The sport that has driven conference re-alignment is in the twilight of dominance
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@approxinfinity @HighEliteMajor
I actually never watch any opinion content on ESPN and filter out comments during broadcasts that wander into political subjects.
Incidentally, the article cited about the “CK effect” on fb viewing didn’t say anything at all about the overall effect on NFL viewership. In fact, it said that of respondents who reported that they watched fewer games, 26% cited CK as the reason, 24% cited off-field stuff, and 20% said too many commercials.
Here is the kicker: That group, the ones who watched less, was only 12% of the >9,000 poll respondents. More than twice as many, 27%, reported watching more NFL games than before, and over 60% reported no change.
So, the poll showed more viewership in total, and only a quarter of the decliners cited CK & Co. Hard to see this as a huge threat.
The study is pretty flawed, anyway, because it is a select group of fans who responded, i.e., people “who attended either one football, basketball or hockey game” (without any indication whether those were amateur or pro events). That certainly cannot be considered a poll of NFL viewers, which would be more interesting. How they obtained their sample is also a big question–going to the gates at a number of games? Questionnaire to ticket buyers? Phone survey, rejecting people who didn’t?
I would speculate that people who go to games might be more resentful of CK because such fans experience the anthem ritual routinely. On the other hand, maybe nonattendees would be more likely to see the broadcast of the protests as interfering with tuning in, so they might switch away. To HGTV or somewhere.
I agree the issue was made more of than it deserved. Another protest–big deal, let it go. Protest against the protest–big deal, let it go.
I just want to watch football and then turn off ESPN when the talk shows begin.
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@mayjay The “poll” will always reach the conclusion the pollster wishes. Those in charge of the poll make sure of it.
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@KUSTEVE JD Power is about the most reputable poll out there. As noted, this one is essentially not probative of anything except what we might have guessed: some viewers were turned off, and most didn’t care. It probably wasn’t even a poll focused on CK. Might well have been a minor statistical sidelight from a poll designed to find out trends regarding viewership of NFL games among people who attend sports vs those who don’t.
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@KUSTEVE I don’t agree. Polls on ESPN are meant to incite debate. The result is arbitrary.
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People still smoke today, true enough. But look at the age of the people that smoke. It’s usually not younger people. It’s actually somewhat surprising to see someone under 30 smoking now. The TV campaigns and awareness have worked, not so much with older demographics, but for kids born in the 1990’s, they generally think smoking cigarettes is gross.
The same thing is going to happen with football. It won’t happen overnight, because football is still very popular right now. But the 20-somethings right now that are going to have kids may not let their sons play football, so instead of having 90 kids trying out for varsity in 15 years, there may only be 60. Instead of having 12 teams in a youth league in eight years, there may only be 8 or 10. Numbers have already slipped a bit for youth participation. Not by a large degree, but ever so slightly.
It’s a slow erosion.
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@approxinfinity It took me a long while to realize that practically every poll you read is an engineered narrative. Kaep kneels…the NFL viewership drops 25%, period. No amount of dishonest polls will change that.
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@KUSTEVE I don’t know where you got that number, but all other sources say it was down 8% last year, and Forbes (a conservative publication, by any measure) did not mention CK in its analysis:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/briangoff/2017/01/23/nfls-missing-million-viewers/
Most sources cite the election as a factor, noting it went down 11% in 2000 and 6% in 1996. Debates, and the Cubs in the World Series, really cut into prime-time games. After the election, viewership went back up, to within 1% of 2015.
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I am so glad to see you post this.
From the moment I saw the results of the brain scanning research ten years ago that even minor traumas accrue into long term brain damage, especially alzheimers, etc., I believed football should be ended.
Next, once brain research reputedly focused somewhat more specifically on football some years back (someone fill me in here if and what the findings actually have been) and reputedly showed that even minor helmet impacts rocked the brain in its cranial hammock enough to create the minor traumas that would accrue to brain damage in middle and old age, I was even more confident football was done, even though the massive revenues and sunk costs would create an inertia that would prevent it from being quickly marginalized and then ended.
I have been writing about the hope for the end of football for years now.
So: how, what and when will end it?
It will never end completely, same as boxing, cock fighting and dog fighting will never end completely.
