re: #290 William Lewis

Interesting post. But I’d like to add my pennies to it.

I played a bit of American football in Jr High. I played center and enjoyed it until a classmate was horrifically injured in a routine reception gone bad. His femur was shoved up through his hip joint requiring years of surgery and rehab. (He’d later die while riding his bicycle home 5 years later when hit by a car.) That put me off playing the game but I still watched it.

Then the news about concussions and how the owners knew long ago that something bad was happening. Couple that with the attitude of “smoke a bowl miss four games, hit your wife have a bonus” and I no longer watch American Football and probably never will again. Mr. Kaepernick’s moral courage wasn’t even enough to lure me back, though it came close. The owner’s treatment of him proved that hesitation correct.

At this point I can not think of any professional sport as being anything but poisonous to our culture yet I understand people’s love of it. I watch English Premiere League soccer knowing full well it’s racism and other problems. Yet if every pro sport went bankrupt tomorrow, including the college minor league football system, I think it would be an overall good thing for the world as a whole. As I have gotten older, I have been profoundly grateful that my son did not get sucked into the athletics scam and would rather encourage him to get his exercise in other ways.

I was raised in Western Pennsylvania where Football is the national religion. Every boy is expected to try out for the team. It goes so far as for parents to hold their sons back from starting school for a year to give them an advantage.

Dad pushed me to try out for football. Well I did show up for the team tryout and a guy’s head hit my ankle at the wrong angle and fractured it.

Dad looked at the doctor bills, shook his head. Other guys goofed on Dad because I didn’t make the team. Instead I got into chess and bridge and became pretty good at both of those. Actually won a bunch of bridge tournaments paired with the football coach’s wife when I was in high school.

Started Pitt in the fall of 1973 with Tony Dorsett. Now I see Tony suffers from brain damage and is confined to a wheelchair. Makes me think I lucked out turning to chess and bridge.

There there are the number of disability claims I’ve take from professional athletes…especially bodybuilders who abused steroids and wind up with degenerative arthritis, liver cancer, kidney failure, heart failure…