As days get shorter and temperatures start to drop, crisp fall days still create many reasons to celebrate, not least of which might be football to many fans at all levels. Even those who aren’t football savvy enjoy the opportunity to gather around with food, drink, and friends on football weekends. Despite the fall fun and camaraderie of this very American sport, fans also need to consider the risks that come with playing football.
Among the biggest risks are concussions. In 2015, the NFL reached a concussion settlement admitting no wrongdoing, but agreeing to pay any former player who developed dementia or severe brain diseases linked to concussions. While the NFL has paid out nearly $1.2 billion to more than 1,600 former players, according to the Washington Post, the criteria to receive compensation was prohibitive to many former players with dementia who when they died were found to have had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a brain disease linked to hits to the head in football.
While many studies have been conducted looking at the short- and long-term effects of concussions, much more research remains to be done. Most studies concur that sports-related concussions have significant short-term impact on individuals, including academic performance. Long-term effects include increased risk for cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s disease, and depression. Research by Victoria O’Kane of Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine noted that a youth who sustains multiple concussions is at significant risk for long-term damage. Meanwhile, an NCAA Concussion Study found that college athletes who had suffered three or more concussions were at a risk of suffering future concussions at a rate three times greater than those who had no previous concussions.
Although the NCAA, NBA, and NFL have all enacted concussion protocols – as have local high schools and other sports teams and clubs – most researchers indicate a need for even more study to determine best treatments and strategies for young athletes.
Because of questions of long-term effects for young children taking blows to the head, we never encouraged our son to play when he was young. My husband, who is a sports medicine orthopedic surgeon, participates with other researchers in concussion studies on athletes, trying to determine best protocols.
Popular anyway
Despite these concerns, for everyone from parents of peewees who spend hours along the sidelines of these mini games to coaches, trainers, cheerleaders, marching band members, and fans of all levels, football offers a sports culture unlike most other sports or activities. Perhaps it is the near perfect weather for most of the season as football is the pumpkin spice of sporting seasons. Maybe it’s the tailgates. Maybe it’s yelling louder than the other team whether in a stadium, a bar, or a living room. Whatever the case, football draws people together.
Those of us born before 1990 played and enjoyed football without any thought about the injuries as studies hadn’t yet identified the issues with concussions. I started my love of the game by playing no-tackle football in co-ed groups as a kid when we had to count “one Mississippi, two Mississippi,” etc. before we were allowed to rush the quarterback. This gave me a little understanding and a lot of interest in the game. I attended every high school football game, playing piccolo in the marching band during my four years of high school.
In college, I started my journalism career by writing sports for the college newspaper and typing the play-by-play at football games as a student worker for the sports information office. My Shippensburg University team made it to the final four of Division II playoffs one of those seasons.
Following college, my first job was as a sports writer for the Lewistown Sentinel, which meant I covered every high school sport (boys and girls) including football. I stood on the sidelines with a 35 mm camera around my neck and a clipboard in my hands. I shot photos and kept my own stats during the games, then hurried back to my office to write the story while handing my film off to the photo editor so we could get the Friday night game coverage into the Saturday morning paper. The glamour part of my job was the opportunity to split home game coverage of Penn State football with the other sports writer/editor. That included a trip to the Orange Bowl at the end of the 1984 season.
The next year, we lived in Charlottesville, Va., home to the University of Virginia Cavaliers. Southern football traditions were so much fancier than what we’d experienced at Penn State. Students and alumni came dressed to the nines while my husband and I sported our jeans and sweatshirts. The games were full of spirit on beautiful fall Saturdays, and I’ve kept a soft spot in my heart for UVA sports teams.
From Eagles to Chiefs
When my husband was a kid in the 1960s, the Kansas City Chiefs had an all-pro linebacker named Jim Lynch. They also had a player who was a former wrestler (Curly Culp, a 1967 NCAA wrestling champion at Arizona State). Of course, a young boy named Lynch who also wrestled was going to become a Chiefs fan.
My dad had always been a diehard fan of every Philadelphia team, which meant that we were Eagles fans. Since I had been a Phillies loving baseball fan more than a football fan, I easily switched allegiances upon marriage.
When we moved to Pittsburgh for four years where my husband attended medical school, I worked in news at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Although we spent many days and nights at the Pirates games, and even more at the Pittsburgh Penguins games, we could never bring ourselves to join the Steeler nation with their brash quarterback Bubby Brister, who was often in the headlines for the wrong reasons.
Then we moved to Vermont for five years where skiing and ice hockey were the popular sports. We laughed at a T-shirt sold in the University of Vermont bookstore that read “UVM football: Undefeated since 1974.” True since the college discontinued football that year.