It will largely end, when we decide to raise the costs of engaging in the production of it to the point that the net benefits diminish enough that the producers look to other actitivies to produce.
That means that to save large numbers of our young from becoming punch drunk old fools for the sake of generating entertainment and entertainment revenues, we have to:
a.) educate the kids, and especially their parents, about how the sport injures them;
b.) find a better sport for them to engage in that vents the aggression that football does;
c.) find other ways for universities to make money;
d.) encourage legislation and court precedents that spike up the damages in class action suits to be paid by those producing the sport;
e.) encourage coverage of other less harmful sports to redirect the amoral TV outfits;
f.) find the amoral petroshoeco outfits a new market for petro shoes and petro athletic equipment uniforms.
Fail to do all of the above, just ensures that football will take longer than it needs to to disappear.
One other possibility would be to get the universities, petroshoecos, and Pentagon to lobby to start D1 robo-football as part of a testbed and R&D subsidy for developing T-2 terminators platoons to replace bio–soldiers with robots-soldiers.
But I’m against this approach, because very shortly rob-armies would slaughter most of humanity except for the private oligarchy.
Alas, this may be the most likely scenario.
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Post Script: As a layman, I have no idea, what level the neuroscience is at regarding explaining and quantifying the extent and risk of loss of brain function due to repetitive impacts players receive in football. But I suspect there may be enough research amassed to make certain kinds of scientifically based remarks on the risks.
So: one small place to start would be to require a warning label be placed on every item of football equipment, and on every ticket, and be run on every TV screen when football is being shown that reads some thing like the warning for cigarettes, only directed to football and brain damage.
To reiterate, I am only imagining here. I don’t know what the actual stats would indicate.
Nevertheless, televisions and television content are reputedly designed to induce our brains to produce an alpha wave-dominated state wherein we are increasingly receptive to suggestions in the visuals and the content. I am therefore optimistic that overtime something like the following might have positive impact. Imagine this fictionalized surgeon general’s warning…
Surgeon General’s Warning: Football is bad for your health. Scientific research indicates that sufficient brain damage can occur from even minor repetitive impacts typically encountered by all that play the game to significantly increase a player’s risk of experiencing significant loss of brain function later in life.
Don’t know if it could be scientifically supported, or not, but what if it could be?
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@jaybate-1.0 If TVs and Facebook, both of which are horrible for our brains, can go without warning labels, fb may be in the clear…
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Nope. Football appears to be a goner. You of all persons, redirecting with face book and the internet, or not, should recognize this. Economies of scale as TV and internet content first Balkanize nationally and then converge globally will get it sooner or later, even if brain damage doesn’t.
Oh, what the heck. Nothing is set in stone. It might be in the clear. It might not be. Rock Chalk!
I am really trying to get better at this self-doubting and qualification.
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And yet people sign up for the military without millions of dollars to entice them. No way football with it’s billions of dollars in income goes away anytime soon. As long as there are hungry people without the intellegence, opportunity, and/or the drive to make their millions elsewhere there will be players. For some it’s the only way out of poverty. For others it’s a way to get your aggression out legally.
I don’t want my boys to play football, but I doubt I could stop my youngest (22 months old). He’s aggressive and will need a proper outlet.
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As much as we claim to love our players most really don’t care about their well being other than how it affects the team.
People love violence, whether or not you do or approve. There will always be a thrill doing something dangerous. This rush is addictive to some/most/all? There will always be an audience for things such as Football, Boxing, MMA, skateboarding, motocross, Jackass type stunts, Kimbo Slice style street fights, Bum Wars, faces of death, etc… it keeps getting worse…
Doesn’t make it right, it just is.
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I don’t think anybody wants to see someone get hurt. At least I know I don’t. Yet there is a danger in everything we do. You can’t eliminate it. Yea you may decrease the odds, or even have some form of Insurance to cover your injuries. However just mandating something like High Risk Insurance would kill the game and not only that but take another rung out of the ladder of success.
You speak of High Schools being responsible to cover those students who would participate in case of a bad injury?
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Majority of High Schools are not privately owned. They are owned and ran by the state. Their revenue sources are generated from tax payers. Meaning in order for a High school to field a team the revenue source must go up. Hence the taxpayer would have to pay the bill.
