I can’t give you the exact moment, but it was fueled by being in Philadelphia to watch Eagles third-string quarterback Matt Barkley chased by Cowboys defenders who had joined the team since it broke training camp in California.
It was that collection of players performing in place of so many injured colleagues in conjunction with the news that poured in all day Sunday.
Rams quarterback Sam Bradford out for the year … Packers tight end Jermichael Finley carried off with neck injury … Bucs running back Doug Martin possibly done for the season … Colts wide receiver Reggie Wayne’s streak of 189 consecutive games ends as he is done for the season.
It was a fantasy football nightmare, only the backs and receivers being maimed and injured were all too real.
That’s when I started to think about League of Denial, a book I’m now reading - which was made into a documentary by Frontline and aired on PBS. It details the NFL’s disturbing fight to keep the truth and the science about concussions the last 10 or 15 years under wraps.
And I thought, at the very least, this is a League of Carnage.
The game has always been unsafe, and it always will be until it becomes a 7-on-7 flag football affair. That much we knew already. A rash of injuries to high-profile players, though unpleasant, was nothing unprecedented.
But watching and covering and, yes, getting paid to write and talk about the NFL as I have been for most of the last 25 years seemed more of a guilty pleasure than ever before.
It reminded me of the awful night I spent in the press box at Daytona International Speedway in 2001, just the third race I had ever covered in a blood sport I was only then growing fond of. Trying to figure out what words I could send back to The Dallas Morning News to describe the scene as Dale Earnhardt Sr. was pronounced dead after a wreck in Turn 4 seemed impossible.
I was seated next to our motorsports writer at the time, Tony Fabrizio, who while staring out over the track at some point, said, “Maybe it is wrong.” He didn’t say it necessarily to me or anyone else, but it was what most of us were thinking.
That’s what it took for NASCAR to find religion. In the NFL’s case, it was the threat of billions in losses in lawsuits that brought safety (and perhaps a trace of honesty) to the forefront. The league eventually settled this summer, awarding the plaintiffs $765 million plus legalfees.
In fairness, that’s not a bad payday considering that players did not have to prove the cause of their damages. But the settlement kept the NFL from having its dirty laundry aired in a courtroom, and it leaves an unsettling taste about the nature of our nation’s favorite pastime.
The league has been pronounced not guilty - or at the very least it didn’t have to acknowledge the truth, which is that repeated concussions can cause severe brain damage and dementia later in life - and we have all returned dutifully to the games we love.
I know that more than once when I have heard of a player being seriously injured, my first thought (sorry, couldn’t help it) was: “Glad he’s not on my fantasy team.”
But the league has reached a precarious position, even if it is not yet reflected in the TV ratings, which remain not only the envy of other sports but all other forms of entertainment. The NFL remains the unchallenged king of all survivor-based reality shows.
At the same time, the game is changing in ways we never imagined just a few years ago when we were still getting our visceral highs off NFL Films’ latest bone-crunching hits.
Kickoffs are growing closer and closer to becoming obsolete.Defensive backs have become so limited in what they can do within the rules that their choices appear to have been reduced to two: risk enormous fines or participate in 51-48 games, as we saw between Denver and Dallas three weeks ago.
I am fully aware of the argument for the other side, that players sign up for this duty, that those fortunate enough to play in the NFL are extremely well compensated, and that they know the risks. The truth is that they knew some of the risks but until recently were unaware of the full extent of the damage that concussions could render.
Broader education will help on that front. Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru’s book League of Denial should be required reading in secondary schools for all athletes. Those of us outside the lines will be wiser, as well, for having invested just a few hours to read it.
In the book, former super-agent Leigh Steinberg talks about the concussion Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman suffered here in the NFC Championship Game before the second Super Bowl win over Buffalo. It’s the moment when Steinberg, agent to many of the star players at that time, began to consider himself an “enabler.”
He’s not the only one. The days of looking the other way when the NFL puts greed ahead of common decency need to be over for all of us.
Sports, Pages 23 on 10/27/2013