I have never been a fan of football, the professional variety in particular because of television.
Punt, 6 commercials. Two passes, an inteception and 6 more commercials. and on and on!
The game totally has developed into primarily a “sport” that is mainly a thrill to the tailgate fanatic types who live and die with the performance of the home team.
As a former sportswriter/editor I once timed how much the ball actually moved in a pro football game.

The kickoff was followed approximately 3 hours and 10 minutes later by the final whistle.
My stopwatch punched out the pigskin was moving exactly 11 minutes and 13 seconds.
The rest of the time was spent with runs, incomplete and complete passes, timeouts, yellow flags being tossed what seemed with reckless abandonment, bodies getting carried off, bells rung (in heads) as so talking heads liked to prattle. And of course, beer flowing freely.

This bring me to a couple of headlines in recent weeks that I found interesting.
One said, “Study Indicates High Rates of Dementia in Former N.F. L. Players.”
Another stated, “High School Player Dies After Hard Tackle.”

On the latter it pointed out a 17-year-old high schooler had died from, “severe brain swelling” after hitting his head while being tackled by another human being.
He was not the first and will not be the last.

But lets get back to the glorified N.F.L.
That article concerning dementia pointed out, “A study commissioned by the National Football League reports that Alzheimer’s disease or similar memory-related diseases appear to have been diagnosed in the league’s former players vastly more often that the national population – including a rate 19 times the normal rate for men ages 30 through 49.”
This finding thoroughly debunked what the N.F.L. had long denied.

That is getting your bell rung, as those constantly talking T.V. announcers in particular always treated like something minor, was not the least bit minor in any way.
The study, according to the article, was conducted by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.

So, with that being said am I sympathic to those gridders who end up with their bells rung time and again?
Hell no! They are playing to an audience that loves the violence of the sport.
An audience that cheers when an opposing quarterback is blasted into oblivion by a 320 pounder and carried off the field.
The tailgaters love it!

It is easy to see why so many pro football players in particular end up with addled brains, their thinking non -existant, legs, arms, etc, battered and barely workable for the rest of their lives.
I know some of these people and it is shocking to see the way they spend their twilight/golden (ha) years.

Many years ago a nephew of mine was trying out for Pop Warner football. Little tykes, little brains, not close to maturity.
One day their coach had players team up, helmuts on to engage in head-butting to “toughen them up.”
Fortunately my young kin came out of that stupity in good shape.

Professional football is a violent sport played by individuals who like violence.
Their following is endless.
And because it is endless and a rip-roaring television boosted sport will continue to send brain-battered individuals into retirement. Oh, they will collect their pensions and survive but is that really surviving?

If you want to read the full article published by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research go to GOOGLE and type in, “Dementia in the N. F.L.”
This is a startling finding but to me not the slighest bit unbelievable.