This is normally the space where I write about soccer, but all I can think about right now is football. Although he never played for Dallas, you’d be hard pressed to find any fans of the Cowboys (or any other NFL team) that didn’t have the utmost respect for Junior Seau. Be it the intensity with which he played on the field, the way he carried himself as a gentleman off of it, or his oh-so-perfect for a linebacker surname, he was an easy guy for all football fans to like. But unfortunately, this was not an isolated incident and the untimely death of a former football star has become rather familiar news for NFL fans. Fifteen or twenty years from now, I fear this will be the moment that everyone points back to when discussing how and why the National Football League waned in importance on the American sports landscape.
Hard-hitting, intimidating defensive play is slowly but surely being legislated out of the game. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell would have the media and fans believe that these rule changes are all about protecting the players. But in reality, these changes are about protecting the league itself. Because the biggest threat to the continued popularity and cultural dominance of the National football League is without question head injuries and the long-term impact they have on the lives of former players.
The NFL clearly sees the writing on the wall when it comes to player safety and they have for quite some time. The league has progressively made rule changes that are designed to reduce or completely remove the kinds of hits from the game that often lead to injury. If you go back to 1980, there have been close to 60 rule changes specifically to protect players from certain hits or plays that often lead to injury. Many of these, such as banning chop blocks, hitting with the crown of the helmet, blocking below the waist on possession changes, horse collar tackles, hitting defenseless players, or allowing the quarterback to throw the ball away when out of the pocket, have all fundamentally changed the way the game is played. They have collectively made today’s NFL a far more offensive-minded league where the passing game in particular has seemingly every advantage. And it can certainly be argued that some rule changes (like low hits on QBs or spearing receivers) are good for the fans and players alike because they help keep star players on the field by protecting them from devastating injuries. But former players don’t kill themselves because they once tore an ACL or had their ribs cracked.
Last year, 50-year-old Dave Duerson committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest. The former Bears safety left a suicide note saying that he shot himself in the chest to preserve his brain for further study. Junior Seau also shot himself in the chest, and while a suicide note has not yet been found, the copycat similarity simply cannot be ignored. What also cannot be ignored is the fact that there are now eight members of San Diego’s 1994 Super Bowl team that have died, and all of them were under the age of 45. While many would point out that there were freak accidents or other health hazards like obesity that contributed to some of these ’94 Chargers’ deaths, they are far from being the only example of former NFL players dying at an early age.
An oft-quoted 2006 story in the St. Petersburg Times found that average life expectancy for NFL lineman was 52 years old (due in large part to obesity). This fan tribute video shows fifteen players that have died (of various different causes) since 2000. Each death happened during or shortly after their playing careers. Steve McNair at 39 was by far the oldest.
This list shows every former NFL player that died in 2011. The average lifespan was 73.6 years, which is only a couple of years lower than the average life expectancy of U.S. males in 2011 of 75.68. But thirty-three (or one-fourth) of the players did not make it to age 65. And of the eighty-two that lived to seventy or older, forty-three (over half) of them played less than four seasons in the NFL. The league’s schedule expanded from twelve to fourteen games in 1961 and from fourteen to the current sixteen games in 1978, which means that every player that died aged 57 or older in 2011 played fewer games (and thus had far fewer collisions) than those whose careers started in 1978 or later. Conversely, of the thirty-three who died before age 65, twenty-one of them (almost two-thirds) played four or more seasons. This is a small, unscientific sample and I’m no statistics expert, but there seems to be a correlation between the number of games played and life expectancy.
Combine the early deaths with the well-documented cognitive issues (including early-onset Alzheimer’s and dementia) that former NFL players face at a far higher rate than society as a whole and the league clearly has a problem. There are now over one-hundred former players suing the league for not protecting them from concussions. There are even more parents across the country who are questioning whether they will allow their children to play football. Parents such as former NFL star Kurt Warner. Players themselves have access to much more information about the potential debilitating effects of playing football today than what was available even ten years ago. It’s not difficult to foresee more and more young multi-sport athletes choosing baseball, basketball, soccer, etc., over football because they decide that the risk of spending half their life crippled or worse, an early death, is not worth the reward of (on average) four seasons of glory and big paychecks.
It is more than a little bit ironic that Junior Seau’s death dominated the news on the same day that the harsh individual suspensions were handed out to current and former New Orleans Saints players in the bounty scandal. The NFL and Roger Goodell came down hard on the players, with Jonathan Vilma in particular receiving a far longer suspension than most pundits predicted. The league is doing everything they can to show (the courts) that they care about player safety. But the more they change rules or dole out punishments in an effort to protect players, the more they will change very fabric of the game. It’s a catch-22 for the league; fans generally seem to hate all of the restrictive rules put on defenders that are designed with player safety in mind, but the league cannot continue to sit back and absorb the legal and social pressure that comes with still young former players dying or suffering from diseases associated with far older people. The more players are protected, the less physical football will become. Without the physical element, football will lose the gladiatorial aspect that has always set it apart from every other team sport. The NFL’s popularity was built on the crushing hits delivered by men like Junior Seau, but the league can no longer ignore the ugly truth of what the accumulation of these hits does to these same men later in life. It is difficult to see how the NFL will rectify this conundrum.
The NFL is currently the most popular league in America based on average attendance, TV ratings, media attention, franchise values, merchandise sales, etc. For the past few decades, it would have been fairly asinine for someone to suggest that the NFL’s well-maintained grip on their lofty stature could ever be loosened. But not so long ago, it would have been absolutely inconceivable for baseball to be anything but the most popular sport in this country. It dominated media and the American sports fan’s attention in and out of season just as today’s NFL does. Over time, a number of factors (strikes, steroids, over-expansion, etc.) combined to diminish baseball’s standing in American sports. The NFL may be irrevocably on the same path.
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