Only Nixon could go to China

It is one of those stories where, well, you just have to wonder.

About a week ago, the University Interscholastic League, which is the governing body for high school sports in the state of Texas, announced a major effort to track brain injuries among athletes who compete in high school sports in that state. Twenty-four sports will be covered. While I assume some  boys' youth soccer does exist in Texas (girls' soccer is named in the article, you'll note), as a number of professional players have come from the state, the sport most likely to be up for closest scrutiny (by those observing and reporting on the study, if not in the study itself) is football, perhaps the most sacred of idols in that state (or perhaps only second to oil).

Note: while I am intensely curious about how the University Interscholastic League governs high school sports in Texas, I'll leave that discussion aside for now.

The study is inherently significant, as noted in the article, if for no other reason than the sheer number of youth who participate in sports in the Texas system. More than 800,000 athletes participate in sports in Texas public high schools (one assumes there are plenty of private schools with sports as well; whether they are covered in the study or not is not noted). That's the beginnings of a very large database tracking brain injury in young athletes.

The League is partnering with the O'Donnell Brain Institute at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center for the study. Its purported aim is to provide a more scientific means to judge whether rules changes, new equipment, or other measures are in fact having any impact in preventing or mitigating brain injury in young athletes, and whether new measures are warranted or needed.

This isn't the first case of a state organization trying to track youth sports on a large scale -- Michigan is noted as having been tracking such injury for some time now. In the 2015-16 academic year football produced the most reports of brain injury, with girls' basketball coming in second, trailing by a mere 1,453 reports.

One would like to be encouraged, wouldn't one?

It all seems very serious. The University Interscholastic League's spokesman acknowledges the lack of scientific usefulness in the current system, which only requires schools to report on a rotating basis. Whatever you may think of UT, its medical program is generally well-regarded. It all sounds like it should be a good thing.

But it's Texas.

It's freakin' Texas.

The book Friday Night Lights (or the movie or the TV series) wasn't set in Pennsylvania or Ohio or Michigan, or even California or Georgia or Florida. All of those states have strong, successful traditions in high school football, as do others. But this is Texas. "Worshipful" is not too strong a word for how that state views football, not by a long shot. The saying that gives this blog its name might as well have been invented there.

Can a state with such a reverence for, such an identity with a sport like football really pull off such a study, no matter where the results may lead?

Do they really want to?

Can the UIL really keep reporting numbers of they get large and out of hand, and nothing seems to help?

Can Texas high schools really be trusted to be scrupulous about reporting all such incidents of brain injury? Can coaches, assistant coaches, trainers, doctors really stick to the rules when the pressure is on and the star quarterback might have to be held out of the big game?

It all has the potential (as it might in any state to some degree) to become a big whitewash.

Or it has the potential to be, to use an overused sports cliché, a game changer.

A genuine and disciplined study can potentially point to what works, whether it be practice limitations, more scrupulous rule enforcement, rule changes or anything else. It could also, in the extreme, point to the conclusion that nothing really works, that football is just going to do this to some percentage of the people who play it when so much size and speed are in play.

On the other hand, a large study such as this could also become little more than a stall tactic, a cover for cries of "we don't have enough data" ad nauseam.

It may be that if a breakthrough of whatever kind is going to happen, it's only right that it comes out of Texas, the epitome of a state where the game really is "way more important than that." Rather like the historical event referenced in the title of this entry, maybe it has to be a state that so zealously embraces the game that has to the one that pushes forth the true nature of the game, or unveils whatever steps are necessary to keep it from enacting a macabre form of Russian roulette on the brains of those young athletes who play it.

It could be big, or it could be just a big sham.

Conflicts of interest

Indiana University has a history of powerhouse basketball teams. Football, not so much.

For their basketball team, anything less than contention for the Final Four is disappointment. For the football team, a 6-6 record and a bowl of any kind is a noteworthy accomplishment.

On the other hand, a Final Four run at the University of Alabama would be impressive, if not particularly noticed or appreciated there. A 6-6 record for the football team, on the other hand, would likely provoke an armed uprising in the state. Different standards at different schools.

Nonetheless, even at a school like Indiana, the pressure for football success can cause things to go off the rails.

A week ago in this blog, two seemingly unrelated stories -- one of a Harvard University study recommending changes to the hiring and oversight of team doctors, another of Indiana's backup quarterback deciding to leave football -- sat nestled next to each other as items two and three. It turns out that the two items, while not necessarily being related, were in fact going to intersect obliquely over the course of the week.

On Thursday, IU announced that football coach Kevin Wilson was no longer going to be football coach. Initial reports spoke of IU firing Wilson (and that's still how my browser bookmarks read), but eventually the departure was reported instead as a resignation. The team's defensive coordinator was immediately promoted to the position of head coach.

This was sudden. There had been no rumors or hints about Wilson's job security; indeed IU is on its way to a bowl game for the second year in a row, which is roughly tantamount to a national championship for the basketball team. If anything it seemed that all was well.

The press conference announcing the firing resignation did nothing to dispel the strangeness. The departed coach was not present, which is not completely surprising. The newly appointed coach talked, as he was supposed to do, of being honored to take the job and of continuing the team's relative success. As for the athletic director who either fired Wilson or accepted his resignation, Fred Glass gave a master class in not answering the questions asked of him. Even the ESPN writer who penned the above story found his answers revealingly unrevealing, in true lawyerly style, as below:

Glass mentioned the term "philosophical differences" so many times I began to envision him and Wilson in robes, arguing over the soul's immortality.

Glass repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, which seemed very strange. For his part, Wilson had accepted a fairly meager buyout despite being owed an average of $2.5 million over the next five seasons. That's not normal coach behavior. Something strange seemed afoot.

A couple of days later, more information started to come out. Despite Glass's protestations, there were some, shall we say, darker episodes sprinkled across Wilson's tenure at IU, episodes which (due to Wilson's departure and the evident confidentiality agreement bridling the tongues of both coach and AD) will probably never be fully interrogated and understood. (A more local view of the whole affair is here.)

At least two investigations into Wilson's treatment of players, particularly injured players, were initiated by Glass, one in April 2015 and another in the past four to six weeks. A number of former players also spoke out in the past week about Wilson's treatment of injured players during his time at IU.

Here's where we must begin to ask questions about coaching responsibility.

There isn't any likelihood of these allegations ever being settled one way or the other. With Wilson gone (and likely not to talk) and Glass having already demonstrate he won't say anything, IU will be unlikely to pursue the issue any further. Still, if even a few of the allegations reported in the last-linked article are true, there was a disturbing tendency towards belittling injured players or dismissing the severity of those injuries in the IU program.

Here's where the idea of conflicts of interest comes in.

Wilson (or any head coach) had the responsibility not to put players at unacceptable risk. That's standard for any coach in any sport.

Wilson also, as any coach in any sport, was responsible to win games.

Those are obvious and universal responsibilities. In addition, in college football, a coach has other concerns beyond those -- seeing that the players are not wiping out in the classroom. Whether or not the coach personally gives a whit about the academic progress of the players, such progress gets measured, and the team actually can suffer consequences if, for example, a certain percentage of the team's players fail to graduate in a timely manner over the course of years. (You might recall that the University of Connecticut basketball team got banned from the NCAA tournament in 2013, at a time when that team was carrying a graduation rate of 8% among its basketball players.) Even if a head coach doesn't directly oversee the academic progress of the team's players, a poor rate comes back on the head coach.

