Welcome to the Machine Glen Hines

Two days after my father passed away from stage 4 CTE, I had to travel to military training. I decided to drive. As if somehow ordained, the day was Super Bowl Sunday, and the roads across the southeastern United States were virtually clear. While football culture spent the day glued to the television, I traveled quietly over 700 miles and escaped the machine. It was an example of what life can be, beyond the game.   

In late January, 2019, I got the call I always knew I would dread. Although my father had been having some serious long-term physical and neurological problems for a very long time from playing football in college and the NFL, nothing could have prepared us for how rapidly his last days came and what brought us all back together for one final vigil to bear witness to what the machine had wrought.   

In April 2016, a U.S. federal appellate court approved the settlement agreement in the case of In re: National Football League Players Concussion Injury Litigation. The league agreed to an uncapped compensation fund that would potentially cover over 20,000 retired players in exchange for a release of all concussion-related claims against the league. A lawyer who helped negotiate the settlement for the retired players, said players, "Will now receive much-needed care and support for the serious neurocognitive injuries they are facing.” Unfortunately, this hasn’t happened in the overwhelming majority of cases.  To call what transpired a "settlement" in the classic, legal sense, is in and of itself a lie. As former players have learned over the past five years, it is actually a Byzantine claims management process set up by the league to make it almost impossible for players to receive much-needed medical treatment and care that they already qualify for under the terms of the agreement. Claims are deliberately drawn-out, delayed, and rejected in the hopes the players will pass away before the league has to make good on their agreement. As a result, it can be argued the NFL has hastened and is responsible for their deaths.

In this episode, I take a contemplative visit back to the empty stadium where many years ago my father and I played and were part of championship teams, twenty-five years apart. I think back on everything that happened then and everything that happened afterward, and I ask, was it all worth it?  

Universities and college football fans preach about their concern for the well-being of the "student-athletes" who attend their schools.  But this facade crumbled when the worst pandemic in a century hit the world and they feared they might not get to watch football. The result was a forced, chaotic, shortened, and illegitimate season, the personal health costs of which we will never be able to measure, and it opened a window into the true hearts and minds of college administrators, fans, and college football culture.   

In the second of a two-part social and cultural analysis, I discuss the concepts of habit, myth, and tribalism as they all combine and relate to American football. In previous episodes, I’ve argued that one of the explanations for why football only exists in America and why intelligent people would still continue to watch and participate in something they know is dangerous to the short and long-term health of its players is something I call tribalism. Tribalism exerts an unseen, undiscussed coercion on people to continue doing things they know are unhealthy. People are all tribal to some extent, and some are more affected by it than others. In some ways, it is part of the DNA, but in most cases, it is directly connected to our environment and upbringing; the family we are born into, the community in which we grow up, the schools we attend, the friends we make, our schooling, and our life experiences all go into this mix. But there is a path to change.