Grantland - The most plausible route to the death of football starts with liability suits. Pre-collegiate football is already sustaining 90,000 or more concussions each year. If ex-players start winning judgments, insurance companies might cease to insure colleges and high schools against football-related lawsuits. Coaches, team physicians, and referees would become increasingly nervous about their financial exposure in our litigious society.
If you are coaching a high school football team, or refereeing a game as a volunteer, it is sobering to think that you could be hit with a $2 million lawsuit at any point in time. A lot of people will see it as easier to just stay away. More and more modern parents will keep their kids out of playing football, and there tends to be a "contagion effect" with such decisions; once some parents have second thoughts, many others follow suit. We have seen such domino effects with the risks of smoking or driving without seatbelts, two unsafe practices that were common in the 1960s but are much rarer today. The end result is that the NFL's feeder system would dry up and advertisers and networks would shy away from associating with the league, owing to adverse publicity and some chance of being named as co-defendants in future lawsuits.
This slow death march could easily take 10 to 15 years. Imagine the timeline. A couple more college players — or worse, high schoolers — commit suicide with autopsies showing CTE. A jury makes a huge award of $20 million to a family. A class-action suit shapes up with real legs, the NFL keeps changing its rules, but it turns out that less than concussion levels of constant head contact still produce CTE. Technological solutions (new helmets, pads) are tried and they fail to solve the problem. Soon high schools decide it isn't worth it. The Ivy League quits football, then California shuts down its participation, busting up the Pac-12. Then the Big Ten calls it quits, followed by the East Coast schools. Now it's mainly a regional sport in the southeast and Texas/Oklahoma. The socioeconomic picture of a football player becomes more homogeneous: poor, weak home life, poorly educated. Ford and Chevy pull their advertising, as does IBM and eventually the beer companies.
3 comments:
And good riddance to football too. It's the dullest of all team sports except baseball. I look forward to the day when there isn't anymore Superbowl Sunday.
I disagree with Anonymous's statement about football being dull. I love the combination of strategy, skill, and athleticism. But I do agree with this central thesis and I think a lot of parents would not put their kids into the sport. I grew up in a small town in Massachusetts with no football team and always wanted to play. Now there's no way I would let my kids play. I think the game could change and become more like Rugby. Regulate where and how you can hit and the speed. Then again, it doesn't take much to build a pro league. I could forsee a Juniors system replacing collegiate play, with semi-pro youngsters signing over liability for pay and the chance to crack the big leagues. We already know the physical devastation that football can cause and yet it remains by far the most popular sport in America. Where there is a will there is away.
Rugby doesn't have the same kind of injury pattern. Remove all the padding, take away the helmets, and the game immediately becomes more interesting and less injurious. US football isn't a game for the players, anyway. It's a strategy game between two coaches.
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