Again, if the stories told about Wilson are true (and the "if" is not insubstantial here), even such a concern as that last one about academics can become an impediment to proper regard for a player's health. The more prevalent concern here in this blog is a kind of emotional manipulation; ridiculing or demeaning injured players as a means to induce them to come back from their injuries too soon.

It's pretty insidious, if you think about it; you get deniability ("hey, he said he could play...") and the player back in action. Eighteen- to twenty-two-year-olds, wildly competitive athletes at that, are not noted for sober judgment or careful balancing of risk. They're frankly easy to manipulate. And it looks possible that Wilson did exactly that.

Let's try to be understanding here; it's hard to keep so many things in balance. While Wilson might have had a nasty streak in his personality (according to some accounts), even a well-intentioned coach of good character can find it challenging to keep up success on the field and in the classroom and still keeping a proper eye on the health of the team's players.

If I'm ever going to start getting hate mail over this blog, it might finally happen because of this topic. Coaches are gods (at least as long as they succeed). It's not just in football; think of how long Bob Knight took to wear out his welcome at IU (in basketball, of course). But there's a media apparatus dedicated to their ongoing deification of coaches across many sports, but particularly so in football (college even more than pro). Nick Saban at the University of Alabama could probably kill and eat a cheerleader at the fifty-yard line at halftime during a game and keep his job. College football coaches always get the benefit of the doubt. Always. Unless they lose, or people get arrested, or overwhelming national attention of a bad kind comes to your program. Ask Art Briles, even as plenty of Baylor folk insist he should have been retained.

Players, on the other hand, are tools (particularly football players). Useful, and even beloved to a degree, as long as they "do their job." Academic failure only matters so far as it causes the player to be unable to play -- not remotely in terms of their education or development as human beings. Personal problems? Get that out of your system before game time, boy (racial coding very deliberate). And don't you dare have an opinion that your coach doesn't give you.

It's hard to challenge a coach who is having even a little bit of success. So if a coach who has the team succeeding even a little gets accused of pressuring injured players to play too soon, who in the administration or -- God help us -- the fanbase is going to hold that coach accountable? Aside from the affected player's parents, perhaps?

It's an unpleasant question to ask, but it had better be asked: are football coaches the best ones to be trusted with making decisions about the health of players (or having authority over those who do), particularly in an age where we have a lot more clue just how much damage football can do to bodies and/or brains?

Fred Glass (right, with new coach Tom Allen) at his lawyerly best.

Weekly Reader: Headlines and reflections

Last week's post on this blog was a public regrouping in order to put forward a small part of the Christian ethical foundation underlying this ongoing project. Today's post will be similar, except framed in a reading of some of the recent headlines directly or indirectly pertaining to the subject and seeking to tease out where these ethical concerns may intersect. It is an excercise in developing a methodology, or trying to do so anyway. So, on with it.

ITEM: The NFL is considering dropping or severly curtailing its schedule of Thursday night games in future seasons.
REFLECTION: I see two particular concerns that are revealed by this piece of news.
The NFL is considering this move for one reason, and one reason only: poor ratings. Others connected to the game have certainly raised other concerns about the package -- bad games, over-saturation, and even player safety on occasion. However, these have been the case for a while -- really, is it not clear that playing a game on Sunday and turning around and playing another game four days later could make it difficult to get every body, or everybody, healed even to a minimal degree? Nonetheless, only the middling ratings for the games seems to have gotten the NFL's attention. So...
1. Why are we so confident that a league that has ignored safety concerns so far in inflating the NFL's Thursday presence, from Thanksgiving Day to a few late season weeks to half a season and, this year, to a full season, can truly be trusted to give enough of a damn about player safety in any other context, absent the pressure of losing not making enough money? To presume that a non-ethical actor is suddenly going to act ethically is, well, not very ethical, is it?
2. The flip side of this realization is that FANS DO HAVE POWER to cause the NFL to change its ways. Withhold your money, or even your attention, and look what can happen! This realization makes it a lot more difficult to cling to the notion that an individual's turning away from the game, for example, "won't make a difference." It apparently can effect the league when people don't watch. So fan responsiblity really does matter.
Sidebar: Some of the same concern will need to be directed at college football as well, in which some teams and leagues play some truly bizarre schedules -- Tuesday and Wednesday nights, even -- and Thursday games have been in place for some schools for as much as twenty years.

ITEM: A study from Harvard University recommends, among other things, substantial changes to the structure by which medical personnel are deployed in the league; the league responded with predictable staged outrage (predictable if you've been paying attention to the league for a while).
REFLECTION: Aside from yet another case of academia being out of touch with the real world, this story points to the mania for control that also contributes to the NFL's untrustworthy nature where player health is concerned.
The study proposes that doctors monitoring health not be employed by the league. The logic is simple; doctors who answer to the league or to an individual team are inherently in a position in which the interests of the team or league (i.e. get the star back on the field as quickly as possible) and the interests of the player (don't die, or don't hasten your own death unnecessarily) do not align, despite the NFL's vapid denials of conflict of interest. (The incredibly fatuous statements attributed to NFL spokespeople in the article suggest that the NFL is either unbelievably ignorant of what "conflict of interest" means, or desperately trying to muddy the waters on the subject.)
And as to claims that the proposed system is unworkable? Then are you serious about the health and safety of your players? It really is that simple.

ITEM: Zander Diamont, a backup quarterback for the University of Indiana Hoosiers, has decided to forego his final season of eligibility after "a lot" of concussions in his career (dating back to high school), summing up his decision with the pithy and on-point comment "I need my brain."
REFLECTION: As has been noted in previous blogs, not everybody would necessarily agree with that last comment.
Of course, as Diamont openly admits, he didn't have an NFL career ahead of him, and he is set to graduate from IU this spring. The lure of a pro career does often interfere with good judgment, it seems. (He's also the son of a soap-opera star, and perhaps that lessens the financial pressures that may cause some to press on in the game and hope against hope for that pro career.)
Also noteworthy is Diamont's acknowledgment that his particular playing style was such that he was more prone to head shots, and that his relatively small size made it hard to have any success without putting himself at greater risk. What is rare here is Diamont's apparent ability to see through it all and come to a decision to step away from the risk before it becomes harm. Hopefully.
What becomes a concern is the degree to which young men, who have been playing football since elementary school in many cases, are terribly good candidates to come to such conclusions more often than not. And this comes back to the root concern of this blog: just because young men are free to put themselves at such risk and to choose the harm, are we Christians ethically or morally free to participate in it with our dollars or our presence or our adulation? And if you've read much of this blog, you'll know where this blog stands.

ITEM: A lawsuit filed on behalf of 142 former NFL players calls on the league to acknowledge CTE as an occupational hazard that should be covered by worker's compensation.
REFLECTION: As much as I would typically be sympathetic to the plaintiffs, some shifty stuff is going on here.
The article states that the lead plaintiff was "diagnosed with CTE in 2015." Um, what? Since the article also seems to indicate that said plaintiff is also still alive, something is wrong here. If some doctor is "diagnosing" former players with CTE (and naturally, this is in South Florida, or Flori-duh), then either some amazing breakthrough has been made in complete and utter isolation and with absolutely zero publicity, or somebody's scamming somebody. Considering that, despite some progress, CTE cannot be definitively identified except posthumously...yeah, ethical dubiousness isn't acceptable on either side of this struggle.

