If you want me to feel sorry for players like Webster and Seau, it ain't gonna work. ALL NFL players know the risks and the potential of severe injury, head trauma and even paralyzation. But they play anyway, weather its for the money or just because they love football. For whatever reason, they choose to do it knowing the risks. The league minimum wage is several hundred thousand dollars and some get paid more that a million dollars a game. They can all afford top notch health insurance on top of what the NFL gives them.
Not a chance I feel sorry for any of them if they get hurt. just MHO.
Not to quibble... but...
Mike Webster... literally pulled the teeth...out. of. his. head... and then super glued them back in.
No, brother, just no. Just, no. NO, these guys did NOT think they were going to break their BRAINS.
Bodies? sure. But no one and I do mean no one thought that football players even COULD become "punch drunk" like fighters.
Now that we know about CTE and people are going back through ex-player's histories, we're seeing LOTS of stuff that isn't so flattering.
I have a little insight to this because I have daily migraines as a result of being in the Navy. I've had 1 migraine that lasted 12 weeks and left me hallucinating. I couldn't and wouldn't go to the doctor because I'd get a psych admit and end up on the no-fly list. I've had a migraine so bad that I wanted to slam my face against my steel desk...HARD... and the only reason I didn't was that I couldn't figure out how far to push out my chair so that when I slammed my face into the desk, I wouldn't break my nose. Thankfully, I thought better of it and gave up.
Point being is that I know plenty of guys that would trade a broken body for even a CHANCE at playing in the pros.
You let a guy see the effects of neurological trauma... and it's different.
This is why younger guys are retiring. You can do DDP yoga and help restore broken bodies. There are nutritional supplements out there that are actually pharmaceutical grade now (no more expensive pee with no results).
What you can't do (outside of maybe CBD therapies) is fix the brain. Moreover, ALL of the therapies available to players now...NONE of them help the brain. Worse, analgesics and opiates in masking pain actually create problems and opiates create a host of problems.
If a guy wanted to complain about anything else up to and including breaking his neck... as tragic as that would be... I would have tons of compassion for him AND I would say that as unfortunate as that is, it's a chance players take. I think I can "feel sorry" for a player sustaining a difficult injury while still maintaining that the injury was part of the game.
But no. Even in 2006 (it feels so distant, I thought it was the 1990s) with those Jacked Up segments, the league was still selling the violence and denying ANY link to ANY neurological trauma.
So, no...just no. NO player could possibly have made an informed decision since there literally was NO information linking football to neurological trauma beyond anecdotal.
And it wasn't until Mike Webster's death that we all got PROOF (not only of CTE, but that Tagliabue was a coward and that Goodell was a low life, corporate scumbag).
We're all entitled to feel how we feel, but facts are facts and the facts are that the players did NOT possess the facts to make fully informed decisions about playing INCLUDING THE RISK OF NEUROLOGICAL TRAUMA until 2010, iirc, even though they knew in 2006...while those Jacked Up shows were being aired...
On principle that matters to me. I don't think it's possible to hold someone responsible for making a decision if you withhold all the pertinent information required to make the decision. And when we see some players AFTER all the information is available actually act on it and decide to retire after only 1 year or after college and forgo playing in the Pros altogether, then that shows that the withholding made a difference.
That and so many former players won't let their kids play...ESPECIALLY based on what they've learned about CTE.
sorry... it's a thing for me.
Be well all and have a Happy Super Bowl.
