The NFL is playing through the pain

If you know me, you know how much I love football. I love offensive linemen and blocking tight ends, and I love quarterbacks who are willing to scramble through the line to pick up a first down. I get irritated at sloppy tackling, and I hate watching a running back or a kick returner lose 20 yards trying to run around a gang of defenders instead of plowing through them.

So this is a problem when I think about how much the physical play that I consider to be “real” football takes a toll on the players themselves. Just this evening, for instance, I learned that Ben Roethlisberger will not start against the Ravens on Sunday night due to concussion-esque effects of an injury he sustained last week in the Steelers’ loss to Kansas City. Roethlisberger is possibly my favorite single current player, in large part because of his style of play. His absence in a division game with wildcard playoff-spot implications is devastating. At the same time, the decision will be better for his long-term health (and the team’s), so it’s ultimately the right thing.

After years of anecdotal evidence indicating severe consequences of those hard hits, the NFL is finally taking begrudging baby steps to address the seriousness of concussions. Sports Illustrated’s Will Carroll has been recommending that players use outside neurologists, as opposed to team doctors, for some time now. An NFL commission has now recommended the same thing. (This week, the commission’s co-chairs resigned; one of them is notorious for denying a link between repeated head injury and later cognitive problems, including dementia.)

The league could move to take the decision to start away from the players. It could make new rules to protect defenseless players (like popular quarterbacks), or maybe increase the penalties for helmet-to-helmet hits. None of that will keep a QB from sliding head-first into a crowd, as Roethlisberger did last Sunday.

When NASCAR addressed this issue a few years ago, the worry was that drivers would hide concussions in order to get around rules requiring them to sit out until they’d healed. There’s the same danger in any sport. After all, you’re talking about highly competitive people who are rightly petrified of being labeled injury-prone. When you’re weighing a handful of games, not to mention the attendant glory and salary bonuses, against the abstract risk of developing Alzheimer’s in your 40s, it’s easy to talk yourself into playing through the pain.

So changing the culture of the NFL in an effort to reduce concussions is an uphill battle. One doesn’t become an elite athlete by playing it safe. Athletes at any level succeed by convincing themselves that discomfort is part of the battle, whether it’s two-a-day practices in August or adding another 10 pounds to what you lifted in your last set. The people (like me) who don’t feel that this type of physical sacrifice is worth it simply don’t become the Roethlisbergers or the Lance Armstrongs or the Serena Williamses of the world.

And isn’t that why we love sports? It’s the spectacle of these super-humans pushing themselves to nearly impossible feats. Sports are the ultimate drama; as my hero Roland Barthes said of auto racing, “To stop is virtually to die.” But the physical toll that athletes sustain in the process of cheating death on the field ultimately endangers their real lives. Another Steeler, Mike Webster, shows us that – while an extreme case, Webster is hardly an isolated one.

Professional athletes make a calculated risk and are highly compensated for it. But the vast majority of athletes in this country will never get paid a dime for it. When sports commentators praise the Detroit Lions’ Matt Stafford for finishing a game with a mangled shoulder, or rip officials for supposedly giving Tom Brady special treatment, players at the high school level hear them, too. It matters.

So, what do we do with all this? Just stop playing or watching sports? Yuck, I hope not. What I would like to see is sports leagues and teams – from small town T-ball programs to the NFL – do a better job of explaining the impact of injury to their participants, and to stop abetting the instinct to play hurt. I’d like to see better, more holistic conditioning. Instead of making a pre-teen pitcher toss 200 softballs every day during the off-season, get her some yoga lessons. Send your star defensive end to ballet class. (Yes, I’m serious.) Do more on the front end with nutrition and rest, and de-emphasize the players-as-cannon-fodder model. Our athletes, and by extension, our sports, will be better off.