Decades ago, this column lightheartedly called football a mistake because it combines two of the worst features of American life — violence, punctuated by committee meetings, which football calls huddles. Now, however, accumulating evidence about new understandings of the human body — the brain, especially, but not exclusively — compel the conclusion that football is a mistake because the body is not built to absorb, and cannot be adequately modified by training or protected by equipment to absorb, the game's kinetic energies.
After 18 people died playing football in 1905, even President Theodore Roosevelt, who loved war and gore generally, flinched and forced some rules changes. Today, however, the problem is not the rules; it is the fiction that football can be fixed and still resemble the game fans relish.
George Will's email address is georgewill@washpost.com.
Jay Evensen's column will resume next week.
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George F. Will is one of the most widely recognized, and widely read, writers in the world. With more than 450 newspapers, his biweekly Newsweek column, and his appearances as a political commentator on ABC, Will may be more ..
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I am a football fan, George Will, famously, is not. But this is certainly a sobering article. I do think more research is needed on CTE before we can conclusively say that it causes dementia. But the human cost remains staggering.
People who More..
@ Eric Samuelsen 10:12 a.m. Aug. 5, 2012
"I do think more research is needed on CTE before we can conclusively say that it causes dementia... People who played football and who now are suffering from serious health problems..."
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Here's an unorthodox idea- get rid of the football helmet. I guarantee players would be a lot more conscientious about how they used their head. It's not like Hockey where you could hit your head on unforgiving ice. Seriously, it's More..