Football and Child Abuse

A solid link has been made between brain injuries and football. It seems to be inherent in the game; if you play football, regardless of any possible safety equipment and perhaps because of the equipment (like with boxing and gloves), you risk serious, and potentially irreversible brain damage. Knowing this, every time I see anything about the game, it makes me a little sick.

The only thing that at all removes a bit of the disgust is that the people playing the sport choose to play it, and are generally very well paid. However, when I stop and think about what it means for fans to support the game, I am repulsed in a completely different way. It is one thing to do a dangerous job knowing that inevitably in the process you will be repeatedly injured in ways that will forever change you in negative ways.

To support a team is to be complicit in the willful debilitating mutilation of thousands of professional athletes, and millions of would-be pros. It is to be a cog in the machine that is systematically destroying these people's brains, thereby destroying their lives, and their futures. You can try to justify it, but you are guilty of taking pleasure in watching people slowly killing themselves.

That is not in the least bit hyperbole, when you consider that the very player interaction that draws the most hype in the game, the bone-crunchingly hard hits, is the very thing that is damaging their brains. Even the repeated smaller hits, like those that happen every time the ball is put into motion, cause brain damage.  Players that manage to avoid concussions still show clear signs of brain damage. You can't play full-contact football without brain injuries.

Now, let's take this to a much darker place. Esquire Network's "Friday Night Tykes" is drawing flack for the apparent (I haven't watched the show) behavior it shows of both coaches and parents of the 8 and 9 year-old players. Andy Nesbitt of FOX Sports pulled this wonderful quote to illustrate:

"You have the opportunity today to rip their freakin' head off and let them bleed," Chavarria yelled at the top of his lungs to his players. "If I cut 'em with a knife, they're going to bleed red, just like you!"

Stop and consider the link between football and brain injuries. Know that the children on both teams are bleeding red, both figuratively and actually. They face the same dangers and are suffering the same types of brain injuries as the professional players do, but without the benefit of highly-trained medical professionals looking them over on a very regular basis, these children actually face a high risk of serious injury. Any Millian Liberalism that I might apply to allowing grown adults to repeatedly bash their heads in stops cold when it comes to children.

Youth football is child abuse.