War against war needs ceasefire
Spare a thought for brave Danny Kanell, corporal in the army fighting The War Against The War On Football. It’s a damned dirty war, and it needs men to fight it on the beaches, to fight it on the airwaves, to fight it in the fields and in the streets, to fight it in the hills. They shall, obviously, never surrender.
Kanell is the former NFL quarterback and ESPN radio host, and he actually coined the phrase, War On Football. In response to a New York Times column by Dr. Bennet Omalu, who discovered CTE and who thinks football should be banned under the age of 18, Kanell tweeted, “The war on football is real. Not sure source but concussion alarmists are loving it. Liberal media loves it. Doesn’t matter. It’s real.”
Kanell went on to defend the tweet against such specious arguments as, concussions are real, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) has been identified in a high percentage of the NFL brains that have been examined, ex-players have killed themselves while suffering from CTE, the NFL itself has admitted in a legal brief that it estimates 3 in 10 players will suffer from early neurological diseases and defects, and at one point one-third of its former players were suing the league for how it handled concussions. Money grab, probably. People love grabbing that money.
Danny, whose father was a Dolphins team doctor who didn’t let him play football until he was 16 to protect his baseball career, wasn’t one of those guys. Here are some things Danny said to ESPN’s Dan Le Batard. “It is a fact, and it is awful, that there are children dying and that they’re playing the sport, but that’s terrifying people from playing the game of football.” Yes, I suppose it would. “CTE is real.” Point to Danny. “The science is inconclusive.” Sure is. Excuse me, I need to go get a cigarette in 1985, or a global weather report anywhere from, say, 19902015.
“The players agreed to the (concussion settlement), and it’s a bad deal.” Sure is. CTE isn’t even in there. “And as with a lot of things in life, it is about money.”
In exchange for melting brains, yes.
“The greater issue is players not being able to get out of bed.” Probably not? “I should not have said liberal media. I should have said all media.”
All media vs. football. Media probably wins, since the games wouldn’t be on TV.
“It’s about getting clicks, it’s about getting eyeballs, it’s about getting ratings.”
You know who else got good ratings? “Where’s the outrage for soccer?” I feel like I’ve heard this somewhere before.
“Are we studying drug abuse in those players? Are we studying alcohol abuse in those players?”
Pretty cool thing to say about Junior Seau, Dave Duerson, and other football players who killed themselves. Pretty cool.
“I’m worried as a former player that we are going to kill the sport because of some of the alarmist comments that are being made and the articles that are being written.”
Science is a bear, yeah. Ex-NFl player and ESPN analyst Robert Smith headed a ways down the same path, which is a coincidence. You know, between The War On Christmas, The War On Poverty, The War on Terror, the Class Warfare that some people seem to talk about whenever someone criticizes a rich person . . . well, it seems like America is really, really bad at wars, even before you get into the actual wars. Maybe sit a few plays out in the war department, is what I’m saying. You’re seeing stars, hallucinating a little. Clear your head.
Last week this space went 9-7. As always, all lines could change.