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Recently, some disparate events have come together to make me increasingly uncomfortable with the impact on the brain from extended football playing. Given my position in life, with no role in the NFL or public health decision making processes, this manifests itself in reduced enjoyment when I’m watching football. I have a low-level thought in the background, when I’m not focused on this exciting play or that terrible call, that these players are beating up their own brains with every play and every impact. Each time a pulling tackle slams into a defensive end, the OT’s helmet is protecting his skull, but his brain is hitting the inside of his skull and causing some level of damage.
For some time, I have had similar feelings about the impact of football, but especially extended time in the NFL, on players’ joints and their bodies as a whole. Sports Illustrated has run several commendable articles over the years, profiling retired players who, at 45 or 50, have the bodies of a 65 year-old. That problem is only going to grow worse, despite advances in health care and increased retirement health care and pensions for NFL retirees, because average player weight at nearly all positions has increased dramatically over the decades–every collision is that much more violent. Force = mass x acceleration, after all.