Followers of football, and maybe of sports more generally, were rudely reacquainted with a subject that seemed to have died down for a while with the news of the retirement of Chris Borland, a linebacker for the San Francisco 49ers. The jolting part of the story was that Borland was no grizzled veteran; actually he had just finished his rookie season, which was a highly promising one by all accounts. Also jolting was Borland's stated rationale for his early retirement. Borland frankly acknowledged that he was getting out after a lot of consideration of the risks of playing football in light of the last several years of revelations about former and often deceased NFL players suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and other brain trauma-related diseases.
The combination of Borland's youth and his frankness about his motivation was enough to awaken the beasts of sports television (ESPN in particular, but others too) and sports-talk radio, not to mention the ever-virulent spheres of social media. The subhuman trolls of Twitter were out in force, though perhaps not carrying as much of the day as might have been the case in the past. For the most part, public figures refrained from bashing Borland (though there were certainly exceptions, but even those were relatively restrained in some cases). The NFL, of course, had to release a statement that, while striking a respectful pose towards Borland, more or less called him a wuss by insisting the sport has never been safer. (Increasingly the NFL is joining the ranks of the tobacco industry and Big Oil/climate denialism in its ability to forfeit credibility with every statement it issues. But I digress.)
Borland also acknowledged that last year during training camp he experienced what he thought might have been a concussion, but did not report the injury and continued to participate in drills in his concern for making the team. He acknowledged questioning himself and his actions afterwards, leading to the research (including consulting with scientists researching CTE) that helped inform his decision (maybe including this bit of information).
Herewith, a few thoughts:
1. Borland was not the first person to retire from the NFL at a young age over health concerns. In fact he wasn't the first member of his team to retire this month over health issues, but Patrick Willis's retirement was over very specific injuries he had already suffered, not over potential long-term harm. Two other NFL players, Jason Worilds of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Jake Locker of the Tennessee Titans, also left the game last week, and Locker's frequent injuries played a part in his decision. But in none of those cases was brain trauma listed as a factor. Despite the oddity of four young (30 or younger) players retiring in the space of about a week, Borland's case is still different and potentially the most challenging.
For that matter, Borland has a predecessor from almost three years ago. Jacob Bell walked away in 2012, and the risks of brain trauma were among the factors he acknowledged in his decision. Bell, though, was 31, and had had a respectable career already. Rashard Mendenhall also made mention of injury risks in his discussion of his retirement at age 26, but it was not a primary factor in his choice. What Borland has done is unique and challenging enough that it will reverberate within the football industry for some time, even if the sports-media beast gets bored and lets the story drop.
2. Borland's opinion is not unchallenged among NFL players. Even within the link above to the main Borland story, someone named Bobby Wagner is quoted via tweet as saying he'll play until he can't anymore because he loves the game too much. Because this is a faith-oriented blog and because I'm a pastor now, I'm going to refrain from commenting on that, or on Chris Conte's stated belief that brain trauma and early death is totally worth getting to run around and hit people. (Yes, he claims that his remarks were not specifically related to concussion issues, but considering he had just come off a second concussion and his lack of other clarification, I'm not buying it.) OK, one bit of snark; I don't know if Conte is married or not, but I have trouble imagining why any woman would want to be married to him with this expressed lack of concern for his future health -- given what happens to women like Kasandra Perkins, Jovan Belcher's girlfriend.
3. Borland's concern did not necessarily need to be limited to long-term health concerns. The aforementioned Jovan Belcher was only 25 when he murdered his girlfriend and committed suicide, and his brain showed signs of CTE in the posthumous analysis. And Chris Henry, the Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver who died in a strange automotive accident in 2009 while still an active player, already showed significant brain damage despite being only 26. Paul Oliver was only 29 when he committed suicide, and his brain also showed advanced CTE. Other former players who lived into their 40s or 50s report that the kinds of symptoms frequently associated with CTE -- memory loss, violent mood swings -- began to manifest themselves as early as their thirties. If Borland was concerned about the health risks associated with football and brain trauma, it wouldn't have been impossible for such symptoms or impacts to have started manifesting themselves much sooner than even he might have thought.
4. Don't let's kid ourselves; this isn't going to bring down the NFL, not even close. For every Chris Borland that chooses to walk away, there are a hundred or more ready to take his place. Maurice Clarett, the former Ohio State running back, took to Twitter to offer a different take on Borland's decision, noting that Borland "probably had a backup plan" and that an awful lot of football players come through their college careers with no practical "backup plan" nor the ability or credentials to form one. Football won't go away any time soon, but it does run the risk of going the route of boxing; a once-dominant sport that becomes a spectacle of the rich keeping their kids playing but happily watching the less fortunate (desperate for any out or up) bash their brains out on the field for their entertainment.
5. And therein lies the rub for the would-be Christ-follower who enjoys football. Do you keep on watching? Buying the merchandise? Paying for the cable or dish packages? Where does a sport that cannot shake this deadly connection no matter how much its main purveyor claims otherwise fit into a Christ-oriented ethic of living? Just how close are we to recreating the days of the gladiatorial combats? (Do you really think that the fact that death comes slowly, maybe years later, rather than immediately in the arena makes that much difference?)
And no, don't even try to make any claims about it being up to the players to guard their own health or take the risks (which Borland decided not to do, after all). What is at stake here is how we, as sports fans who are trying to be Christ-followers, express that following even in this realm of our lives. It is, I will insist, totally irrelevant that Chris Conte has decided that the risk is worth it. Your own response to the risks associated with the game are not contingent on the players' own choices, for which they and only they can be accountable in the end. The question ultimately can only be: can I, seeking to follow Christ, partake of such an injurious and potentially destructive spectacle in good conscience? Even sports like auto racing, in which death is far more frequent, does not kill its participants so routinely -- a fatal crash very explicitly means that something went wrong. The players, from Mike Webster to Junior Sean to Paul Oliver, were playing football exactly the way they were taught to play.
We cannot escape the ethical challenge here. To the degree that we try to evade it we discredit ourselves and our professed faith. The question must not and cannot be swept under the rug. Time to start facing up to the challenge.
Credit: 49ers.com
