College football season is starting up. Why do universities support a sport that harms their student athletes?

For those of us in academia, September means a new school year, and all of the excitement and energy that students bring as they return to campus. Strolling around, you can feel the energy in the air.

September is also the beginning of the college football season (in the U.S.). For many students, alumni, and other fans, watching the game each week is one more fall activity they look forward to.

But now, thanks to a rapidly growing body of new research, we know that football can severely harm and even kill its players. Not right away, but years later, through a brain disease called CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy. This is a frightening disorder that gradually destroys brain cells, causing memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, and progressive dementia. Many former players die very young, in their 40s or 50s, after first suffering for years.

CTE is caused by repeated blows to the head, events that are common to football. It has grown worse in recent decades as the players have gotten bigger and stronger. Improvements in helmet technology haven't helped, and they might even have made CTE even worse, because the helmets allowed players (by their own admission) to use their heads as battering rams.

Two years ago now, a large medical study of football players' brains showed that an appallingly high percentage of those players had CTE. In that study, Boston University scientists led by Jesse Mez and Ann McKee found CTE in the brains of 110 out of 111 former NFL players (99%), and 48 out of 53 college players (91%).

As the BU scientists themselves pointed out, the former players and their families may have suspected something was wrong, and that may have motivated them to participate in the study. Thus the extremely high proportion of deceased players showing CTE in this study is certainly an overestimate. But as I wrote at the time:

"is it okay to ask young men to play football if the risk of permanent brain damage is only 50%? What if it's just 10 or 20%? Is that okay? Is football that important?"

Clearly, the answer should be no. University presidents are constantly, even obsessively, worrying about the safety of their students. Campuses have many programs in place to protect students from crime, from sexual harrassment, from emotional distress, and more. And yet every fall, they willingly–no, enthusiastically–subject the 100 or so students on their football teams to a serious risk of lifelong, life-threatening brain damage. This simply should end.

For an especially poignant story, watch this short video about Greg Ploetz, who played on the 1969 national championship football team at the University of Texas, and who died in 2015 after years of worsening dementia:

As his daughter says in the video,

"If [today's football players] knew what he went through, and what we went through as a family, there's no way that people would decide to keep playing." 

Perhaps universities could take a cue from former Baltimore Ravens player John Urschel, widely considered the smartest player in the NFL, who was pursuing a Ph.D. in mathematics at MIT while simultaneously playing pro football. Two years ago, Urschel quit, because he was worried that brain damage would destroy his ability to think clearly. And just one week ago, Indianapolis Colts' star quarterback Andrew Luck retired early because football had "wrecked his body and stolen his joy."

Brain damage may be happening to much younger players too. A study from the University of Washington last year found that 5% of youth football players aged 5-14 had experienced concussions each season. Three years ago, a mother sued the Pop Warner youth football organization after her son committed suicide at age 25. An autopsy showed that he had CTE, and the mother argued that his brain damaged was caused by his years playing youth football. The Pop Warner organization settled the suit for close to $2 million, but other lawsuits have been filed since.

As I and others have written, football and its promise of big-money television contracts has corrupted our universities. While universities build ever-bigger football stadiums and pay coaches exhorbitant salaries, they force the players to play for free. Now we know that players face a much more direct threat: long-term brain damage.

Let me ask university presidents this question as bluntly as I can: how much brain damage is acceptable for your football players? If your answer is "none," then it's time to get football out of our universities.

How much brain damage is too much? NFL players head for the exits.

The smartest player in the NFL just quit.

Not because he was unable to play, and certainly not because of his age–he's only 26. No, Baltimore Ravens' player John Urschel decided to quit because the risk of permanent, irreversible brain damage is just not worth it.

Urschel is a very smart guy. He's currently pursuing a Ph.D. in mathematics at MIT, one of the best and most demanding science universities in the world. Until this summer, he was (impressively) balancing his studies with being a full-time NFL player.

But when Dr. Ann McKee and colleagues published a new study showing that 110 out of 111 former NFL players had suffered serious brain damage, Urschel could no longer pretend he wasn't putting his future at grave risk. McKee's study, the largest study yet of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), showed alarmingly high rates of CTE in college and high school players as well (91% of former college players).

Let's get one point out of the way: everyone involved with the study, including Dr. McKee, knows that it was biased. The scientists examined brains of deceased players that had been donated to the study because family members–or the players themselves, before they died–suspected something was wrong. So perhaps the true risk of brain damage is lower than 99%. Maybe it's only 50%, or 20%. Do young men playing football want to take that risk?

John Urschel isn't the first player to quit because of the growing realization that football may cause irreversible brain damage. In 2015, San Francisco 49ers player Chris Borland retired at the age of 24, and in 2016 Kansas City Chiefs player Hussain Abdullah retired at 30, both over concerns about concussions and brain damage.

The NFL has been denying or downplaying the risk for years. A few years ago, after the suicide of former player Junior Seau, they announced a $30 million partnership with the NIH to study the risks of football on the brain. As results started coming in, showing that the risk was far more serious than most people knew, the NFL backed out of the deal with $16 million still unspent.

