'I have no clue how these head injuries will go after the game.'

Kam Chancellor 

I've watched football on fall weekends for a good chunk of my sentient life, but it's harder and harder to ignore that the game is extracting a horrific human cost:

On Sunday, Seattle Seahawks safety Kam Chancellor announced via Twitter that he was stepping away from football, citing his unhealed neck injury from the 2017 season that would cause him to risk paralysis if he returned to the field.

The neck injury piece isn't the most worrisome part. Chancellor closes his Instagram post to fans with this:

P.S. Pray for your boy. I have no clue how these head injuries will go after the game. What I do know is that my God is stronger. Peace and Love ❤️

He is referring to chronic traumatic encephalopathy. CTE -- essentially dementia caused by repeated head hits -- is the most-discussed football-related head injury, though experts also mention some other disorders. It can't be diagnosed while a person is alive because it requires an autopsy. However, reasonable inferences can be made from the symptoms. To my knowledge, Chancellor hasn't publicly stated that anything is amiss with his mental state. However, he surely is aware several former pros like Junior Seau or Dave Duerson suffered from depression, memory loss, and erratic behavior, then committed suicide (by gunshots to the chest so their brains could be examined). And, not surprisingly, they were diagnosed with CTE.

***


Davis Wade Stadium at MSU on gameday

Watching football is something that's been a part of my life since I went to high school football games in starting in middle school. (I didn't play, as the sport isn't ideal for those who are both slow and skinny.) Mississippi doesn't get the publicity that Texas does, but high school football is just as interwoven into the culture. 

When I was in college, State football games were the biggest events on campus. Until I shuffle off this mortal coil, I will get a little emotional the first time I hear the Famous Maroon Band play the MSU fight song on a Saturday. Now living in Nashville, I've been to a dozen or so Titans games and enjoyed them, $10 Bud Lights aside. Like most 36-year-old dads, I watch a bunch of games on TV, too (in between naps).

For a while, I've rationalized it by telling myself that professional football players are adults who make a risky choice in exchange for making large sums of cash. I don't fault anyone for wanting better for themselves and their families and using their God-given talents to do so. Life-changing amounts of money are at stake. Also, there's no shortage of people willing to play football for a living. At this juncture, too, pros understand what could be a result of their career. 

Knowledge messes with entertainment, though. Knowing that players are choosing short-term gains at a terrible long-term cost to their family makes things like Cleveland Browns games seem even more meaningless than they already were.


Browns fans celebrate their latest 0-16 season

Others seem to be as ambivalent as I. NFL ratings, while still the highest among all TV shows, were down 10 percent this past year. The decline was caused by a variety of factors, to be sure. I'm sure, though, the steady drumbeat of CTE-related news played a part.

There's a precedent for the change in public taste. Boxing was the most popular sport in the country for most of the early-to-middle 20th century. The brutality eventually drove away much of the audience (not in the least because people were literally getting killed in the ring). Obviously, boxing is still around and, for some, is highly lucrative. But it's just not the juggernaut it was several decades ago. 

Football will remain popular, I'm sure. But if I were a billionaire and looking for a vanity purchase, I'd buy a soccer team.

Topic for another day -- Buying a sports team as a vanity purchase. (The world could use fewer Dan Snyders.) If the Green Bay Packers can be a public trust, so can the rest of the teams.