Commercial Sports Cause Major Life-Long Injuries
Because of the pressures to win, to break records, and to fulfill multi-million dollar contracts, athletes are motivated to shake off injuries and even to play while hurt seriously, despite prudent medical advice. (Sadly, team physicians often compromise their Hippocratic Oaths by sending players too injured to play back into tight games; admittedly, if they acted otherwise, team owners would surely fire them and hire more compliant physicians.)
Any person who has worked in health care has likely witnessed in their treatment rooms prematurely aged patients-usually former NFL players-crippled by arthritic joint degeneration at an early age of 35-40 from the constant and excessive force characteristic of professional contact sports.
Neurologists also see many examples of brain dysfunction (remember the glorious Muhammed Ali at the peak of his career-before his brain damage became manifest?) in retired professional athletes. Now, a recent study confirms that chronic brain injury from concussions is even worse than anecdotal evidence had previously suggested:
"What's been surprising is that it's so extensive," said Dr. Ann McKee, a neuropathologist at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Bedford, Massachusetts, and co-director of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy (CSTE). "It's throughout the brain, not just on the superficial aspects of the brain, but it's deep inside."
CSTE studies reveal brown tangles flecked throughout the brain tissue of former NFL players who died young -- some as early as their 30s or 40s. McKee, who also studies Alzheimer's disease, says the tangles closely resemble what might be found in the brain of an 80-year-old with dementia. (CNN American Morning, 1/29/09)
Actually Vince Lombardi Was a Putz
Perhaps the greatest recent damage to all sports, both college and professional, has been the pernicious win-at-any-cost philosophy embodied by former Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi. One of Lombardi's most telling quotes was: "If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score?" Well, Vince, you've just told us that after a lifetime of coaching you still didn't "get it" that sport is really about playing, and that winning or losing is just a by-product of an important human activity that intrinsically promotes life skills, character development, health, personal satisfaction, camaraderie, and teamwork.
Here's another of Lombardi's mixed-up, (and sexist) thoughts that confuse sport with war: "I firmly believe that any man's [sic] finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he [sic] holds dear, is that moment when he [sic] has worked his [sic] heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious." (Emphasis added) This tragic confusion between playing a sport and fighting a war-truly a life-and-death matter-can ruin the benefit and suck the fun out of any sport. Perhaps Lombardi himself suffered too many concussions during his own playing career to understand this.
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