JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

It was about six years ago, as some of you might recall, that I swore off pro football, mainly because of the high incidence of concussions and the disproportionate rate of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (C.T.E.) among former pro football players.

In 2017, I vowed to also give up college football, meaning I stopped going to KU games to see the school’s outstanding marching band. (I would almost drive over there just to hear the band’s soul-settling rendition of “Home on the Range,” which it plays after every home game.)

In about 2018, though, when “Mahomes Magic” struck Kansas City in a big way, I began drifting back, plowing over my principles. By the time of the Super-Bowl-winning season, 2019-2020, I had abandoned all pretense of boycotting football. I cheered as loud as anybody and jumped as high out of my chair as anyone when Mahomes threw his 44-yard (57 in the air) “Wasp” pass to Tyreek Hill against the San Francisco 49ers.

I watched with anguish last year when we lost the heart-breaker to Tampa Bay and Tom Brady, and I was a nervous wreck on Sunday, alternately sitting on the edge of the couch and walking back and forth between kitchen and living room in an effort to fend off the nerves during the Bills game.

The last 13 seconds of regulation left me spellbound and disbelieving, and when overtime began, I was so addled and undone that I got in the car and delivered dinner prepared by Patty to our daughter Brooks in Waldo. I was in Brooks’ driveway, listening on the radio, when Mahomes threw the game-winner to Travis Kelce.

Only then did I start to breathe normally.

That’s a long way of getting to the gist of this post: How I could so easily abandon my commitment to principle and return to watching football regularly while little or nothing has changed on the concussion-C.T.E. front?

I kind of understood how I could do it, but I didn’t quite have the words for it. Then, in yesterday’s New York Times, a writer for the paper’s Opinion section spelled it out for me.

The writer, Jay Caspian Kang, had a story under the headline, “We Used to Care that Football Players Got Concussions.”

He started like this…

Of all the disappearing stories in the American consciousness, none has receded from the public eye quite like football concussions. It’s hard to remember now, but less than a decade ago, President Barack Obama said that if he had a son, he would have to think ‘long and hard’ before letting him play football.

He noted that many stories were published about parents pulling their children from youth and high school football and how “obituaries were written for the future of the sport.” He cited a study that found C.T.E. in 110 of 111 deceased N.F.L. players.

But, obviously, that burst of concern was short lived. What has evolved, Kang said, is a “concussion ritual” that occurs routinely:

A player is knocked out, the TV announcers say, “Well, you hate to see this”; the player gets carted away or staggers off to the designated blue medical tent; the sideline reporter tells the audience that the player will not be returning to action. All this is done in somber tones with the implicit understanding that the player will probably be back in a week or two.

That’s essentially what happened early in Sunday’s game after a Chiefs’ player inadvertently struck teammate Tyrann Mathieu in the head with his leg and knocked the star defensive back out of the game and into “concussion protocol.”

Like everyone else in Kansas City, I’m sure, I did not turn off the TV in disgust. Like everyone else, my next thought was, “Who’s going to replace him?” (For the record it was Daniel Sorensen.)

Back to Kang’s story…Moving toward his main point, Kang said the passage of time and fans’ resignation to the inevitability of head injuries in football had led us to where we are today in our acceptance of football’s health hazards.

Kang’s “kicker” paragraph summed it up perfectly…

The way we watch football today feels like a capitulation that’s interesting because of how common this kind of giving in has become in modern life. We, the concerned public, may flare up our indignation for a short period when faced with an obvious problem — from school shootings to Covid policy — but there’s no real sense that we can do anything about these issues that make us mad. This doesn’t mean we are unaware or even particularly apathetic — again, nine out of 10 sports fans believe concussions are a problem in football; it’s more that we have no faith that we can change our institutions and, with ample evidence and sound reason, have dropped the belief that we even should have any input into how they choose to do business. What usually remains are the empty displays of concern we see every Sunday: the collective wincing when the inevitable happens, the hope that the harmed will be OK and then the quick move to a different subject.

Capitulation. Feeling hopeless about our ability to bring about meaningful change.

As Kang suggested, that’s where we are politically, for the most part:

What can we do about the “red” states that are intent on making it more difficult for big-city residents, particularly members of minority groups, to vote easily?

What can we do about the Missouri General Assembly’s drive to make it virtually impossible for a statewide initiative petition to succeed, by raising the threshold for approval from a simple majority vote to a two-thirds majority?

And that’s where we are in football — resigned to the fact that the N.F.L. owners and the commissioner aren’t going to make a serious attempt to reduce head injuries and we can’t do anything about it.

So, we keep watching. It’s entertaining, it’s exciting and, hell, it’s possibly our Kansas City Chiefs going to the Super Bowl for the third straight year!

It’s also likely that one or more of the Chiefs who are giving us those spine-tingling performances will end up half out of their minds later in life and come to a bitter end, like many other former players have.

But that’s 20 or so years from now. Not today. Today it’s still shock and awe about our guy having moved the ball 44 yards downfield in 10 seconds to set up the game-tying field goal.

That’s just the way it is and the way it’s going to be for a long time.