ITEM: Liberty University has hired Ian McCaw as its athletic director.
REFLECTION: While there are about a million things that can be said about this subject, for this case (sticking with the football/CTE issue) we are again forced to consider the issue of trustworthiness, but this time from an explicitly Christian (or nominally so) perspective.
McCaw, of course, was previously the athletic director at Baylor University, at a time when the institution failed spectacularly at dealing with revelations of sexual assault among its athletes. Apparently Liberty's desire to become the Notre Dame of evangelicalism is not about to be sidetracked by mere concerns about the safety of women on campus.
The Washington Post's headline on the article places the stakes pretty high, but not inaccurately so, I'd say. If the term "evangelicalism" hasn't taken enough abuse as a result of the presidential campaign, items like this should help push that over the top.
Of course, one of the principal evangelical leaders involved in that campaign was none other than Jerry Falwell, Jr., the president of Liberty University. The juxtaposition of those two tidbits is juicy enough to warrant a larger concern about just what evangelicalism means anymore. Can an evangelicalism that wants to portray itself primarily through athletic success -- at any cost, apparently -- be trusted with the health of the players who are supposed to bring that athletic success? And a school that is so little concerned with what happened on McCaw's watch at Baylor is not that likely to care for the long-term health of its athletes, either.
The win-at-all-costs mentality of college football is sad enough among the largely secular universities who enjoy most of the success in it these days. Seeing schools who shout loudly about their "Christian character" be so cavalier about such costs, and prioritizing athletic success to the degree that it calls that character into question, is profoundly hard to swallow. It's hard not to wonder if grappling with football and the harm it does to some percentage of its players is going to have to go forward without much participation from the evangelical wing of Christianity, or whether that wing is capable of forming a Christian ethical response to the harms (as opposed to risks) of football.

Zander Diamont says "a lot" of concussions is enough.

Christian ethics, the human body, and football

Part of my responsibility in purusing this project is to put forth a coherent ethical response to the ongoing concern of football and the traumatic brain injury associated with it. Amidst the gathering of new stories and accounts of the experiences of former and now deceased players, the inability or unwillingness of football leagues or collegiate conferences to take the issue seriously beyond a basic CYA instinct, and possible changing attitudes among fans or players, I occasionally need to drop back and gather up some of the ethical foundation and procedure behind the project, to try to keep myself from getting too far off track.

So bear with me, please.

I have been reminded of two basic concerns underlying an ethical approach to this question; one concerning the possible audience for such concern, and another pointing to a basic reason why Christian ethics must (in my opinion, humble or otherwise) address the issue.

Note the choice of the term "Christian ethics." That is a significant limitation on whatever comes out of this pursuit. In trying to sort out what kind of Christian ethical position I'm coming from I've come to conclude that based on what I hope to be the outcome of such a project, my target audience is limited to what is theologically called the "body of Christ."

It isn't because I think the opinions and actions of those of other faiths are irrelevant or unimportant -- quite the opposite. It is simply that, in my role as a Christian (specifically Presbyterian) pastor, my most basic concern is to in some way provide spiritual guidance and direction so that the members of the body of Christ (we usually call them "Christians" though I am growing less and less fond of that word in its current state every day) are formed and matured into people who live rightly, more so than trying to direct individual actions so that individuals act rightly.* This might not sound like what you've perceived as the role of Christian ethics (or ethics in general), and there are certainly others who will disagree.

*Here one might look into Samuel Wells, Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2004), especially his introductory chapters.

Christian ethical thought has at different times emphasized very different outcomes for the body of Christ -- sometimes emphasizing loyalty to the State as a means of guaranteeing the influence of the Church (and yes, quite a few nominally Christian leaders are clearly taking this approach today); sometimes propagating a canon of law or rules, adherence to which demonstrated one's faith; sometimes emphasizing the rationality of the faith, or its suitability to the improvement of the individual vs. the larger body. By staking out the position I have, I am certianly "showing my bias" -- the importance of community and "body of Christ" over individual supremacy, a preference for formation of habits and even "instincts" to respond ethically to situations that haven't necessarily existed before, rather than prescribing a rulebook and then trying to bend current situations to that rulebook (football is, after all, a relatively recent thing in history, though there are other activities that the Christian ethical response to which will be informative), and others I'm sure I'll hear about.

For the moment, though, the big concern that arises from this is that if my primary concern is with the body of Christ, then what I say should not be considered authoritative over those who do not claim membership in said body. It ain't because I don't care. And if a book or some other product eventually does hit the market, my Jewish or Muslim or agnostic friends (or anybody else) should certainly feel free to buy a copy. <grin> But all of this really does come out of a pastoral and theological foundation, and those who do not partake of such a foundation cannot be bound by my arguments from it.

So the language of this project is likely to get more and more faith-specific -- not with intent to offend, but simply trying to do the only job I can do here.


The second reminder to myself comes in a sideways fashion from the first -- specifically from my job being directed toward the "body of Christ," i.e. the Christian (there's that word again) church. Part of the reason is that I don't believe that followers of Christ, professors of an incarnational faith, can be indifferent to those activities in human existence that regularly and routinely cause harm to the physical body.

We are, after all, followers of a victim of torture. The scourging, whipping, imposition of a crown of thorns, and other abuses visited upon Jesus wouldn't even remotely pass muster under the Geneva conventions today, and I'm pretty sure crucifixion would fall under the ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" even for the most zealous defenders of capital punishment (on second thought, maybe not all such defenders). One of the key events in the narrative of Christianity is an act of physical destruction.

Not surprisingly, Christian ethics and doctrine have not typically looked kindly on activities that visit lasting harm on the body (leaving aside for the moment those who hold to soul/body dualisms of some sort, except to say that I'm not one of them). Capital punishment (usually) comes under criticism; abortion is sanctioned; harm to the body through drugs or alcohol or other foreign substances is decried; sports such as boxing have, eventually, fallen out of favor in many Christian circles. It certainly remains possible that football will similarly fall out of favor, although with such virulent attachments to it still in place in some corners of the church that doesn't seem likely any time soon, no matter how much nobodies like me might protest. But it's becoming harder and harder to ignore the degree to which the game produces an awful lot of broken bodies, even if the damage takes five or ten or twenty years to show. That can't be acceptable in an ethic that takes seriously the idea of human beings created in the image of God.  

Here's a case where our ancestors in the faith have provided some thought that can be applied to the modern case, albeit indirectly at best. The criticisms of Tertullian, Augustine, and the like against the gladiatorial combats and contests of the ancient world don't necessarily transfer directly to modern critiques of football (the spectacle of death is not immediate in the NFL, at least for now), but the concerns both about the aforementioned imago Dei and the impact such spectacles had on those who viewed them should not be dismissed. Augustine's account of his unfortunate friend Alypius at the spectacles sounds pretty mild compared to the total besotted intoxication fans display at the modern spectacles on Saturday afternoons (or nights, or now Thursdays or Fridays), or Sundays (or Mondays, or now Thursdays). That infatuation and saturation with the spectacle becomes an unavoidable part of teasing out a Christian ethical response to the seemingly intractable destructiveness of the game on some sizeable number of its players, and has inevitably to be answered and critiqued as part of the process of ethical inquiry.

