At NRO, Rich Lowry writes, “If Costas really wanted to issue a jeremiad in the aftermath of the Belcher killings, perhaps it should have been directed at the vastly profitable football-industrial complex of which he is a small part:”
Nearly simultaneously with Belcher’s murder-suicide, Boston University researchers published a study that found, in the words of a Reuters report, that “years of hits to the head in football or other contact sports lead to a distinct pattern of brain damage that begins with an athlete having trouble focusing and can eventually progress to aggression and dementia.” It is apparently not big hits to the head that bring on the condition, called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, but a diet of small blows.
This phenomenon may have absolutely nothing to do with Belcher’s crime. But the question will be asked, and yet more attention will focus on the issue of brain injuries. The league is already being sued by thousands of former players and their relatives for not taking brain injuries seriously enough. The game is so hugely entertaining that it is hard to see it ever losing ground in American life — unless people eventually come to believe our viewing pleasure isn’t worth the price exacted from the players.
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