Meanwhile, the chorus of warnings has been growing steadily louder from the medical community. Last year, a former team doctor and a former football player and coach wrote in JAMA that

"unless there is a way to reduce the number of TBIs [traumatic brain injuries] caused by the sport, football will remain a threat to the brains and health futures of the players, including impaired cognitive function and reasoning, memory loss, emotional depression, and other sequelae that profoundly erode quality of life."

Earlier this year, a study out of the CDC reported that "3 high school or college football players die each year from traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries that occur on the field," most them as a result of being tackled during games.

Over the years, football players have grown ever larger (the average NFL lineman today weighs over 300 pounds) and the intensity of the violence on the field has grown with them. It's not just in the NFL, either: last year, three high school teams in the state of Washington forfeited their games against a local team out of a legitimate fear that players would be badly injured by the opposing team's 300-plus pound linemen. Their fears were justified: the human head simply wasn't built to withstand the repeated blows that players endure.

All players might do themselves a favor by listening to John Urschel. He explained his decision–and his abiding love for the game of football–in a lengthy interview on the Freakonomics podcast a couple of weeks ago. That interview should be required listening for young players, and even more so for parents who might be dreaming that their sons have a future career in football.

This could be the end of youth football

The end of a lawsuit this month might also signal the end of youth football. The plaintiff in the suit, Debra Pyke, claimed that her son suffered brain damage from repeated head injuries in his youth football league, which caused chronic traumatic encephelopathy, or CTE. Just a couple of weeks ago, the youth football league Pop Warner settled the $5 million case, reportedly for under $2 million.

Debra Pyke’s son, Joseph Chernach, committed suicide in 2012 at the age of 25. He had played youth football for four years, from the ages of 11 to 14, and her lawsuit claims that he suffered from CTE as a result. CTE has been in the news a great deal of late, after it was discovered by Dr. Bennet Omalu to be the cause of early dementia in an alarming number of NFL football players. (Actor Will Smith plays Omalu in the recently released movie, Concussion.)

Pyke’s lawsuit holds nothing back in its claims about the damage of football. She argues that tackle football is a "war game,” and provides copious examples to back it up, including these:

“Football is not a contact sport. It’s a *collision* sport. Dancing is a good example of a contact sport.” (from former Michigan State coach Duffy Daugherty)

“Pro football is like nuclear warfare. There are no winners, only survivors.” (from Frank Gifford, former NFL player and long-time football broadcaster)

The lawsuit includes multiple arguments about why children are more vulnerable to head injuries. Their brains are still developing, and have less myelin to protect their brain cells from damage. Until the age of 14, children's are disproportionately large, and their necks are weaker than adults’ necks, making them prone to greater rotational forces when hit in the head.

Just looking at pictures of young boys wearing football helmets makes many of these points obvious. The idea that young boys are intentionally crashing into one another, often involving their heads, should give any parent cause for concern. Slate writer John Culhane described this as a “bobblehead effect” in which “their brains crash back and forth in their skulls.”

When Pyke’s lawsuit was filed last year, Culhane called it “The Lawsuit That Could Threaten Kids’ Football.” Despite the title of his article, he concluded that

“even in the unlikely event that she [Pyke] wins her case, youth football isn’t going anywhere. But a finding that Pop Warner is carrying on an abnormally dangerous activity would surely drive up the cost of insurance, and therefore make the sport more expensive for participants. It might also make more parents question whether they want to risk their children’s safety.” 

The “unlikely event” didn’t happen, but only because the league settled the suit.

Pop Warner football has a dedicated safety section on its website. It includes pages devoted to their concussion policy, and articles that argue that “rewards outweigh risks” and that “the relationship between developing CTE and playing football remains unclear. The link between the number of concussions a person sustains and the risk of developing CTE is also uncertain.”

Using words such as “unclear” and “uncertain” seems to me to be a classic example of sow confusion rather than admitting the obvious: youth football can be dangerous. Consider the “pee wee” league game in 2012 where five boys got concussions in a single game. The coaches were suspended afterwards, but the damage had already been done. At the time, the NY Times pointed out that “Pop Warner has done more than perhaps any other organization to try to protect young players from head injuries,” but the fact is that football is a violent contact sport.

(Pop Warner did not respond to my request for comment.)

As the New York Post reported when the settlement was announced, Pop Warner had $2 million in liability coverage for players in Wisconsin at the time of the lawsuit, in 2012. They now carry $1 million per player and allow individual chapters to add another $1 million.

Think about that for a second. Why would you want your son to play in a youth sports league where the league feels the need to carry a $2 million insurance policy on every player?

Parents: you and your kids have other options besides football. Youth sports are a great way for kids to exercise, have fun, make new friends, and learn the value of teamwork. Your kids can choose soccer, tennis, baseball, or basketball, all of which have large networks of youth leagues. Many regions of the country have other sports as well. There’s no reason to suit up a child with a helmet on his still-growing head and send him out on a field to be knocked around and possibly concussed.

Joseph Chernach suffered a tragedy, and his family’s suffering will never go away. We’re now learning that even powerfully built grown men suffer permanent injuries on the football field. There’s no reason to expose children or teenagers to similar risks.