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Sadly if High Schools are forced to pick up the bill for insuring said kids. High Schools in low income areas will be forced to drop the game altogether.
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Once you move the line or force a certain plan of action. Like forcing High schools to pay for insurance coverage on football players. Then the debate will begin what about the baseball players, basketball players, and even the wrestlers? As history has shown move that line and it will be moved again and again. Meaning at some point High Schools in low income areas would indeed have to drop sports all together.
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The thing about football is not just playing the game. Yet it gives so many youths discipline, structure, and a chance at a free education at the next level. The goal maybe to make it to the pros and ink that million dollar contract. Yet in the journey a lot these kids do get an education they other wise wouldn’t have gotten.
You start messing around with something because you think it’s too dangerous? You might just close the doors on a lot hopes and dreams.
As for the NFL? The players have a union they can fight for what you propose if they wish.
I’m glad you like a good cup of joe. I too like my coffee. PS I know you drink tea. Admit it.
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@DoubleDD Here in the south, sweet tea is the big thing. Don’t drink that, either. Now, just once in a while, say every two months, I have an unsweetened iced tea at McD’s if I am avoiding Diet Coke.
I know, you are saying, “Ha! I knew it! Gotcha!”
(slinks away in shame…)
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I promise to be good.
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Tell ya the truth I’ve been trying to drink more tea myself. They say it’s better than pop. Momma has been getting after me here lately with my health. I tried to tell her I’m just big boned.
I don’t think she’s buying it?
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@drgnslayr I was about to write what you did! I was chagrined to look at friggin espn the other day and see nothin but friggin football and friggin NBA.
MLB is to blame I think. Their national network FOX doesn’t televise a postseason game until the World Series. During the stretch run as pennant races heat up they’ve stopped doing the one game of the week they’ve done for years.
The other national network for baseball, friggin espn does no postseason games. I can’t imagine a league commissioner like friggin Selig and friggin manfred allowing their sport to be treated so poorly.
It was an interesting original post. CTE will kill the sport I think and the violence of football just gets worse as players headhunt without impunity. Or is it with impunity? I forget! No I didn’t play football! Anyways college hoops lives on and for that I’m thankful to be a Jayhawk!
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OMG
I was sharing this debate on this subject with my wife. She said, “you know how you can protect the Football players from getting hurt?” I’m like what?
Just wrap them up in bubble wrap.
God I love that woman.
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@HighEliteMajor and here I was thinking I didn’t like ESPN because most of their staff is annoying as crap, forced to be opinionated, and usually underinformed about the sports and sporting teams they cover… I am willing to concede that the mandated lean is liberal. Either way, it’s obnoxious.
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Yes… football is a definite negative for the ol’ noggen. I think technology with safety will improve, as well as the rules, but there is no way stop the total risk.
Having said that… I don’t believe the sport will vanish anytime soon.
To put in perspective, since I have two toddlers I look at what is in food and snacks, especially designed for kids. Most of those products are full of toxins that do everything from inspire cancer to shrink the brain. Yet… I don’t see those products being pulled off the shelves, now or anytime soon.
So life moves on… and every year there are tragedies exposed in the media about head trauma from playing football. Sometimes youth will perish. People will be sad for a couple of days then will flip to the next game.
I didn’t care when I was young. I thought I was invincible. Boy was I wrong! And I pay the price now and I’m sure in the future. It has made me reevaluate sports and safety and will try to direct my kiddos to a safe path.
Who am I to talk? I haven’t banned games like football from my own TV.
I guess there are certain dangers that just exist out there and will continue to exist. Meanwhile, it has given me new admiration for the game of baseball. And the long, long seasons gives me a fix as long as all other sports I watch together.
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@drgnslayr The long season of baseball now runs into the too short season of college hoops! IMHO stretch out the dance a little longer. Make quarterfinals a best of three or something like that over the course of a week. Home court advantage will be given to the team with the better record. That should help us in the elite 8!
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Politics are killing my sports entertainment here more than on ESPN…
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@mayjay I didn’t realize you were in a fight with her- my apologies then.
