Last year, my family got together to celebrate my Uncle Johnny’s 80th birthday. This is a photo of him, on the left, with one of his old high school football teammates:
Seeing an old fellow leatherhead led Uncle Johnny to tell us a few gridiron war stories. Most notable among them was one story about an opposing lineman who was one of the biggest, meanest kids in the area — and Uncle Johnny had to line up against him. It was pouring down the rain that day, and when they got down in their three-point stance, my uncle looked up and saw this ferocious beast of a man staring him down, breathing angrily, and looking determined to maul him and the quarterback.
So my uncle met his gaze and quietly grabbed a chunk of muddy turf in his hands. When the ball was snapped, he shoved that mud right into that big kid’s face. And he kept right on doing it until that kid couldn’t see straight anymore.
Uncle Johnny and I chatted a bit about the NFL. He lives in Tampa, and he’s as frustrated with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as everyone else down there is. I told him about how the Glazers bought Manchester United with nothing but debt, found themselves in a bad spot when the economic downturn hit and probably diverted resources from the Bucs to avoid getting their debts called in. The next day at breakfast, we chatted about football again, and he repeated what I told him about the Glazers as if I hadn’t said anything about it the day before. I let him talk. It was good just to talk to him, and he deserved at least that much respect. Besides, he’s 80. Finding someone at that age who hasn’t had a mental slip or two is challenging.
The scary thought, however, is that my Uncle Johnny’s brain at 80 is probably still in far better shape than Chris Henry’s was at 26.
Whenever people talked or wrote about the long-term brain injuries of football players, the focus was always on the linemen — players who took the most hits and suffered the most physical abuse. Former Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster struggled mightily with brain trauma before his death eight years ago. A coroner named Bennet Omalu got permission to study Webster’s brain and found large accumulations of proteins clogging his brain cells. Omalu called it Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE. His crusade to get NFL officials to recognize his work was chronicled in this must-read GQ story.
Webster’s brain was just the first one Omalu and his colleague Julian Bailes studied. They looked at the brain of Philadelphia Eagles safety Andre Waters, who committed suicide in 2006, and found CTE. They looked at the brain of Steelers lineman Justin Strzelczyk and again found CTE. For the most part, though, these were the guys in the trenches, guys willingly suffering repeated violent collisions for the glory we showered upon them. Many of them probably knew going in that they were trading years of their lives for that glory. It was their trade to make, so we let them, because we loved to watch.
Then it came out this week that Chris Henry, a wide receiver who played only two seasons of college football and a grand total of 47 games in the NFL, also suffered from CTE.
Chris Henry didn’t play in the trenches. He had a history of bad decision-making before he died, yes, but he had no known history of concussions. Receivers in general don’t suffer the sort of abuse that linemen and linebackers subject themselves to regularly — at least, we didn’t think they did. Yet there’s the scientific proof that Henry had the exact same brain trauma that Mike Webster and Andre Waters had.
That begs the question — if football caused Chris Henry to suffer from CTE, just how many other football players have this condition? What about all the kids playing this game on the high school and college level? Hell, what about the kids in the pee-wee leagues? Is it possible that the gridiron game damages the brains of everyone who plays it?
It’s kind of question that makes even a lifelong football fan such as myself step back and think, “My God, what have we done?”
Football, in all its forms, is an evolutionary thing. Rules change. New tactics and strategies develop over time. The game that my Uncle Johnny played back in the 1940s is miles away from the game everyone plays today. These brain studies, however, suggest that American football has evolved into something very ugly, and as Omalu learned when NFL doctors initially rejected his report about Webster, getting the powers that be to change their ways, especially when billions of dollars are on the line, is never easy — especially when one of the biggest selling points of football is this:
This is what we, as fans, pay to see. We want to see the gladiators do battle. The NFL gives them to us. So do countless high schools and colleges. Never mind that the gladiators will all suffer from debilitating injuries that can eventually wreck their lives and the lives of everyone around them. These men choose to play football, and they willingly take everything that goes with it, good and bad. And we cheer them for it.
Chris Henry’s brain changes all that. If Chris Henry had CTE, then it’s possible that everyone who plays American football will develop CTE — and not just NFL players. The more people start to consider that information, the more parents will start asking, ”Should my son even be playing this game?” Sure, the powers that be will invest in new helmets and make new rules to soften the blows and ease people’s fears, but ultimately, those are cosmetic changes. American football players only know one way to play football.
American football, however, is not the only football in America.
Last week, when Landon Donovan scored the game-winning goal for the USA against Algeria, it felt like one of those pivotal moments in American sports history. It was as if people in this country all started to realize that, yes, the Association game is a great game, too, and we should watch it. Just one day after the USA-Ghana game smashed TV ratings records in this country, 18,755 people went to see the Philadelphia Union’s first game in its new stadium. You can sense the shift happening, even if it continues to move at a snail’s pace.
I wonder now if this revelation about Chris Henry might end up shifting things just as much. I wonder if the parents of the next Randy Moss will look at these CTE studies and start thinking, “You know what? Maybe we should look into this other football instead. Maybe there’s an opportunity here. Maybe we should direct him this way…”
That’s a simplistic notion, of course. As Juergen Klinsmann will be the first to tell you, U.S. Soccer still has yet to develop the resources necessary to attract inner city kids to that game. Still, these CTE studies seem certain to lead some talented young athletes from poorer backgrounds away from the gridiron game. Those kids will be looking for an outlet. They can’t all play basketball, and they’re not so interested in baseball. Why not soccer?
Perhaps 20 years from now, we’ll look back on this summer as the real turning point in the history of football in America — and not just because the USA gave us a couple of magic moments in South Africa. Landon Donovan and Tim Howard brought the fans to the game, but it might be Chris Henry who ultimately brings the players to the game. Perhaps in death, Henry will have a far greater impact on football in America than he did in life. Wouldn’t that be something?
