I tried my hardest, I really did, I have not watched a single bullshit game or had a single fake conversation about football all year but on this so called super Sunday I have to share some of my perspective on this game that thoroughly disgusts me.
Brain damage is real, it is pretty easy to injure a human brain and just like an anatomical joint injuries accumulate over time leading to reduced functioning and then failure. Football at its core necessarily involves a lot of brain injury. Those helmets, that are supposed to be a safety device are actually an amazing weapon when attached to the head of a teenage boy with anger issues.
Because football helmets do a great job of protecting the external face and skull (combined with propaganda) they provide the illusion of safety. What you can not see is all of that force is redirected inwards to the brain being sloshed around in cerebrospinal fluid, like an egg yolk being scrambled in the shell.
The grand old elite white men of the NFL want you to believe that concussions are rare and CTE only happens to NFL players. This is bullshit on so many levels. One good subconcussive pop to the head can easily lead to reduced brain functioning. Don't believe me? Stop reading, put a helmet on, now run at the wall head first and smash that thing like your favorite NFL star, then come back and read the rest of this article and compare (dont really do this, respect your brain health).
Now imagine doing that thousands upon thousands of times over and over again, from age of to 8-25.... What sort of shape would your decision making skills be in? How would you function without a support system? What symptoms of Traumatic Brain Injury are commonly displayed by football players? Why the fuck are parents still entrusting there children to a system that is actively covering up the fact that 99% of players test positive for CTE at a young age.
So why am I so concerned? Well, you may have guessed by this point that I am a former football player. I was very gifted and big as a high school football lineman and was treated to the 5 star recruiting treatment from most of the schools on the western half of the united states. Basically a bunch of different rich old men trying to bribe already slightly brain damaged young high school kids into sacrificing their bodies and brains to enrich themselves. How do they bribe? Girls, money, culture, ego, you want it, they got it. Just be a good boy and smash your head into shit when we tell you.
I went and played about a year and a half of football in college before I quit for good. The math never made sense to me to be paid so little for destroying my body while the old guys sitting on their ass made all the money. I figured, I had, at best a 25% chance of being healthy enough to play professionally, and then the average career was 2 years in the NFL (95% of NFL players go bankrupt anyway, with league appointed financial advisors....) so seemed like a terrible business and health decision to me. And that was before we were told anything about the risk of brain damage because they covered up all the evidence at the time.
Why I am even more concerned? My dad has alzheimer's disease and has had symptoms since he was in his late 50's, he is currently 70 years old. In the decade that I have been studying this disease I have learned an incredible amount about brain anatomy and functioning. The kind of studying you do compulsively for years when you are trying to find an answer to a huge problem that you know is worth every bit of time and pain you spend on solving it. During that time I figured out how to get myself from working in an office with no prior medical training into working in a state of the art operating room, side by side with one of the nfls chief neurosurgeons in less than two years.
I learned a whole lot from that guy and many other surgeons I worked with. Most importantly, seeing the all of the anatomy in person opened up and seeing how fragile skulls and brains really are. Especially KIDS!!!!!!!! What % of neurosurgeons children play football? Yet how many neurosurgeons speak out against football? The last "dr" I called out on it told me the NFL was a big organization and he couldnt fight it, and that driving in cars was equally dangerous. Pure genius there...... His solution to all my dads problems btw, he needs more pills. Pills Pills Pills.
Which leads me to my next rant. Take a look at all of the commercials if you watch that football garbage. Those are the companies you are really supporting when you watch the NFL. You are exposing yourself to the influence of companies that profit off making people sick via unhealthy food, alcohol and prescription medications in most cases. Just try ingesting everything you see advertised today and see how you feel tomorrow. I'm guessing fat, bloated, impotent, craving sugar and heartburn medication, do we really want to huddle around the TV cheering for these companies?
This is not the first time I have spoken out against football nor will it be the last. I encourage any of you still reading to not give any of your attention today or ever again to state sponsored brain damage. Every year you will see more and more ex players like me speak out against this abusive corrupt system. I went really hard at this last summer and people around me had a very hard time understanding and listening to my perspective. Led me to a very strange place last summer which I will include in a later post. And just when I thought I was on an island I saw this right around opening day of the 2017 season:
https://www.denverpost.com/2017/09/07/drew-wahlroos-colorado-buffaloes-dies/
He was a college teammate of mine and a good guy. Made it to the league for the average career length (a yearish or 2) and was hurting enough to shoot himself in the chest and donate his brain to research at age 37.
Want more recent news just from my college?
This is a great example of how I see football fans treating players in general. They loved him when he was playing, but as soon as he can't carry the rock, they steal his shit and auction it off without even caring that the guy took his own life because of his football "success".
So please do me a favor, if you watch football today. Be observant of the permanent damage these young men are enduring in the name of your entertainment, be aware of the fact that most of them have been indoctrinated from a young age into a highly organized system designed for profit with no regard for health. Ask yourself if you really want to support any of these companies. Ask yourself what value does this violence worship game really bring to society? Is it worth the risk to the millions of boys who are still playing and have played?
Finally, I encourage everyone of you football fans to volunteer to be an alzheimers or dementia caregiver for a day. Try to find an early onset case where the person who has the disease was the star of the family like NFL players are. If you don't have the courage to do that, just try to find a young person who's parent has alzheimers or dementia and ask them about the overall health of the family.
Don't scream at the television for violence unless you are prepared for violence yourself. Be respectful of other people's health and don't take advantage of children from low income and hi risk backgrounds for your own entertainment. The time for willful ignorance is past and so is this rant.
Get out and do something positive for your health today!
I welcome any questions or comments on this rant and thanks for allowing me to share a little of my perspective here, it is therapeutic for me and I know there are many others out there feeling like me today so hopefully some of them will see this.
Big Love to you all for reading !