There are not many jobs that will pay a 24-year-old $540,000 for six months' work.
That's what San Francisco 49ers linebacker Chris Borland stood to make this football season. That's what he walked away from last week. Conceivably it could have been a lot more. After being drafted in the third round last year, Borland signed a four-year contract worth just under $3 million. (That included a $617,436 signing bonus. The 49ers now have the right to recover 75 percent of that bonus--$463,077--from Borland. That would be a difficult check for most of us to write.) But his real payday would have come after he played out that rookie contract and become a sought-after free agent. Borland could have been on track for a multiyear, multimillion-dollar contract.
But he decided it was too risky to continue. He stepped away from the game because he was worried about the toll our gladiatorial pastime was taking on his body. Specifically, he was worried about the effects of repeatedly banging his head.
"I just honestly want to do what's best for my health," Borland told ESPN.com investigative reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru. "From what I've researched and what I've experienced, I don't think it's worth the risk ...."
The risk is considerable. We are only beginning to find out about the long-term brain damage football players risk, and while some decry the "sissification of football" it's only prudent to try and limit head-to-head collisions and turn down at least some of the game's violence. In announcing his decision, Borland cited the cases of Mike Webster, Dave Duerson and Ray Easterling, three former NFL players who experienced symptoms of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the degenerative brain disease associated with head trauma, after they retired from football. Duerson and Easterling killed themselves, while Webster--who spent 17 years in the NFL and was the first former player diagnosed with CTE--died at the age of 50 after spending years suffering from amnesia, depression and dementia.
The discoverer of CTE, Nigerian-born pathologist Bennet Omalu, examined Webster's brain after his death and found it as damaged as one of "boxers, very old people with Alzheimer's disease or someone who had suffered a severe head wound."
Webster was a center for the Pittsburgh Steelers' championship teams in the '70s, and he might have been an extreme case. He hit and was hit on practically every snap, and he often used his head as a battering ram. As a middle linebacker, Borland was similarly engaged in the game's close combat. But even so-called "skill position players," who play further away from the middle of the field and theoretically don't absorb the constant pounding that occurs at the line of scrimmage, are at risk. Bengals wide receiver Chris Henry, who played five seasons before he fell from the back of a pickup truck and was killed during a domestic dispute with his girlfriend, was found to have developed CTE during his playing career. Henry was just 26 years old when he died.
Now it's true that other sports have their head trauma problems; soccer players may be at higher risk for concussion than football players, and boxing is a barbaric, indefensible institution. And part of the cost of living is the assumption of certain risks. Newspaper columnists probably have higher rates of obesity and heart disease than occupations that get you out in the fresh air and make you move around. There are plenty of jobs that are a lot more dangerous and pay a lot worse than the NFL--firefighters, police and members of the military don't make in their careers what some NFL players make in a year. Someone else will eagerly take Borland's place; I don't expect the NFL will ever lack for volunteers willing to sacrifice their bodies for a chance at glory and the chance to be "exploited" by NFL owners.
Yet Borland's retirement feels like a signal event. A young man who has options has decided that the risks of football aren't worth the reward. He's banked a little money, now he intends to move on, to do something else. Maybe he'll regret it, maybe he'll come back to football. Maybe he'll even play this next season. But the important thing is, he did some research and it gave him pause. He saw something that scared him.
And Borland's decision is going to make it harder for some mothers and fathers to let their kids play football. Maybe not that many of them, because football is America's Game, a cultural institution that some folks treat as a secular church. You can make the argument that the game gives more than it takes, trot out the old coach's homilies about it building or revealing character, and if the kid is potentially good enough to earn a scholarship or a paycheck by blocking and tackling, running or throwing, then it will be difficult to voluntarily foreclose the option.
But they will think longer and harder about it than our parents did, and maybe more of them will try to channel their children's energy into pursuits that don't involve knocking heads. Maybe eventually, a generation or three down the line, middle-class kids will abandon football for more genteel games, and football will become the new boxing--an avenue for self-improvement available to the poor and desperate. But so long as it pays, there will be gladiators.
I don't mind saying that I'm as hypocritical as the next guy when it comes to sports. I enjoy the games, and part of me believes in the myth of sports as a means to self-knowledge. For all our fine talk about character and grit, the primary lesson of sport is that bigger, faster and stronger generally prevails. At the very highest levels where there is little to physically separate the elite from the ordinary, intelligence and determination and other immeasurable qualities play a large role. But most of us eventually discover that it doesn't really matter what is in your heart if you're playing against someone who is bigger, stronger and better than you are. Most of us are eventually humbled by our games, and that seems to me a good thing.
Sports can be beneficial for kids if they have centered coaches who care more about their charges than the outcomes, but chasing a ball or putting your head in someone's chest is not an inherently noble exercise. And once the games become a business--which they do at the high school or college level these days--that's really all they are. All the buzzwords and the chatter are really just enticements, part of the sales job that leads us to identify with and support our tribes. In such an environment it's possible for a player to develop allegiances and maybe even believe in excellence as something more than a way of soliciting brand loyalty, but almost all of them will eventually learn their true value to their teams.
And they might envy Chris Borland, who quit while he was ahead.
pmartin@arkansasonline.com
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Editorial on 03/22/2015