From there, we landed in Cleveland in 1996, a very sad year for football fans as it was the year Art Modell, the owner of the Browns, moved the team to Baltimore where it became the Ravens (Cleveland built a new stadium and the Browns were reincarnated there in 1999). My husband was training as a sports medicine orthopedic fellow, and that first year, Modell kept the staff of the Cleveland Clinic as team doctors, so my husband flew to Baltimore to cover games. That didn’t diminish our allegiance to the Chiefs.
After selling our kids on the Chiefs, too, we finally decided to fly out for a game against Dallas in 2009. We loved the city – the many fountains around Kansas City are still my favorite part – and the high-throttled game-time events. Arrowhead Stadium is a great place to see a game. Sadly, the Chiefs lost that game as one of many in a 4-12 season. Ouch.
After their first Super Bowl win at the end of the 1969 season, the Chiefs finally won again 50 years later at the end of the 2019 season. My husband quipped that he hoped he “wouldn’t have to wait another 50 years for them to win again.” He didn’t have to worry. With quarterback superstar Patrick Mahomes guiding the ship, the Chiefs made four Super Bowl appearances in five years, winning again in 2023 (2022 season) and 2024 (2023 season). It’s good to be a Chiefs fan in the 2020s.
Back to college
College football tailgates are almost as much – if not more – fun than the games themselves. Fans pack up grills (some even pull smokers behind their RVs), tables, salads, snacks, drinks, and beer, lots of beer, to share at tailgates. The cornhole board can slide in amongst the chairs, tables, coolers, and more for more tailgate fun. Penn State is known for its rabid fans and fields of tailgaters, but so, too, are many other big colleges like Michigan and Clemson. My sister and her husband wear the orange every weekend for Tigers’ tailgating.
In 2013, my husband was named as the orthopedic consultant to the Penn State football team. That meant that he was at practices and at all games with the team. In 2014, his duties expanded when he was named director of athletic medicine for all Penn States sports teams. His job was to oversee medical coverage for all teams, while attending directly to football and women’s lacrosse. His moral charge was to ensure the best care and medical safety for the student athletes.
We spent every weekend with Penn State football. At one game, the wife of one of the sports medicine fellows who had never previously been to college football games threw her first tailgate after ordering all of the trimmings. A United Nations of people attended her tailgate. We had a sports medicine fellow from Spain, a student from Canada, another student from China, and others gathered around playing beer pong and flip cup. Our fun and laughter attracted people from other tailgates asking to join in. We decided that this could be the secret to world peace.
When in State College, we live in a condo overlooking the State College High School football field, so we get serenaded by the marching bands and can look out at the Friday night lights. It’s a nosebleed seat to high school rivalries.
All good things come to an end, and not always a good end. In early 2019, my husband was removed from his roles with Penn State football and athletics ostensibly because Penn State athletics said he was not in State College full time (he still worked three days a week at Penn State’s Milton S. Hershey Medical Center) and they needed someone there 24/7. My husband contends – and on May 29, 2024, a jury awarded him $5 million in punitive damages for his removal from the roles – that he was removed because he refused to give in to coach demands to clear injured players who should not play. He sued over his dismissal -- after his superiors ignored his recommendations to separate medical from coaching -- fearing that since he was no longer in the job to protect players from the whims of coaches, players would have no one to stand up for them as he had. He hopes the verdict in his favor will be the start of change in college sports.
The darker side
Obviously, what my husband experienced had diminished our enthusiasm for college football. Yet, even before his removal at Penn State, we had sometimes questioned the safety of the game.
Concussions aside, football players suffer a myriad of other injuries as well – from torn ligaments to organ injuries to broken bones.
In a 2013 article, a Washington Post survey of retired NFL players found that nearly nine in 10 suffered from aches and pains on a daily basis and of that group, 91 percent attributed their pains to football. Nearly half of these former players also felt that their team doctors made decisions that would benefit the team interests over their health. Thirty percent of them said their teams discouraged them from seeking second opinions. This is startling given that NFL players have agents whose main purpose is to protect their clients.
Where does that leave college football players, who lack a union or anyone who truly represents their best interests physically? They are at the mercy of coaches and doctors who want their teams to win at all costs. So much is riding on a win – the coaches’ multimillion dollar salaries, television contracts, advertising, alumni donations, and so much more. The College Football Players Association is working to represent past, present, and future college football players, seeking to make the game safer and healthier for players.
Awareness is key
The game is still fun to watch. I can’t imagine a Sunday without the sounds of NFL playing on the TV in the background. A part of me feels like a hypocrite.
Being part of a fandom is fun. Watching a strategic game like football is also fun. Despite that, we can’t ignore the violence of the game and players who are being pushed to play without consideration for their future physical and mental health.
This is not meant to be a buzz kill. It’s always going to be a good time when sliders, dips, and beer fuel a friend and family filled tailgate. It’s also familiar and fun to watch college and NFL games at home or with friends in a bar. Football is fall for many Americans. This fall though, let’s remember to support not just our teams and their wins, but the individual players who may need someone on their side in this big money sport.
