By Sam Woiteshek
The Bucs’ Blade
Grand Haven HS
1st Place
Division 1, News Writing
Sports Columnist
Before I begin, let me just say that I credit this column to my brain. My brain allows me to write this column fluently and smoothly, not misspelling words or using an incorrect one. No, my brain is the reason you are reading this.
The brain is one of the utmost, important organs in our body. It allows us to react to things, feel emotions and objects, obtain memories and it allows to think. These days it is common for brains to be damaged and eventually wasted. Why?
Football.
I probably just ruined your weekend by telling you that the majority of your favorite team’s players probably have had at least 2 concussions and are still suffering from concussion symptoms.
The NFL has been sweeping these concussions under the rug. Most notably, the NFL has unconcerned themselves with the brain disease called “chronic traumatic encephalopathy”(CTE). CTE occurs when the brain experiences a trauma that is caused by concussions or severe hits to the head.
In a recent study by Boston University researcher Ann McKee, 110 out of 111 brains of former NFL players, were found with CTE… Staggering.
CTE affects the brain in many ways such as impaired judgement, dementia, aggression and depression. But the biggest impact CTE has had on the NFL is one that cannot be predicted.
Death.
CTE has been noted as the catalyst for the suicides of linebacker Junior Seau, wide receiver Andre Waters and most recently tight end/murderer Aaron Hernandez.
Wait, murderer? Perhaps the impacts of CTE go beyond suicide, which is hard to do.
That’s not the worst part.
The league and the fans are so ignorant that all they care about is if the players generate money for them, or how their fantasy teams perform.
Take Jim McMahon, former Super Bowl-winning Chicago Bears quarterback. According to Newsday, the CTE-diagnosed player “couldn’t remember where he was”, and he “had to carry around his girlfriend’s cell phone number in case he forgot”, and also “he’d plan to go to the store, but then a half an hour later he’d be home wondering why he wanted to go out.”
The scariest part was that McMahon “stayed in bed for several days at a time because he couldn’t get out of it.”
It’s easy to point at our favorite NFL players that we idolize, but the real impact CTE and concussions have had is on our youth.
We start children out with Pop Warner football and think nothing of it. They’re just kids right? Let them have fun. Then they go to middle school and hits get harder as testosterone increases. Then to high school, where football is life. Each day of the year you’re lifting weights, practicing, and playing. Hit after hit.
I tend to think there are more important things than sports in life, and I certainly don’t think a sport is worth dying for. If we as a society don’t want to be rattled by suicides and concussions then we have do something about it,
We have to take our kids out of football, we have to encourage ejections for helmet-to-helmet hits like college football does and we have to create new technologies for these consequential hits to the head. Primarily we have to realize the disease and not ignore it.
The sport of football is a great game and I am hooked on the it.
But the dangerous, life-threatening impacts of CTE aren’t fantasy. They’re reality.