career will offset that. It's hard to develop sympathy for a person playing a game for a living and making that much money off of it. The other reason is easy: apathy. How many people will watch this, be horrified for a night, and then continue watching football under the premise of "well, there's nothing I can do about it"? It's hard to stop an industry as large and powerful as professional sports, especially when they're blatantly against something. That said, I think it's horrible how physically and mentally damaging football is. Despite me occasionally watching it, I will always be a much, much bigger fan of baseball.
I agree with both of your reasons regarding why this will have little effect. I'd add to it mans ability to rationalize decisions by truly believing that this would never happen to me. Football isn't going anywhere any time soon. We have a team call at work every week on Mondays and I swear the first 20 minutes (of a 1 hour call) are consumed by College and NFL Football talk. I finally told my team that I cannot pretend anymore, I honestly don't give a shit about Football. It's fun to watch occasionally, but I can't imagine being a fan at their levels. Every Saturday and Sunday they allocate countless hours.... such a waste imo.
That was my experience during my last job, people are all about talking about football as much as possible. It's a bonding experience. I watch maybe, maybe one NFL game a week, but that's about it. I don't rabidly follow it. Baseball on the other hand, if I have enough time I could watch 3-4 games a week of that while doing other stuff around the apartment. How did they take your announcement about not caring about it?
A lot of guys don't make millions in their NFL career but it probably won't keep people from thinking they do. The longer the career the more base pay goes up and the better the pension is. Boxing is my favorite sport and it's just as troubling as football as far as long term brain trauma is concerned. I guess I just ignore the ethics of my culpability as a fan. I don't ignore it I suppose, I'm aware of the danger these guys put themselves in every time they step into a ring and I watch anyway. There is a growing awareness of long term dangers of the sport (both because the real dangers are only now being realized and campaigns to educate boxes have just gotten off the ground in the past few years). Maybe I should put the money I would pay for an HBO subscription to one of the charities that does research and education for fighters and torrent fights instead. Not that it makes up for it, just a self serving way for me to have a lighter conscious I suppose. It's the sport I love.
I'm interested in how much data they have on football players with cte because in this article they only seem to talk about Webster. It's a logical to associate football and brain damage but unless they got some significant data backing up their claim not enough people will care. Everybody knows football is dangerous but it would take some good research to quantify the magnitude of its association with brain damage.
I've not seen the documentary yet. Perhaps they will have more conclusive numbers in it.
Great question. I have a two and a half year old and one on the way and I cannot imagine being able to scrap together several hours to watch television. Unless.... its Stanley Cup time :) in which case parenting be dammed. But kidding aside, I'm not sure how so many people have such a large amount of discretionary time.
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