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Entertainers of all kinds and pro athletes have a wonder opportunity to use their platforms to help many organizations by raising millions of dollars. NBA player Taj Gibson gives $20G to family of slain Brooklyn mom. Small example. If Ck was at a Chiefs game, I’m ignoring him. Not keeping me from watching and sometimes enjoying
My team. I’m sick of espn too, I just get the updates on my favorite teams, pretty much ignore the rest.
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An interesting topic forsure, my wife currently doesn’t want my son to play football (he’s only 2) but it would be hard for me to tell him no. I’m hoping bye the time he gets old enough to play they have made some advances in the safety department. I personally think that the CTE is more of a risk for guys that end up playing professional, I played it growing up and got 2 concussions playing basketball (Legs took out from under me while in the air for a rebound, head first to floor) but 0 from football. In terms of going anywhere I highly doubt it. People dating back to ancient times love destruction, we all cheer for the hard hits. I agree that tackle football shouldn’t be played til middle school at the earliest but at the same time I played tackle as kid on the play ground with my older siblings. The other thing is that most of these players know the concussion risk, it has been highly debated and followed the last decade. If it it was me, I’d play if for nothing else to make the millions they make so I could take care of my family. The Kaepernick thing has hurt the NFL for oblivious reasons for starters he was raised in money and grew up better than just about anyone I’ve ever met(I grew up poor, living in trailers and duplexes without A/C and hot water and drinking sugar water, for a few examples. I know the media claims poor white people don’t exist but here I claim BS), praising a guy like Castro is a level of stupidity seldomly matched. Racism will never be completely dead and I’m not saying things are perfect but we’ve come along ways. Pointing fingers doesn’t help anyone, work together.
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@KUSTEVE She and Ann Coulter have always been out to get me. So I paid a Delta passenger to take Ann’s seat.
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@kjayhawks “(Legs took out from under me while in the air for a rebound, head first to floor)”
Funny, I was never in danger of that type of concussion. My danger came from trying to jump as high as about 4 inches into the palm of a guy holding it flat over my head and laughing at me.
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Watch. More. Basketball.
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mayjay said:
@kjayhawks “(Legs took out from under me while in the air for a rebound, head first to floor)”
Funny, I was never in danger of that type of concussion. My danger came from trying to jump as high as about 4 inches into the palm of a guy holding it flat over my head and laughing at me.
Was Ann Coulter, who is 6 foot tall, the one holding the ball over your head? It would certainly explain a lot.
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@JayHawkFanToo Sorry it took a while to respond, not in a good technological place right now.
I see the CK protest as harmless. It didn’t keep him from doing his job. I do understand you have some (a lot!) responsibility to your employer, but for protest to make any difference, it has to be done in a way that draws attention in some way, right? If he’d just made a statement at some point, it’d have been barely noticed. So he did something that got noticed. Without hurting a soul.
I do agree with a lot of what you write. I am generally pretty conservative and despise the left media and hollywood do gooders who like you say, us platforms that may be at the wrong time. I haven’t read the Laura Ingraham book, sounds interesting.
Sorry @bskeet for hijacking the interesting topic. Kind of took on a life of its own obviously. Been a good discussion on both topics.
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But it was not harmless; it costed the 49ers, his employers, a lot of money and the League as a whole a great deal of viewership and by extension, money. Remember that his stunt during the National Anthem was not the only thing he did, he also showed to a team press conference wearing a Castro t-shirt and wore socks to practice with pigs dressed as police officers. He really went out of his way to insult a lot of fans.
If I am making a presentation to clients and one of my employees starts making political statements that result in lost work, he would be at the very least suspended or fired on the spot. I suspect most of us are in the same spot. He was hired to play football not make political statements and he was not doing the first part well so he did the second…me thinks to use as an excuse for potentially not getting his contract renewed. Keep in mind that he had already lost the starting spot to0 former MU players Blaine Gabbert who had been a huge bust at Tampa and in his last season there he played only three games, finishing with just one touchdown and seven interceptions.
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To me you’re describing effective protest!
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wissox said:
To me you’re describing effective protest!
Yep, he effectively protested himself out of the NFL.
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@JayHawkFanToo He’s already made millions of dollars, and people are still talking about him and why he was protesting almost a year later. His protest was effective regardless of whether or not someone agrees with his position or methods because the discussion is still going on.
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Watch. More. Basketball.
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All-- I have attempted to ‘fork’ this topic.