In short; the destructive quality of football (which seems more intractable and less fixable than in sports like hockey) has to be addressed, but we're going to have to untangle some seriously dubious entwinement of football and religionesque ritual and worship while doing so. And yes, the "i" word (idolatry) is probably going to have to be invoked at some point.

I...I can't even...

Book Commentary: Unintended Impact

Prebstle, Jim. Unintended Impact: One Athlete's Journey from Concussions in Amateur Football to CTE Dementia. Edina: Beaver's Pond Press, 2015. 265pp. ISBN 978-1-59298-883-9.

I have previously in this blog raised the unsettling spectre that, aside from those former NFL players, known and yet to be known, suffering the lingering effects of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), there might well be numerous players (thousands? tens of thousands?) whose career arc never approached the NFL but yet suffer from the same debilitating effects of their shorter football careers.

This book tells one such story.

Dick Prebstle grew up in the football-crazed precincts of Canton and Massilon, Ohio. Born in 1942, he progressed through what was already a familiar path for a young athlete; beginning to play tackle football at age ten, getting onto the high school team (in his case skipping the "freshman team" that was more common in the 1950s), and as a successful high-school star (and also an excellent student), being recruited to a successful collegiate program, in his case at Michigan State. Prebstle was mostly a backup quarterback at MSU, and a succession of severe injuries, including a now-shocking number of concussions, ultimately ended his career prematurely. (His younger brother, the author of this book, would last longer in football, and was a member of MSU's 1965 national championship team, but neither brother would play in the NFL.)

Dick Prebstle's post-football life seemed destined for success, despite an unsuccessful attempt at law school. He ultimately made his way into business; getting a foothold in the insurance business before  maneuvering his way to the acquisition of a construction equipment company.

Jim Prebstle's story of his big brother's rise and decline has been dropping hints along the way -- frequent migraines, unexpected illnesses suggested as stress-related at the time -- that all was not to be well, but the decline is marked sharply at this point. Without giving away too many details (you are supposed to read the book after all), Jim Prebstle reads Dick's decline in retrospect, armed (as he and Dick's other family members were not at the time) with the understanding of CTE's effect on the afflicted brain. While a CTE diagnosis, which can only be confirmed posthumously, cannot change the suffering its victim and family go through, it can be a means to understand how a seemingly healthy and successful man like Dick Prebstle could be laid low so suddenly. The most marked changes in behavior and cognitive function began to manifest themselves in Dick Prebstle in the early 1980s, according to Jim Prebstle's account.

Dick Prebstle lived until 2012, aged 69.

Think of thirty years in fearsome mental decline, kicking in before age 40.

Jim Prebstle's account is straightforwardly retrospective, reading Dick's life in light of his posthumous diagnosis. Having learned how CTE works, through their experience with the Boston University study that has announced so many such diagnoses, Jim and other relatives of Dick, including wife and children, are calling up painful and baffling memories, and beginning to re-interpret those memories through new information and understanding that was simply not out there in the 1980s. (The book's Forward is by Dr. Robert A. Stern, a member of the BU study group, and is particularly useful to read and digest.)

As Jim Prebstle's account unfolds, a plethora of related issues float, sometimes unintentionally, to the surface -- the relationship between brothers, particularly the overachieving older brother and the younger brother constantly judged by his elder's accomplishments; the "warrior codes" and implicit assumptions about manhood attached to football; the sheer lack of understanding of brain injury and the harrowingly outdated and ultimately deadly way young football players were taught to hit head-first; the sheer idolatry (my word, not Prebstle's) of football in certain parts of American culture; the "steel mill mentality" of the upper Midwest; the bitterness and rancor that result from disputes over care of dementia patients; the staggering physical deterioration of a CTE-afflicted brain; and many more.

The one significant disappointment of the book is the Epilogue, in which football idolatry still demands an Affirmation of Faith in the sport despite its destruction of some percentage of those who play it. The insistence that there has to be a way to make the sport safer still rings out, despite the lack of any evidence that this is so. Preserving football still comes first.

Nonetheless, read the book as a kind of personal counterbalance to a more broad-based account such as that in League of Denial. I suspect more such stories are going to begin to appear, as more former players or their family members try to understand what they or their loved ones have suffered, and how it could all be a result of the game they loved.

The gamut of player reaction

The subject of sports "curses" and belief systems is a fertile one, and one I hope to follow up on in the future (even if the most notorious of those curses went out the window last week). But there is a primary topic to this blog, and the past week-plus offered some interesting takes on the subject of football and its concussive effects on its players, against the backdrop of a startling, but not surprising, revelation about a deceased former player.

1) It turns out Cam Newton might actually care about his head after all.

It's amazing what having a concussion can do to your opinion on concussions. After a blindside hit that knocked him out of one game and kept him from starting the next, Newton was inclined to be a bit more cautious about exposing himself to unnecessary hits in the future.

Not that Newton is likely to change his style of play. To be blunt, without his mobility and running ability, Newton's just another big-armed quarterback, and being in the pocket isn't always that much safer than being on the run. No, by "unnecessary" hits he refers to, in the case of the hit that knocked him loopy, not doing foolish things like slowing down on the way to the end zone for no good reason.

I suppose such counts as a tiny measure of progress. Newton isn't stupid, and he might actually have the potential to be the kind of athlete who can have an impact after his career is over if he doesn't end up too scrambled to remember his name. But that's just not guaranteed, no matter how big Newton is. And given the (apparently statistically verifiable) tendency of NFL refs not to call illegal hits on him, he really is going to have to take care of himself.

2) You know that sentence above, "It's amazing what having a concussion can do to your opinion on concussions."? Well, maybe not.

At least one NFL player, Nat Berhe of the New York FOOTball GIants, missed four weeks with a concussion, and yet announced to the world that he will do exactly the same things he did that got him that concussion in the first place.

Among the money quotes in the article: "Nobody wants to live forever" (his own quote directly; has he not watched sci-fi movies?), and a description of his opinion stating that Berhe "said it's not his prerogative to think about the consequences." Um, Mr. Berhe, if it's not your prerogative, then whose is it? Player non-responsibility, thy name is Nat Berhe.

I really, really can't help but wonder what his family thinks, and if he's married and has any children.

3) And then there are those who are struggling with two thoughts, both true. Meet Alex Smith.

He's the quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs. Once upon a time he used to be the quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers.

He lost that job because of a concussion.

By the time he recovered from that concussion, his job had been taken by a guy named Colin Kaepernick, who is now famous for different reasons. Smith ended up being shipped off to KC, where things have actually worked out pretty well for him.

But now he's about to miss a start with what might have been a concussion, and the backup who will be getting the start is a guy who Kansas City acquired because their coach liked him so much back in Philadelphia. On a competitive level, yeah, that would be enough to provoke concern. Oh, no, here we go again...

But Smith has a wife and three kids. He has a reason to want to live forever, to use Berhe's crude formulation. And he's not stupid about head trauma and its effects; at minimum he can read headlines.

So he's torn.

If all that wasn't enough to weigh on him...

