PhDeac
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Antwaan Randle El with a strong argument against football.
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/...-wouldn-t-play-football/stories/201601190177?
On a similar note, a friend of mine and I were talking about the last decade or so of Bengals football and we started talking about Chris Henry and his trouble with the law. He died in 2009 after falling off the back of a truck. I hadn't thought about him since. I looked him up and found out that 6 months after his death, Henry was diagnosed with CTE. He had never been diagnosed with a concussion in college or in 5 years in the NFL. He was only 26 years old. Who knows how many college and NFL players, maybe even high school players, are living with CTE?
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/...-wouldn-t-play-football/stories/201601190177?
Ten years after he threw one of the most-celebrated passes in Steelers history, Antwaan Randle El has trouble walking down stairs.
“I have to come down sideways sometimes, depending on the day,” Randle El, 36, said. “Going up is easier actually than coming down.”
Randle El was an electric athlete, versatile enough to run a route on one play and throw a beautiful spiral on the next, as he did in Super Bowl XL when he found Hines Ward for a 43-yard touchdown on a wide receiver reverse pass. That his body has begun to betray him before his 40th birthday is hard to fathom. The crazy thing is that Randle El can feel his mind slipping, too.
“I ask my wife things over and over again, and she’s like, ‘I just told you that,’ ” Randle El said. “I’ll ask her three times the night before and get up in the morning and forget. Stuff like that. I try to chalk it up as I’m busy, I’m doing a lot, but I have to be on my knees praying about it, asking God to allow me to not have these issues and live a long life. I want to see my kids raised up. I want to see my grandkids.”
Randle El didn’t hesitate when asked if he regrets playing football.
“If I could go back, I wouldn’t,” he said. “I would play baseball. I got drafted by the Cubs in the 14th round, but I didn’t play baseball because of my parents. They made me go to school. Don’t get me wrong, I love the game of football. But, right now, I could still be playing baseball.”
“The kids are getting bigger and faster, so the concussions, the severe spinal cord injuries, are only going to get worse,” he said. “It’s a tough pill to swallow because I love the game of football. But I tell parents, you can have the right helmet, the perfect pads on, and still end up with a paraplegic kid.
“There’s no correcting it. There’s no helmet that’s going to correct it. There’s no teaching that’s going to correct it. It just comes down to it’s a physically violent game. Football players are in a car wreck every week.”
Randle El knows how much power the game of football still has over American society. He knows every year the NFL just piles up more and more money. But he also knows the winds are changing.
What he’s about to say … he knows it sounds off the wall.
“Right now,” he said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if football isn’t around in 20, 25 years.”
On a similar note, a friend of mine and I were talking about the last decade or so of Bengals football and we started talking about Chris Henry and his trouble with the law. He died in 2009 after falling off the back of a truck. I hadn't thought about him since. I looked him up and found out that 6 months after his death, Henry was diagnosed with CTE. He had never been diagnosed with a concussion in college or in 5 years in the NFL. He was only 26 years old. Who knows how many college and NFL players, maybe even high school players, are living with CTE?