That doesn’t mean “stick a fork in it”… rather it means split the topic as the conversation has wandered into new territory. The new post is called “Colin Kaepernick’s protest and it’s impact on the NFL”
I have moved it to the General Discussion section…
Also-- my apologies that not all of the posts were moved when I forked it. I could not scroll to select all of the posts, and it looks like once it’s created, there’s no way to move posts across topics.
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Ravens player (John Urschel) battling for starting job retires from NFL to finish Ph.D at MIT
"In a 2015 post on ThePlayersTribune.com, Urschel wrote that he envied former 49ers linebacker Chris Borland, who retired after just one NFL season because of concerns about head injuries. Urschel explained that he played football, despite his promising mathematics career, because “I love the game.”
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I like the idea of making the Final Four more games!
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An interesting article here that football participation has dropped again this year at the high school level.
That’s a big deal. Football will remain the biggest participant sport because you can’t have 50 kids on the basketball team even if you have 12 each on a freshman team, a sophomore team, a JV and a varsity. Right now its just a 1% decline. Youth football participation has declined even more, from around 3 million in 2010 to less than 2.2 million in 2015.
That’s a 25% drop in youth participation. If that erosion continues (even if it slows to only 2% or so), football is in real trouble because less kids playing at the youth level means less kids going out in high school. Those kids will end up playing other sports - basketball in the midwest and upper midwest, soccer on the coasts, baseball in the Sunbelt, even hockey in the upper plains and northeast.
The clock is ticking. It’s probably two decades out, but the clock is definitely ticking.
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yep… My guess is 2030 NFL falls to second place.
Part of the precipitous drop will be from the impact of the talent migration you mentioned…
Athletes that used to be WR or TE are now Forwards in the NBA… The NBA (and other sports) get better as the most talented athletes move from football to less dangerous sports. Track and field should be interesting… Tennis… Swimming…
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I think it takes longer, just because the erosion is a long way off. It’s coming, no doubt, but it will take a while. For example, the drop in youth participation is mostly at the younger levels (8-10 year olds, as opposed to 12-13 year olds). That means those kids, who are just now turning 12 and 13, aren’t even in high school yet since the study was just a couple of years ago.
The big high school drop is still two years away, maybe even three. After that, the numbers will probably continue to erode, but at a lesser rate.
High school participation is roughly 40% of what youth participation is (basically, the best 40% from youth teams keep playing into high school). With youth participation down to around 2m now, we can expect high school participation to drop under 1m in the next year or two, and down to around 850,000 by 2023 or 2024 (when the kids that are 8-10 years old now get into high school).
The question is what happens with the kids that are younger than that right now? What happens with the kids that are too young to even consider football - the ones that are not even in school just yet? They won’t even be in high school for another decade or more. If their youth participation (basically five or six years from now) drops under 1.5m, that’s proof that football is dying.
Football survives now because it is part of the culture. Kids are used to going to high school games on Friday night, playing youth games or watching college games on Saturday afternoons, or NFL on Sundays. It’s how pretty much all of us grew up. It was just part of the Fall routine. But if all of a sudden those Fall Saturday mornings are filled with soccer games, or swim and track meets, or tennis tournaments, or volleyball matches for the vast majority of kids, things change. But even that isn’t until 2027 or so at the earliest at the high school level, which means its another 6 years before that wave gets to the end of college.
This article is a parody of what it would take to destroy the talent level in the NBA. https://www.sbnation.com/nba/2014/6/3/5772796/nba-y2k-series-finale-the-death-of-basketball
It’s funny, but look how long it takes to completely decimate the NBA talent - from 2014 all the way until nearly 2030 before the talent level caved in so badly that the end was visible on the horizon. That’s 15 years from the time the talent pipeline from college completely dries up. We are at least 15 years away from being 15 (or so) years away from being able to see the end in sight. I would say 2050 may be the day of reckoning, though sooner if more health issues come out before then.
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We have a crappy paper but a brilliant editorial cartoonist.
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That new helmet reminds me of this
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At least one ESPN announcer (former college champ and 5 year NFL) is backing up criticism with action, likely to cost him a lot of money. Resigning because of the unique danger of brain injuries.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/sports/espn-ed-cunningham-football-concussions.html?referer=