4) Kevin Turner's post-mortem brain examination came back revealing as bad a case of CTE as there is.

You might remember this story from the New York Times featuring Turner, then a lead plaintiff in the ongoing legal action against the NFL. Turner died back in March, having already been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. The postmortem in this case did not replace that diagnosis with CTE, but verified the presence of both in Turner's brain, and suggests that in this case the CTE may have been the cause of the Alzheimer's. Such a link had been speculated in the past, but Turner's exam was the most concrete evidence yet for such a link.

Turner really didn't know what he was getting into at the time of his playing career, which was over by the time of Mike Webster's death and the subsequent publicity and understanding of CTE.

Newton, Berhe, and Smith can't say that.

Neither can we, which I can only hope affects how we participate in football, or don't.

Kevin Turner in 2014 (from NY Times)

Weekly Reader: Well, what do you expect?

So on Sunday afternoon, before heading off for a couple of meetings, I was busy watching football (or futbol, to be more precise) when my Twitter feed apparently felt compelled to alert me that a football (American style) player had gotten hurt.

In this case New Orleans Saints defensive back P.J. Williams had to be carted off the field after sustaining not one, but two hits to the head on one play. Due to the uncertainty about Williams's injuries and their extent he was immobilized on a backboard and his head/helmet was strapped down to prevent any further injury. In the end, though, the diagnosis was a concussion, and while Williams stayed overnight at a hospital for precautionary reasons, he was expected to be discharged on Monday and enter the NFL's concussion protocol.

Quite a Sunday for your second-ever game in the NFL. He was even a hashtag for a little while.

Now time for this blog to get callous.

There are injuries by which you are allowed to be shocked. When Kevin Ware's leg snapped like a cheap pencil in the NCAA Final Four, shock was appropriate. It was horrifying, grotesque, and completely not typical for a basketball game.

Then there are injuries you really have no business being shocked by.

You really have no business being shocked when your favorite baseball team's best pitcher goes down with a torn rotator cuff. It's pretty much an epidemic, and while it generally isn't life-threatening, it still happens way more than it should.

It's a bit silly to be shocked when a hockey player loses a tooth. It's a stereotype, for pete's sake.

On the more farcical end of things, there's no point in being shocked when a soccer player acts as if he's in the throes of mortal agony after a non-contact play (I say "he" here because this really doesn't seem to happen so often in the women's game).

And football? I'm not sure there's any kind of injury on a football field that should really be shocking anymore. We've seen too many. And frankly, at this point it might be that those who suffer obvious injuries that require them to be removed from the game are fortunate, in that they don't stick around for two or three or a dozen more hits to their stunned cranial matter.

This is what the sport does to its players. And you know that going in, if you're a rational adult.

So spare me the hashtags. You've made the bargain; live with it.


Other things to read and think about:

*If you wondered why the NFL had become such a prolific contributor to select members of Congress, now you know why.

*From the "Waiting on Science Our Savior" department: The NFL is gonna throw gobs of cash at the pursuit of a "magic helmet," and some for concussion research too.

*Former NFL placekicker Cary Blanchard died earlier this month. He was one of the 4,500 former players who was a plaintiff in that settlement reached a couple of years ago. Yes, placekicker. Even I didn't think that was terribly possible. Shows what I know.

*From earlier this year: you might remember an experiemental study from a few years ago, when a number of former players like Tony Dorsett were judged to show signs of CTE while still alive? The first former player to be a part of that study, Fred McNeill, has died, and...he has been posthumously confirmed to have had CTE. This could be a very big deal in the effort to diagnose the disease in the living and try to find some way to combat it. The bad part, of course, is that more players will have to die to confirm this -- the great ethical conundrum of CTE research.

*A former NFL great suffering from possibly football-related dementia has become the subject of an ugly custody battle.  He's regrettably unlikely to be the last such story.

Outside concussionball:

*A group of NHL players hit Capitol Hill (figuratively) to lobby for tigher rules for younger players.

*Political activism among athletes is not limited to NFL players during national anthems.

Scary, but not shocking.

What we may never know

One of the largely unspoken dimensions of our understanding of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in football players is that while we have a certain amount of understanding generated by currently diagnosed cases, we'll never truly know the whole story.

We will know when former players or their families choose to have their brains given for examination after their deaths. Given the ever-increasing awareness of the effects of football and the thousands of hits its players sustain over the course of their participation on the youth, high school, college and pro ball (for those who get that far), that number is fairly likely to increase. Even that won't necessarily be a complete picture, since most of those who choose to donate are those who experienced symptoms of brain decline during their lifetimes.

(Side note: you could possibly do science a great favor, as a former player, by submitting your brain for study especially if you do not experience such symptoms in your lifetime. Understanding why some are afflicted by CTE and some are not would be an important advance in understanding this trauma.)

However, even that picture won't necessarily reflect the whole story.

That Mike Webster's condition became known to the public has as much to do with the fluke of what Pittsburgh medical examiner was called in to examine the body when it arrived at the morgue. There's not any guarantee that a different examiner would have chosen to perform the more extensive examination that Dr. Bennet Omalu did on that occasion. If that had not been the case, who knows if anyone would have chosen to probe further into the deaths of Justin Strzelzczyk or Terry Long.

Before that awareness in the medical community, we will never know how many former players wer afflicted by the condition in the 1950s, '60s, '70s, or '80s, or even earlier. They might have gone down as simple cases of dementia, or something other like Alzheimer's, or simply unexplained illnesses.

Or unexplained suicides.

In researching on this subject, I came across the story of Jim Duncan. Duncan played briefly in the NFL in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with its pinnacle in the 1970 Super Bowl season of the Baltimore Colts, for whom he started as a defensive back in that championship game. He also featured as a kick returner that season.

The next year he began the season with the Colts as a starter. Injuries derailed his season, though, culminating in a head injury that November. Though no concussion was diagnosed, his season ws more or less off the rails at that point.

Perhaps more interestingly, both team and family members noticed changes in Duncan after the injury; team officials spoke of changes in his personality, while his mother recalled that Duncan began to experience memory loss.

Duncan's life went downhill quickly from there. He was traded the next season to the New Orleans Saints, but was waived by them, and after a failed tryout with the Miami Dolphins (then coached by his former Colts coach Don Shula), he was out of football. A side business went south, treatment for mental illness was required, and his marriage came apart. Finally, in October 1972, according to an official police report, Duncan committed suicide by entering a courthouse, grabbing a police officer's gun, and shooting himself.

The questionable circumstances of his death carry unpleasant resonances with modern headlines about young black men and shootings at the hands of police officers. The other circumstances of his last two years, though, sound awfully familiar to those who have followed the story of CTE:

Football? Check.

Head injury (whether diagnosed as concussion or not)? Check.

Memory loss? Check.

Personality changes? Check.

Business troubles? Check.

Insinuations of drug use/abuse? Check.

Suicide (possibly)? Check.

There will never be any way, at this point, to conclude or demonstrate that Jim Duncan suffered from CTE. His relatively young age, only 26, would not be a disqualifying factor, as the likes of Michael Keck and Tyler Sash demonstrate. But Duncan died forty-four years ago. Analysis or study isn't going to be possible. And there are enough questions about the circumstances of Duncan's death that should not be dismissed that CTE cannot be assumed. But it doesn't seem as though it can be ruled out either.

