I’m not sure I like the analogy Malcom Gladwell makes between the NFL and Michael Vick’s dogfighting. It seems pretty much calculated to get one to read the article (even if one is not particularly interested in either topic on its own). If you want to compare our reaction to dogfighting to something, I’d suggest using our reaction (or lack thereof) to the often worse treatment of animals killed on behalf of our dinner plates.
That said, Gladwell’s piece is definitely a very worthwhile read, especially for anyone who is considering the idea of letting their kid play football in high school or beyond. Many former NFL players have violent damage done to their brains. A key (and troubling) takeaway is that it could be the adding up of a lot of relatively (by football standards) small collisions that do the damage.
Much of the attention in the football world, in the past few years, has been on concussions—on diagnosing, managing, and preventing them—and on figuring out how many concussions a player can have before he should call it quits. But a football player’s real issue isn’t simply with repetitive concussive trauma. It is, as the concussion specialist Robert Cantu argues, with repetitive subconcussive trauma. It’s not just the handful of big hits that matter. It’s lots of little hits, too.
And it doesn’t seem like there’s any great way to avoid damage as long as your playing this particular game (my personal favorite - along with about half the country).
