The NFL ain’t what it used to be.

There are plenty of reasons why I don’t watch the NFL anymore. Some of them are purely selfish reasons (my team stinks and I’m struggling to care about them…go Jets). I can’t say I completely care for how Fantasy sports changed my perspective of the NFL. It was fun in college I suppose, but rooting for individual stats over whether a team wins or loses took away something over time for me. Daily Fantasy Sports only made that perception for me worse. But none of that stuff really mattered in the long run for my decision to stop watching the NFL. Neither has the protesting debate that consumes the NFL now. While that topic is a whole other article, players kneeling during the National Anthem is quite low in regards to me watching the NFL as there are far more pressing issues (and reasons not to watch) facing the NFL.

The first event that made me think twice about the NFL was when Ray Rice punched his finance Janay Palmer in the face…and the NFL gave him a two game suspension because “they didn’t see the video” or whatever their excuse was at the time. A week later, Adrian Peterson was indicted for beating his son with a switch as a form of discipline. NFL fucked that up too. There was also Greg Hardy’s situation, NFL didn’t even initially suspend him. While I always knew in the back of my mind the NFL and their owners didn’t really give a shit about their players, just what they do on the field.

Which brings me to the real point of the article. Hypocritical as it may seem, I didn’t just turn off the TV when a NFL game was on because of what I just wrote in the prior paragraph. I still talked about the NFL with friends. I still played on Draftkings. I did all that stuff last year. This has been something that’s been building over time for me. And while it started specifically with the NFL in regards to Ray Rice, my current concerns with the NFL really began with an event that had nothing to do with the NFL.

It all started for me when professional wrestler Chris Benoit killed his wife and family.

As I’ve gotten older, I guess extreme violence directed toward the head has started to make me feel bad for what I’m watching. In Bill Simmons’ most recent article he talked about how he still watched boxing even after it seemed clear Muhammad Ali suffered brain damage because of the sport. I guess it was that with me and professional wrestling. Plenty of professional wrestlers had died at abnormally young ages, and some of them due to some sort of depression (The Renegade, Mike Awesome, Chris Kanyon, Andrew Martin, Axl Rotten, Balls Mahoney just to name six quick ones, three of which were confirmed to have what I will mention in the next sentence). But none of them really hit hard as the Chris Benoit tragedy. It was later revealed Chris Benoit had severe chronic traumatic encephalopathy. This was in 2007.

It took me years to understand why WWE changed their product and promotes a much safer style than it did in the late 90s/early 2000s. It’s a reason I’m still okay with following and watching today.

It’s not to say the NFL hasn’t made changes to make the game safer. Only those changes aren’t enough. And while NFL players are practically killing themselves on the field for (non-guaranteed) contracts, the NFL is making billions of dollars off of these players. Before I get the argument that “the players know what they are getting into”, I would counter that no they don’t and that’s not a good argument to make anyway. That, and the biggest reason I’m not watching, the NFL is trying to hide the fact that a diagnosis for CTE is likely for their players.

The biggest thing that stuck in my mind wasn’t even a factual event. It was the movie Concussion that came out in 2015 which detailed the work on CTE that was done by Dr. Bennet Omali. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure the film isn’t 100% accurate. But it opened my eyes as something I felt like I needed to look into. Dave Duerson and Junior Seau both killed themselves and were found to have CTE in their brain. There was Jovan Belcher, the Kansas City Chiefs player who killed his girlfriend, showed up at the Chiefs practice facility and killed himself. He had CTE too. What about college player Owen Thomas, a 21 year old who committed suicide? CTE there too.

What about, overshadowed in all this kneeling for the flag stuff, what about the revelation that Aaron Hernandez what found to have Stage 3 CTE on September 21?

The Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that in 111 former NFL player brains that were tested, 110 had CTE. 110!

And the NFL doesn’t care. Their concussion lawsuit settlement was ridiculous (and will be rendered moot once the next thing I mention becomes true). Before 2016, the NFL downplayed the connection between CTE and football (read up on Dr. Elliot Pellman).

CTE isn’t covered in that concussion settlement. This is because CTE can’t be diagnosed until a person is dead. And it looks like that’s about to change. Boston University has said they’ve potentially found a way to diagnose CTE in people that are living. The NFL can’t hide it now. American football, a game that’s already changed drastically for safety changes will soon not even closely resemble the game we all once watched and enjoyed. Bill Simmons wrote it best:

   “And there’s no way to stop it. You can’t change football. You can dump kickoffs and punts. You can eject anyone for a helmet-to-helmet hit. You can keep cutting the number of practices. You can dump the preseason. But you can’t rewire trained missiles going 20 miles per hour. It’s not a contact sport; it’s a collision sport.

   Advertisers have the luxury of deciding, “Things are changing … instead of doing A, B, and C, we have to start doing X, Y, and Z.” Football owners don’t have that luxury. Even worse, they don’t want to change. They want everything to stay EXACTLY THE SAME. Collectively, they’ve made tens of billions of dollars the old way. They don’t want a new way.

   That’s why they leveraged the stunningly short length of the average NFL career — not once but twice — to force players to accept unfavorable collective bargaining agreements. They buried concussion research until they couldn’t bury it anymore, even bullying ESPN from participating in Frontline’s concussion special. They stifled individual expression until NBA stars became more popular and recognizable than NFL stars, forcing them to begrudgingly (and awkwardly) change course. They effectively blackballed Colin Kaepernick. And when a president who many of them supported — with their money — threatened their business last weekend, they chose to unite with their players for a few hours. Like they give a shit.”

Sure, I’ll be a bit of a hypocrite. I’ll probably watch the Super Bowl. It’ll still look up some scores. See what players are doing well. But as time moves on the NFL will probably become a distant memory for me. I just can’t get past players wrecking their entire lives just to provide me some entertainment for a few hours every Sunday. And in case this didn’t make you think, don’t forget what Davante Adams looked like this last Thursday night. One day a player is going to die on the field. Let’s hope that’s not what it takes to change everything like it did for WWE.