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The big concern I have with the NFL is that a court is going to rule that, basically, you may not engage in a contractual obligation that will destroy your life or irreperably damage you in some fashion. In Washington State, there are several people in jail for consensual BDSM activities. People signed on a dotted line, consenting to being beaten or whatever, they WERE beaten, they were HAPPY with the results, but the state came in anyway and prosecuted the damagers on behalf of the damagees, even though the damagees didn't want charges brought. They used domestic crime law, basically, created so that the "abuser" could not intimidate the abused into silence.
Those people lost a case in which no one wanted prosecution and everyone was okay with the bodily harm inflicted. They're in jail now.
You would assume that this wouldn't happen in the workplace. It's not like crab-fishing is a safe activity - people die in safety accidents every day, or have their lives cut short and physical hardships created because of the jobs they do. But it's absolutely feasible that a court could rule that no safety equipment could make football safe or halt brain injury, and it would become necessary to "save football players from themselves" because you cannot consent to unpreventable bodily harm. If you were 100% guaranteed to lose a finger every time you took a bungee-jump, there would be some eight-fingered people out there because they just HAD to do it. And then bungee-jumping would be illegal.
If brain injury is a guarantee, then football is dead. I'm still pissed off that Riddell is not using more advanced helmet technology, but at some point you figure they'll get there. If there are no kids playing football because no high school or youth league can get insured for it, though, then it won't matter - there will be no football, certainly not as it's played now.
If the NFL hid concussion tests and the long-term ramifications of concussions from the players, then they're gonna get killed in court. If they are changing their processes and procedures as this new information (that they never had before) is produced, then one would hope they are not crushed in the courtroom, but either way the viability of the league and the sport is based on some ability to prevent these brain injuries. Bones heal, and any construction worker will tell you it hurts when they roll out of bed at 50 just like it hurts a former football player - some things are just hard on the body.
Hard on the brain is different. A sport that turns the brains of its participants into jelly will not survive much longer in this legal climate. They're running the tests on boxers and MMA fighters now, trying to get yearly brainscans from a number of participants to form a database. Once they have it, I expect some things will have to change. Maybe boxers will go back to headgear. Maybe football will have to be played standing up to avoid head collisions for linemen on every play. Maybe helmet technology will have to be radically updated to independent plates that can distribute shock...oh wait, we have that technology, Riddell just won't license it.
But whatever happens, I hope those sports are still around in some fashion. I will say as a former pro wrestling fan, though, that the effect of wrestler deaths and head-trauma aftermath has made me unable to watch that athletic endeavor any more. Chris Benoit, good Christian man that he was, killed his entire family and hung himself with his weight equipment. His brain looked like swiss cheese from all the headbutts and cage matches and chair shots he endured over his career. He was my favorite wrestler. It broke my heart to see the greatest technical wrestler of his era come to that horrific end, but he was one of dozens I watched slide slowly into the abyss of brain injury and early death. His tribute show was the last weekend of wrestling I ever watched or ever will watch. I can't support that kind of outcome for the participants of a sport I love.
I hope we don't get to that point with football. I hope that the precautions the sport takes will be enough to keep it viable and true to the sport while also allowing the players to have a quality life after the game.
And I hope that the NFL hasn't done anything really stupid (like burying concussion data) that would give an activist court a reason to demolish a sport I love.
~G