Season 5 Episode 3

Brain Blitz: Fumbling the Health of Our Athletes

Every Sunday night from September into February, American football fans gather in living rooms, bars, and stadiums alike to celebrate and cheer on their teams. Football is a staple of U.S. culture. From the “high school captain of the football team” jock to the NFL Hall of Famer, the image of a football player is synonymous with Americana. But is that enough to justify chronic brain damage? Are our football players really safe, and why does it matter?

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a condition of neurological damage caused by repeated concussions and head trauma that leads to early death, usually from athletics like football. The Boston University CTE Center have found that 91% of brain samples examined from former NFL players had CTE. Exposure to repeated head trauma and CTE are linked with cognitive decline, depression, suicidal behavior, poor impulse control, aggressiveness, parkinsonism, and, eventually, dementia. Our young, budding athletes in high school are at serious risk of disability and CTE compared to non-athletes during their brains’ most formative years. Schools should be building brains, not breaking them.

What policies exist to protect our athletes, and what are we missing? What sociological factors contribute to this undue harm? How can we preserve the neurological health of our athletes young and old? In other words, why should we care about football in public health? In this month’s episode of PHPod, host Abby Varker meets with experts on the subject to learn more.

Drs. Nathan Kalman-Lamb and Derek Silva are authors of the book “The End of College Football” and co-hosts of the podcast, The End of Sport. The pair has contributed extensively to the conversation on protecting athletes’ rights and safety. Their research focuses on the intersection of social theory and sociology of sports with a focus on labor, racism, and exploitation. The pair examines how physical harm, coaching abuse, economic extraction, and more make U.S. college football one of the most exploitative facets of American society.