But we will never know.

And it's very hard to believe he's the only such case.

(Side note: normally I'd have put in a whole bumch of links on Jim Duncan, but most of them are in Google News and Google Books which don't always link well. Google "Jim Duncan suicide" to see reports in The Afro American, Jet, and other sources that discuss aspects of Duncan's life and death.)

Jim Duncan returning a kick in the AFC Championship game of the 1970 season (played Jan. 3, 1971), at the height of his brief career.

Shining a light

Media attention to the ongoing brain-trauma struggle in football has come from various sources. In terms of media presentations, the movie Concussion and the PBS Frontline documentary League of Denial (based on the book of the same name) are probably the most high-profile projects, although others have been produced on the subject. A number of books and articles have also been produced, although these are often more general treatments of the violence and physical toll of football.

A couple of new productions are making their way into the public consciousness this month. A documentary with the heart-tugging title Requiem for a Running Back appeared at the Carter Center in Atlanta a couple of weeks ago (see no. 5); in it the director Rebecca Carpenter chronicles the decline of her father Lew, a former back for the Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, and Cleveland Browns and also a coach in the NFL, in his later years. Unbeknownst to Carpenter, in those years her father was likely suffering the effects of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which was found in his brain after his death. (The Carter Center screening was arranged in part by an intern at the Center, by the name of Chris Borland; you might remember him...)

Carpenter's reflection on her father's life and decline contains some familiar elements from the stories of others; sudden mood swings, forgetfulness, becoming withdrawn and distant, and more. Lew Carpenter died at a relatively early phase of CTE research, though well after the early names like Mike Webster or Andre Waters. He became the 18th former NFL player to be diagnosed with CTE after his death in 2010 (keep in mind that number is pushing close to 100 now).

Rebecca Carpenter's experience is refreshingly informed by what might be called NFL privilege. As a result of her father's career, she was able to access an education and social status she would never have been able to access otherwise, and that such status allows her the privilege to make sure her son never gets near a football field "unless he's dating a cheerleader." It is a complicated situation, and at times her words carry the weight of survivor's guilt.

A different take on the subject of football airs tonight on something called truTV, a channel I know of only because it carries some early-round games in the NCAA basketball tournament. A comedic/informational show called "Adam Ruins Everything" promises to perform its title act on football in an episode airing tonight at 10:00 p.m.

Adam Conover is a stand-up comedian who developed the original version of the show for the website College Humor. Like the annoying friend who won't let you off the hook for believing those commonplace things that turn out to be untrue, Conniver takes a topic per show and takes down two or three myths associated with that subject. Tonight's subject is football, and Conover will sound the alarm about the health problems and myths associated with sports drinks as a principal means of hydration for young athletes; the degree to which the playoffs are thoroughly unsuited for determining the best player in the league; and ... the degree to which head injuries are far less avoidable than people think, it sounds like. (Oh, and the guy sources his information online.)

I don't know that you'll necessarily learn anything from Conover that you haven't already seen in this blog, but I have no doubt that Conover will have more eyeballs on his show tonight than this blog ever gets. So I won't complain if somebody else is out there banging the drum on how concussions are not the only culprit in football brain trauma.

So you have former players, and their family members, out there trying to make an impact; researchers like Dr. Ann McKee and Dr. Bennet Omalu; occasional journalists like Alan Schwartz of the New York Times; the Fainaru brothers, authors of League of Denial and occasoinal ESPN contributors, and a smattering of other journalists and authors.

From the precincts of the church, you get a few articles in Sojourners; a downloadable study from The Thoughtful Christian, which aims more generally at football than strictly brain trauma (and that seems to be the extent of my denomination's efforts in the area); a little bit of content from the Christian Century; and a few scattered efforts elsewhere. Not much, for a people whose ethic claims (often very loudly and rudely) to be about the preservation of life.

I don't know what will happen to Rebecca Carpenter's documentary; maybe it will get to HBO (although as invested in football as they are, probably not) or some other distribution. And a few people will see "Adam Ruins Everything" tonight as well.

That's something, I guess.

Airing in a little less than an hour...

Maybe it *is* a religion...

This one was too much to pass up...

You may have noticed in different news outlets (or on my social media feeds if you follow those) an amusing-looking story about a course offering at Presbyterian College, a small (yes, Presbyterian) school in a small South Carolina town, on a timely subject: The Religion of SEC Football.

It's an elective course, team-taught by professors in history and English who both identify as intense fans of schools in the Southeastern Conference. The course description is fairly descriptive:

Woo Pig Sooie!? Roll Tide!? Go Cocks!? What is it about college football that turns otherwise sane people into raving lunatics? Why is it that each fall millions of people schedule their lives around SEC football, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for RV’s and tailgating for days prior to a game? Why do fans often hate another school — such as the ‘Bama fan who poisoned 130-year old trees at Auburn? This class will attempt to answer these sorts of questions by exploring the ‘religion’ of Southeastern Conference football and how each of us fit into that faith.

Sounds like fun, I guess.

In truth, the course is not new. It was first offered back in 2003, and has been offered "periodically" ever since. For whatever reason, this was the year that nationwide publicity came upon the class. It's a fairly interesting coincidence of timing, as Presbyterian's football team is making its biannual pilgrimage to serve as a sacrificial lamb for an SEC school, in this case the University of Florida, later this season. (Tickets are available.)

Of course, PC (as it's sometimes called) has a bit of experience as a sacrificial lamb. The school's athletic programs moved into NCAA Division I in 2007. The football team plays in the Football Championship Subdivision (what used to be called I-AA), in the Big South conference, but like many schools on that level it sells itself out to big-time programs as, in essence, cannon fodder. The gain in such a sacrifice, of course, is a paycheck, one that provides a substantial chunk of the athletic budget for a school of PC's size. (Please divest yourself of any fantasy you might hold about athletic revenue having any beneficial impact on the school's academic programs. Boosters essentially have to be bribed into supporting anything academic.)

I can only wonder what the benefit is beyond the paycheck. Partly as a result of their paycheck pursuits (they also travel to play Central Michigan of the Mid-American Conference), PC only has four home football games this year. If the point of such a move in the athletic department has anything to do with the enhancement of campus life, four home games seems a pretty meager return. For what it's worth, the Blue Hose (yep, that's the nickname) basketball program has known some bumps along the way in its Division I journey (with no subdivision to cover itself in that sport) but at least they got to play half their regular-season games at home last season.

In short, it might be worth some professor's time to develop a course on PC's own athletic journey and what, if any, benefit it has brought to the university as a whole. But for now, back to the class subject at hand, the "religion" of SEC football.

You might be expecting this blog to jump in feet-first. And yes, this blog would normally not pass up a chance to do so. But honestly, I can't quite get that excited by it.

Yes, there's a ton of excess in SEC fanship. The anecdotes related in the larger article above are all sufficient evidence of that -- the parents who blew off their daughter's wedding because it conflicted with a 'Bama game, the 'Bama guy who poisoned the Auburn trees, the PC professor who floated to his wife the idea of naming their child Zorback (as in Ra-Zorback) (I'm guessing he was at least joking somewhat, but it really did happen to someone...). It's comical, or it would be if it weren't so sad.

