As we head into the final week of the NFL regular season, I must confess that I’ve spent more time watching football this year than I have in a long time. There was a time there when my interest in the NFL was seriously waning — for three of four years between 2018 and 2021 I didn’t even watch the Super Bowl. But at some point around that 2022 Bills/Chiefs game, I started paying more attention.
But it’s not like the issues that pushed me away in the first place — the health and safety of the players — have gone away. If anything, they’ve gotten more acute: We just passed the one-year anniversary of Damar Hamlin collapsing on the field during Monday Night Football. Anyway, I’m not sure what the answers are, but I’m reposting a trio of pieces that are at least attempts to grapple with the questions:
This podcast episode was an attempt by James and I to reckon with the failed idea that football would simply disappear on its own….
The 2022 Tua saga was a reminder that football’s concussion problem is not over…
…and the problem with expecting players to protect themselves is that most guys WANT to keep playing. So what do you do?