Dominick Helton
Professor Azard
English 1302
4 February 2017
It’s Football or the Brain
The Crazed Nature of American Football
As a nation that lauds the act of competition, the United States has become especially crazed with sports. This very crazed nature has allowed professional sports leagues to grow to the point of generating billions of dollars of revenue every year. One sport which may illustrate this fact better than any other is football, which stands at the very peak of American Sporting today. With revenue that even surpasses that of “America’s Past time” baseball, football has enjoyed standing as the most profitable sport at both the professional, and collegiate level for quite some time. Perhaps, one of the greatest reasons the …show more content…
This is first evidenced by a multitude of statistics linking higher rates of chronic mental disease to NFL retirees. For example, after conducting a sample of 1,063 NFL retirees in 2009, the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan found that the rate of mental disease in NFL retirees was multiple times greater than the average American man. Specifically, the rate of Alzheimer’s Disease, Dementia, or other memory related diseases in an NFL retiree between the ages of thirty to forty-nine was found to be 1.9%. Comparatively, the age group in the average American man it is a mere 0.1%. Furthermore, NFL retirees over 50 have 6.1% chance of displaying symptoms of these diseases while only 1.9% of other American men over 50 exhibit signs of these mental handicaps. Michigan is not alone in expressing these beliefs. Their findings are supported by the findings of Dr. Alan Schwartz who, in a New York Times article noted “that retired NFL Players are five to nineteen times as likely as the general population to have received a dementia related diagnosis.” Moreover, physician, USA Today columnist, and football Katherine Chretien admits that there is indeed “Mounting medical evidence of repetitive head trauma causing chronic brain injury and an early form of Alzheimer- like dementia”. It’s important to understand that claims like these are not all unsubstantiated by scientific research. Each of these claims can be explained by recent advances in neuroscience. In their book, The Concussion Crisis: Anatomy of a Silent Epidemic. Linda Carroll and David Rosner evidence a study by Douglass Smith at the University of Pennsylvania. In a scientific study, Smith made a link between head trauma and onset of Alzheimer’s disease. In an interview discussing
Professor Azard
English 1302
4 February 2017
It’s Football or the Brain
The Crazed Nature of American Football
As a nation that lauds the act of competition, the United States has become especially crazed with sports. This very crazed nature has allowed professional sports leagues to grow to the point of generating billions of dollars of revenue every year. One sport which may illustrate this fact better than any other is football, which stands at the very peak of American Sporting today. With revenue that even surpasses that of “America’s Past time” baseball, football has enjoyed standing as the most profitable sport at both the professional, and collegiate level for quite some time. Perhaps, one of the greatest reasons the …show more content…
This is first evidenced by a multitude of statistics linking higher rates of chronic mental disease to NFL retirees. For example, after conducting a sample of 1,063 NFL retirees in 2009, the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan found that the rate of mental disease in NFL retirees was multiple times greater than the average American man. Specifically, the rate of Alzheimer’s Disease, Dementia, or other memory related diseases in an NFL retiree between the ages of thirty to forty-nine was found to be 1.9%. Comparatively, the age group in the average American man it is a mere 0.1%. Furthermore, NFL retirees over 50 have 6.1% chance of displaying symptoms of these diseases while only 1.9% of other American men over 50 exhibit signs of these mental handicaps. Michigan is not alone in expressing these beliefs. Their findings are supported by the findings of Dr. Alan Schwartz who, in a New York Times article noted “that retired NFL Players are five to nineteen times as likely as the general population to have received a dementia related diagnosis.” Moreover, physician, USA Today columnist, and football Katherine Chretien admits that there is indeed “Mounting medical evidence of repetitive head trauma causing chronic brain injury and an early form of Alzheimer- like dementia”. It’s important to understand that claims like these are not all unsubstantiated by scientific research. Each of these claims can be explained by recent advances in neuroscience. In their book, The Concussion Crisis: Anatomy of a Silent Epidemic. Linda Carroll and David Rosner evidence a study by Douglass Smith at the University of Pennsylvania. In a scientific study, Smith made a link between head trauma and onset of Alzheimer’s disease. In an interview discussing