But such idolatry (and that's what is, well beyond mere "zealotry" as called in one of the articles) is hardly restricted to the SEC, is it?

The conference has its own network, sure, but in this they followed the lead of the Big Ten Eleven Fourteen Whatever.

Despite the antics of certain church-attendance-enforcing head coaches/violators of the Constitution, the SEC doesn't actually engage in the direct mixing of their athletic programs with religious missions (looking at you, Notre Dame, BYU; please sit down, Baylor).

Is the SEC egregiously bad about worshiping its teams, or even its own conference reputation? Yes. But you don't have to be in the SEC to have a cultish following.

Are they that much worse than, say, the Big Whatever, the Other Big Twelve Ten Whatever, the ACC, or the Pac-10 Whatever? I don't know that they are. And does it even compare to the idolatry of the NFL, the league which (as one of the better lines from Concussion puts it) now owns the day of the week that used to belong to the church?

And that probably isn't the worst part. The worst part, beyond the idolatry of any individual team or conference, is the inherent, but much less questioned, idolatry of the sport itself -- an idolatry that, as regular readers of this blog will guess I believe, claims its own physical sacrifices regularly.

When somebody develops an academic course that tackles that particular worship, then I'll pay more attention.

Circle Nov. 19 on your calendar...

Waiting on Science our Savior: How cells die from concussions

As has been insisted before on this blog, long and loud, the damage done to football players' brains -- what we call chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE -- is not -- I repeat, not -- strictly a matter of repeated concussions. Concussions still matter, though, and new research that hit print a couple of weeks ago offers a fairly chilling assessment of just how concussions do their dark anti-magic on the brain.

The research appeared in the journal Scientific Reports on August 2. It contains at least two striking and somewhat worrying findings in relation to the kinds of brain blows football players and other athletes receive, findings that can be informally correlated to the experiences of some such athletes with concussions.

Finding 1, demonstrated with a nifty time-lapse video in the CNN report linked above, suggests that how the individual cells that are damaged by concussive blows might be different than one might expect. As shown in the video, the damaged cell doesn't necessarily show a lot of damage on the outside, for as much as six hours. From that point forward, though, the damage becomes clearer, and as soon as another six hours the cell is dead.

What this seems to indicate, chillingly, is that the damage doesn't show up at first because it happening within the cell, an internal chemical process that only begins to show up in external observation once the affected neuron is mostly deteriorated inside. As a result, once the damage begins to show up on the cell's exterior, it's probably too late for that cell; the damage is irreparable.

I should hope it doesn't require explanation to consider this happening to multiple cells, neuron upon neuron, in the course of one concussion, a horrifying thought. So much brain damage -- what else is there to call it? -- in one moment.

It also makes some intuitive sense when one considers how many concussions reported among NFL players weren't immediately detected or the degree to which concussion symptoms don't always show up immediately. If the deterioration of a single cell can take up to twelve hours, it "sounds right" that it might take that long (or sometimes longer?) for a victim of a concussion to feel its effects.

On the flip side of that chilling thought, comes a thought about chilling. This bit of information offers some hope for researchers, who hope to build upon previous research suggesting a kind of hypothermia -- a "brain freeze," or at least a brain cooling, if you will -- may offer hope for heading off the damage before it becomes irreversible. Those studies aren't conclusive yet, though more are on the way. The researcher presenting the current research, Christian Frank of Brown University, is working with the concept of an inhaler-type device that would deliver a shot of cold air through the blood vessels to the brain and arrest the deterioration at the cellular level.

So in the future, if your favorite quarterback or safety comes off the field looking concussed, you might just see the medical staff hitting him with what looks like an asthma inhaler, but the medic might just be applying a brain freeze.

But back to the downsides. The research also suggested more strongly than before that there might be more than one type of brain injury going on in cells when concussive blows are received. Beyond the obvious blows (leaving the signs you might have seen if you saw the movie Concussion), researchers also found a second, less obvious type of damage, in which cells essentially "pull back" their connections from the surrounding neural networks and, in essence, quit.

This isn't a kind of injury that shows up readily in any kind of examination, pre- or post-mortem. So in other words, all those horrible stories of brains that were examined by the likes of Dr. Bennet Omalu or Dr. Ann McKee, reported to be so grisly and horrible ... might just have been understated.

At the risk of overusing a word, there is something particularly chilling in seeing such neuron deterioration playing out. Then doing the math; how many cells affected by a given blow? how many such blows a game? do all the blows really have to be concussion force to affect some of this kind of damage?, and the heart sinks, or hopefully it does, if you have one.

Concussions happen outside the NFL, of course. One might see the military, in the age of roadside bombs, standing to gain greatly from such research as this and any possible treatments that derive from it. Depending on the level of your pacifism one might see such injuries among soldiers as sad but inevitable or just sad and criminal, but at minimum one would hope no one would begrudge any such affected veteran whatever hope this research might produce.

One hopefully would not begrudge such hope to football players or other athletes, either, but to concede that point should not forestall the question of whether we have any business indulging in the behavior that produces such damage. Does our need for entertainment or our thirst for cathartic violence really justify this?

Concussions happen in other sports besides football, of course. So far, though (aside from certain elements in the NHL), no other sport seems inclined to treat such damage as necessary and inevitable.  Other sports don't talk about the violence that produces these injuries as intrinsic or necessary to the game, or have fans who make asinine sexist remarks about putting skirts on the players when any mitigation of such blows is suggested.

So even as a study like this one offers some beacon of hope, it points ever more deeply to the troubling and powerfully problematic nature of the whole enterprise, one that has been going on for decades. No person should feel even the tiniest compunction against deciding that she or he can't or won't watch it happen anymore.

Watch a neuron die. Now imagine a whole bunch at one blow. 

(As seen in Scientific Reports)

Theological starting points: Imago and Incarnation

Last week's post opened up a small number of ethical wonderings about the viability of football as an entertainment in the age of CTE, one of which was penned by Benjamin Dueholm in The Christian Century back in 2012. Dueholm, in contrast to the other noted pieces, did approach his wonderings from an explicitly religious, and specifically Christian, point of view.

To speak of these questions from such a point of view is eventually going to require some theology.

I'd like to throw out two possible theological starting places for such inquiry: the Imago Dei and the Incarnation.

The former has a clear enough biblical citation available, if you're going to start from scripture. You can find it, in fact, in the very first chapter of the first book of said scripture. Genesis 1:27:

So God created humankind in his image,
   in the image of God he created them;
   male and female he created them. 

Fairly simple, yes? Humans, male and female, were created in the image of God, or Imago Dei if you're into fancy Latin terminology.

If this basic theological ideal were really taken seriously, there are an awful lot of things we do to bodies that would be severely questionable, not just football and its awful potential for damaging brains.

However, it's football that we're talking about here. And football, in anywhere from one-quarter to one-third to maybe even forty percent of cases, does damage to the human brain -- one of the most remarkable and intricate components of that image-of-God-created body -- that cannot be repaired, and cannot be explained away by other sources.  Given the degree to which there are so many ways in which that human body can be damaged or broken -- combat, accident, disease, and so many more -- there is simply not a moral means to justify more damage and brokenness for entertainment purposes. It is an ethically untenable position. Do you really want to be in the position of justifying the eventual irreparable damage of seven out of twenty-two players on the field at any given time for your entertainment?

