Hunter O. Lyle—Sports Editor
Football is doomed. After living fruitfully and glamorously for nearly a century, the sport of American football has found itself in a predicament, lying on the operation table while the surgeons look for organs to harvest. Don’t start with the brain.
This was made clear to me as I watched one of the many morning sports shows discuss the ending of a program in a Southern state. If a football program in the bayous, where football goes hand-in-hand with God himself, can close, I fear the end is near.
Each year there are more and more reports of long-term injuries relating to football, especially head injuries like concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
This was made especially clear with the death of former Patriots tight-end Aaron Hernandez, who took his life in prison after his team won the Super Bowl. He allowed for his brain to be studied after his death, and the results were alarming.
Besides from the obvious damage, that being the inside of his brain looked like a rotted pumpkin, doctors noted that he suffered from heavy CTE. In fact, according to a Washington Post article written in 2017, Hernandez suffered “the most severe case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy ever discovered in a person his age.”
Recent years have proved that there is a mounting wave of opposition against football. Between insurance companies, parents, players and the evidence from brain scans, programs are being pressed to answer for these injuries, and the NFL is of no exception.
With middle schools and high schools most likely being the first on the long list of the chopping block, then goes the college programs, which feed the NFL. With these supply lines of players drying out, soon the professional level of football will be faced with the hard question: Who will play? How will we survive?
Maybe not in five years. Optimistically thinking, maybe not even in ten years, soon however, the stainless pillars of football will come crashing back down to Canton, Ohio. Southern will most likely not be immune to this either. In time, I bet even the athletic department at Southern will be wondering what to do with Jess Dow Field.
