Boxing, football, and soccer all cause repeated concussions. Each concussion causes permanent brain damage. As a result, boxing is no longer tolerated in most high schools.
Medical science makes it clearer every day that playing football and soccer damages the brains of players. Younger players are most badly affected: brain damage is cumulative and worse in men who started started getting concussions younger.
One researcher notes: “Professional athletes are showing up demented in their 40s and dying before they’re 50 with real unpleasant brains at autopsies. . . concussion occurs by the brain being very rapidly twisted inside the skull . . . and that tears neural fibers apart. It piles up. Repeated blows (as in boxing, football, and soccer) take longer to heal. Three times in a bad afternoon on the soccer or football field, the damage is likely to be permanent.”
Those in the soccer and football establishments discount, diminish, and demean such research. “I played for a real long time and there’s nothing wrong with my brain.” They say “There’s nothing wrong with soccer and football.” because they want to protect their careers and income are horribly wrong. Another group, among the most evil of people, is easily identified.
There are some who encourage soccer and football because they know it causes concussions and permanent loss of thinking ability. They are among the most evil of people.
Many approve of soccer and football causing permanent brain damage to millions. Among the most evil of people are those who gloat “Stupid people can’t solve simple problems or think for themselves. They are helpless and easy to control. We want more young people to play soccer and football. We lower their IQs by twenty or thirty percent! And, we get rid of the occasional threat to the established order. If we could have had a few soccer balls smash into Thomas Edison’s head, he’d have been too dumb to have invented the light bulb! We want ’em dumb and dying young! Early deaths reduce Social Security outflow! Best of all, when people who are actually smarter than me are dumbed down, I have an easier time getting ahead! More kids should play soccer and football so my kids can do better, too!”
Those among the most evil of people get away with the damage they do by encouraging millions of children to be brain-damaged. Adults whose brains have already damaged are unable to make the connections between sports concussions and their own subsequent lack of success in life. Rather than realize that soccer and football concussion damaged their brains and held them back, they say “I never got any big breaks in life.” as if luck was all that matters.
An aside: Once, a concerned Catholic offered a high-ranking bureaucrat in a Diocesan Education Department a cash bribe. He said, “I will give you, personally, $20,000.00 if you will make a rule that the kids in the Diocesan schools can no longer damage their brains by heading the big, heavy, fast-moving soccer balls. If you change the rules and have them play soccer without heading the ball, I’ll give you $20,000.00.” That offer was declined. Was the concerned Catholic’s sin in offering what seemed to be a bribe, or in not having the offer be bigger?
Parents and grandparents, please note a typical research conclusion: “Most of the (brain) damage occurs on high school playing fields, non-professional athletes. Young males between 10 and 20 are the ones inadvertently, unknowingly, innocently taking damage, because there are so very many of them. And, they’re determined not to let the team down. And they’ve been hit real hard and they’ve taken damage and want to keep playing.” And, for the rest of their lives, their ability and capacity is diminished.