There is also a second theological prong noted above: the human body was not only created as a locus of the Imago Dei, but also was the locus of the Incarnation.

Now the word itself is not necessarily traceable to a particular Bible verse the way Imago Dei is, but the concept is embedded in one of the most basic tenets of Christianity for most (albeit not all) of its history. Incarnation at its simplest refers to God taking on humanness -- not merely "human form" as it is sometimes phrased, but real humanity -- in the redemptive person of Jesus.

Because this was the subject of intense debate in the early formative centuries of the church, one of the places where one finds the word and the concept of incarnation is in the early creeds of the church. Dating (in its final form) from 381, the Nicene Creed is perhaps most explicit about its view of incarnation, in speaking of Jesus:

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
and became truly human.

Point blank. After making sure you understand that Jesus is "God from God...true God from true God," the statement turns around and also makes sure you understand that Jesus also "became truly human." Paradox, mystery, whatever you choose to call it, the Incarnation was embedded into church thought even if it was more easily stated than explained.

Later confessions might address the subject more obliquely, but it does receive treatment and description. The Heidelberg Catechism of 1562 frames the point succinctly...

Q. 18. Who is this mediator who is at the same time true God and
a true and perfectly righteous man?
A. Our Lord Jesus Christ, who is freely given to us for complete redemption
and righteousness.

...as does the twentieth-century A Brief Statement of Faith from my own Presbyterian Church (USA) Book of Confessions:

We trust in Jesus Christ, fully human, fully God.

In other words, we're talking pretty basic doctrine here, mainline folk.

So in short, the human being was the means by which God chose to enter the world in the person of Jesus. God didn't just put on a flesh suit, or merely take on human appearance or likeness. God became human. Whatever ways Jesus may not be like us human types, there is this one inexplicable point of contact -- being human. That our humanity was not so low that God the Son would yet enter into that humanity is one of the great mysteries of faith.

Now God in human form, i.e. Jesus, did take some pretty severe physical torture. Crucifixion as the Romans practiced it was meant to be painful, by doing horrible things to the human body. Being followers of the one (or the One) who endured such brokenness and destruction in his human body should, if nothing else, give us tremendous pause in participating in anything that visits more brokenness and destruction on the bodiliness we have in common with God Incarnate, i.e. Jesus. And again, participating (by the spending of our dollars, by the devotion of our time and emotional attachment) in such breaking and destroying for the mere sake of being entertained ... it becomes extremely difficult to justify.

That's a starting point. By no means are the only possible theological concerns to be raised in this discussion, but they are two possible points that speak directly to the bodily destruction that is seemingly inextricable from the game. And to the degree that the violence that leads to the brokenness and destruction is inseparable from the game's appeal, as many of its adherents will tell you quite vigorously, then it seems we have an unresolvable problem.

He, too, is created in the image of God.

And he, too, is created in the image of God.

Is anybody even raising questions out there?

In case there was any doubt, I'm really not the only person out there trying to raise questions about the ethics of watching football. And if anything, I'm a little late to the game.

Note: some of these various sources may have been referenced in previous blog entries. That's o.k.

One of the earlier and more big-splash entries in questioning football was this piece in The New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell, all the way back in 2009. For the most part the article does not engage in ethical argument; much of its energy is in documentation, recording the experiences of ex-NFL player Kyle Turley; early efforts by Dr. Ann McKee and Dr. Bennet Omalu, two of the principal researchers who detected chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in the brains of deceased football players; and the research efforts of Kevin Guskiewicz at the University of North Carolina, seeking to quantify and document the force of the blows football players take. However, when Gladwell begins to wonder if football is any different in a moral sense than dogfighting (the Michael Vick case was recent at the time), that's ethical judgment even in the mere raising of the question. Gladwell's conclusion -- that nothing will change as long as people continue to follow the game with their dollars -- is not new to regular readers of this blog.

With time, other ethical ponderings began to surface, sometimes in out-of-the-way places. An author by the name of Nathan Bransford wondered out loud if watching football was an ethically viable activity anymore. Citing Gladwell's essay, Bransford also notes several player suicides (Dave Duerson and Junior Seau among them) as well as the vicious injury and eventual death of Washington Huskies safety Curtis Williams in 2000 (which Bransford witnessed live); Williams lingered, paralyzed, for a year and a half after his injury. Bransford keeps his ethical query simple:

"But should we really be supporting a system that incentivizes people to destroy their brains for our pleasure?"

Indeed.

As far as I can tell, Bransford has not returned to the subject.

The blog of the Kenan Institute for Ethics posted in 2013 a starkly titled entry, "A Fan's Moral Imperative: Is Watching Football Ethical?" About a year later, the journal Commonweal put forth a similarly themed entry by its digital editor Dominic Preziosi, "What are the ethics of watching football?" Both entries are more devoted to question-asking than actual ethical argument (that's not a criticism, by the way; this was more than most corners of the ethical sphere were doing at this point). Both clearly seem to be written by authors who really didn't even want to be asking questions at that point, much less even hinting at possible answers that might damage their football-watching habits. Prizes at least performs the valuable service of asking a pertinent question and making a pertinent point:

But are there criteria for such a decision? ... but it does seem as if we're at the place where someone might need to, if people are in fact serious about challenging the role hundreds of millions [of] nonparticipants play in putting the long-term health of thousands at such great and provable risk. 

I challenge Preziosi's description of spectators as "nonparticipants" -- simply not being on the field does not equal participation in the sport, and in fact I will argue that it is precisely that "participation" of these "nonparticipants" that perpetuates the irrevocable and unavoidable damage of the game as it currently exists. Nonetheless, that is a prescient point; it's time for some criteria. While there are discussion of sport ethics on a more general plane, they aren't always good at getting down to this particular nitty-gritty question.

HuffPost Religion actually took enough of an interest in the subject to wonder if watching football was actually a sin. At least, it took enough interest to put together a podcast on the subject.

Probably after Gladwell, Ta-Neishi Coates would be the most famous non-sports person to weigh in on the subject (Charles Peirce writes plentifully about sports so he doesn't count, and Coates is probably more famous that Peirce anyway.) The death of Junior Seau was the deal-breaker for Coates; as he put it at the end of this piece in The Atlantic, "I'm out." Coates also makes the distinction between seeking to have the sport banned (a non-starter) and refusing to watch (easily doable). You will note that this blog hews to the latter position.

You will note that these entries so far take no particular religious position; some of the authors are explicitly not religious persons and others simply do not make any kind of religous argument part of their own argument or claim. Benjamin Dueholm provides an exception. Writing for the Christian Century in 2012, Dueholm begins the process of asking explicitly Christian moral questions about the game and the fascination with it, even -- or especially -- among Christians as its destructive capacity became clearer and clearer. Not surprisingly Dueholm turns to the ancients and their critique of gladiatorial spectacle in his own reflection. His conclusions are must-read;

Christians, too, need pastimes and diversions. The question is which ones honor the image of God and the call to justice and equity. 

Aye, there's the rub. "Created in the image of God," if we take it seriously, is a theological proposition that cannot help but call into question any activity that mars said image beyond repair or healing. That is one theological point of contact for Christian ethical discussion on football and its damage.

There are more yet to come.

It hasn't always been easy to find, but ethical wondering is out there...