A memorial for linebacker Junior Seau last year in San Diego. Seau, who committed suicide at his home, was suffering from a type of brain damage found in other deceased former NFL players. (Kent Horner, Getty Images)
Faith takes a hit as evidence mounts of players who suffer brain damage.
Pro football has a serious morality problem. I am not talking about promiscuous players or racist team nicknames. Nor am I referring to the obscene amounts of money changing hands between the masses obsessed with football and the sports industrial complex that keeps them supplied.
I am talking about the risk the players are taking on for our entertainment -- the risk, if the growing pile of evidence is to be believed, of brain damage. In light of an investigation by journalists Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru, we now know better than ever that playing in the National Football League can destroy men's cognitive health, and that those who run the nation's most powerful sports league have been making herculean efforts to keep the risk obscured.
The brothers Fainaru-Wada and Fainaru lay out their disturbing findings in their new book,League of Denial (also the name of a Frontline documentary that aired Tuesday night on PBS). Now that the lid is starting to blow off, the revelations are sure to intensify the debate over the complicated relationship among faith, morality and football.
Gridiron Platform for Faith
In recent generations, evangelicals have used football as a huge platform to promote their religious values. And why not, you might ask? The qualities of football closely align with Christian virtues such as sacrifice, discipline and courage.
As the author of a book on evangelical Christian engagement with pro sports, I am keenly aware of the dilemma this poses for well-intended agents of faith who work in sports. How much longer can the good Christian men in and around pro football continue cozying up to the NFL and treating it as an ideal venue to promote faith and morality to the sports-consuming public?
"When we attach ourselves to a structure that from a Christian standpoint is fallen, we inadvertently reinforce something that we don't believe in," John White, director of the Sports Ministry Program at Baylor University, told me after watching the Frontlinedocumentary. "For Christians, this link between football and brain trauma is very troubling."
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SOURCE: USA Today
Tom Krattenmaker
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