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Zack Riggs

Professor Douglas

UWRT 1102-026

2 February 2017

Should Football Be Banned?

For decades, the game of football has been a staple in American society. The game itself

is played by millions of people across the country in all different age groups. However, in the

past 10 years, there a dramatic increase in the concern of players developing CTE through

repetitive concussions and head injuries. What is CTE? you might ask? CTE is a degenerative

brain disease that can eventually lead to extreme rage, depression, and dementia. The only

problem is that there is no clear-cut explanation for CTE and it can only be diagnosed after

death. This common awareness has raised the question, should football be banned in schools?.

Both of the articles that I found do a very good job of reaching their intended audience and

informing them about the topic and the connection it has to football and contact sports as a

whole. The first article was written in 2014 by Shawn Love and Gary S. Solomon. The intention

of this piece was to give people in the sports and medicinal fields a background and this sort of

general knowledge about the topic and the studies associated with it. The second article was a

case report of an autopsy done on a former NFL football player. This article is a little bit older,

written in 2008, which is around the time that the awareness first become very prevalent. The

main difference between these articles is that this article is a lot more dense and not exactly for

the everyday reader. I feel that the intended audience is a higher educated crowd because there is

a lot of terminology in there that many people would not understand without having to look it up.

Unfortunately, neither one of these articles give a definite statement at the end. They both leave
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you to your own opinions because nothing about this science is definite yet. The article from

2014, Talking with Parents of High School Football Players about CTE, analyzes the data from

doctors and the numerous studies done on the topic and states that The single epidemiological

study of high school football players found no risk increase for degenerative disease due to

football (Love). However, it also says that There is little empirical scientific literature to

answer a parents question with any degree of certainty about the actual probability which

shows that they still have no definite answers (Love). The Case Report takes the same approach

of giving no definitive answers in regards to the link between football and CTE. It simply calls

for further research to be done on those who show symptoms after they die.

The portion of these articles that I most agree with is simply the scientific data. All of the

data comes from reliable sources and there is an abundance of data in both of these articles. The

Case Report article is a report of the autopsy of one the first NFL players diagnosed with CTE.

The victim was 44 years old and the cause of death was suicide. The report itself is laid out in

chronological order, beginning with an introduction, followed by premortem history and the

findings of the autopsy. The language used is a lot more on the scientific side of things which

tends to make things more trustworthy. The author is a Nigerian-American man named Bennet

Omalu. Omalu is a neuropathologist and the first person to discover CTE and bring it to the

attention of the NFL and the media. The only downside to this report is that it isnt something

that can be easily understood by the mass majority of people. This isnt always a bad thing

though because in this case, the report wasnt intended for everyone, it was intended for people

in medical professions. The author doesnt show the opposing side due to the fact that he did

research and is recording his findings, it isnt an opinionated piece.

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After reading the articles, I did find a few bits of information that I didnt necessarily

like. The main thing is that neither of the articles were definite in their findings. Its easy to

understand because nothing has been one hundred percent proven yet. The article Talking with

Parents of High School Football Players about CTE was strange to me because throughout the

entire piece, the author talks about all of these studies and all of the people that have had CTE in

the world of contact sports. Yet, at the very end, he claims that there is no definite link to football

and that the risk of catastrophic brain injury is actually lower than for many common, everyday

activities (Love). This confused me a little bit as I had to read it over another time or two in

order to completely grasp the message that the author was trying to relay.

Between the two articles, there is a lot of valuable information presented. Of the two, my

favorite article was Talking with Parents of High School Football Players about CTE. The article

gives a lot of basic information about the topic and thats really nice, especially for someone who

is just starting to get into the topic. Each section is labeled well accordingly and it just makes it a

little easier to read. The language is formal, however its general enough that most people would

be able to understand it. There are some instances where the author uses complicated or

unfamiliar terms but thats only because there is not a simpler word to describe them. One of the

major strengths of this article is that the author uses a lot of data and statistics to prove the points

that hes making which improves his credibility. The only thing that this article doesnt do is go

deep into the science of CTE and describe the real scientific things. However, I dont think that

this negatively affects it in any way. As previously stated, this article is very entry level into the

CTE discussion and thats where it succeeds.

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Works Cited

Omalu, BI, RL Hamilton, MI Kamboh, ST DeKosky, and J Bailes. "Chronic Traumatic

Encephalopathy (cte) in a National Football League Player: Case Report and Emerging

Medicolegal Practice Questions." Journal of Forensic Nursing. 6.1 (2010): 40-6. Print.

Love, S, and GS Solomon. "Talking with Parents of High School Football Players About Chronic

Traumatic Encephalopathy: a Concise Summary." The American Journal of Sports

Medicine. 43.5 (2015): 1260-4. Print.