When Kant Played Football . . . Or, Injury and Dehumanization In College Sports

One of the more worrying trends at Universities and colleges in the United States is the increasing emphasis on collegiate sports over academics.  To be fair, sports have an important place.  Douglas MacArthur, while commander of West Point, called the athletic pitch "The field of friendly strife."  He saw the link between martial virtues and sports clearly.  The emphasize camaraderie and physical courage, and helped foster a sense of tribal affiliation among onlookers.  The dedication of ardent fans is really the only proof you'll need: It is why riots break out when one team loses.

In college sports, those rivalries aren't quite as intense (we hope).  They are nonetheless pervasive, and generate a level of commitment which solidifies unique brand loyalties.  And universities aren't particularly cagey about fostering that loyalty.  When Oregon State University shifted to a new logo and new uniforms for the 2013 season Head Coach Mike Riley made it clear that it was part of a strategy to boost recruiting.

Though why anyone would want to be one of the Nutrias is beyond me

“This stuff absolutely matters to kids, and I think it looks really sharp [. . .] It’s cool that the kids are so excited about it. During the season, we were able to sneak a peak at some of the helmets, and the guys loved it.”

And success on the field has significant impact on university recruitment in general.  A winning team attracts high school juniors who care less about academics than who has the better team.  In Oregon, a state without major league sports, college football rivalry is elevated to the same status as the 49s vs Raiders.  But the same is true elsewhere.  According to a CNBC report, college football

pulls in $5 billion a year, which is more than Facebook, Twitter, and Candy Crush combined.

The singular difference between college football of today, and MacArthur's "field of friendly strife" is that today economic forces compel each team to compete not just on the field but also on the free market.  The central tenet of free-market ideology is that competition refines a product and establishes equilibrium between supply and demand.

(AP photo/Bill Haber)

The inherent problem in this equation is that the product are human beings struggling not to be better football players (we hope) but rather to become educated members of society.  We trust that education is the end, and that football is a means to accomplishing those goals.  But as football becomes commoditized, the people are increasingly marginalized.

It seems like a truism, but winning is the goal; human beings are lumped onto one side of the equation which ultimately yields victory.  While most coaches, and certainly university administrators would argue that they ultimately have the students' interests in mind, market forces offer incentives to behave as though players were cogs in the athletic machine.

The evidence for that atmosphere of commoditization is mounting.  Today, PBS released a documentary on the dangers of professional football.  "League of Denial: The NFL's Concussion Crisis" highlights the work of Dr. Bennet Omalu.  A pathologist trained in neuropathology, Omalu examined the brain of Mike Webster, a former Hall of Fame player who retired in 1991.  Webster died in 2002 following mental degeneration which left him staring into space in a Pittsburgh train station.  When Omalu examined Webster's brain, instead of finding traces of Alzheimer's, he discovered that "its cells had been strangled by excess tau proteins released after collisions."  His diagnosis of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) should have been a wake up call to NFL doctors, but instead they minimized his findings and appealed to him to keep quiet.

“‘Bennet, do you know the implications of what you’re doing?’” Omalu recalled being asked by a league doctor. “He said, ‘If 10 percent of mothers in this country would begin to perceive football as a dangerous sport, that is the end of football.’”

According to the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy, chronic traumatic encephalopathy is a progressive degenerative disease found in the brains of people who experience multiple concussions.  Certain athletes are particularly prone to them, and was thought to be limited to sports such as boxing and hockey which traditionally experience high rates of concussion.  More worrying is that subconcussive hits -- violent hits that are nevertheless not traumatic enough to cause a concussion -- also cause CTE by causing a buildup of the abnormal protein tau.  "These changes in the brain can begin months, years, or even decades after the last brain trauma or end of active athletic involvement."  Despite ardent attempts to reduce harm, the damage might already be there.  Since CTE is exacerbated by every hit, a long history of trauma further heightens athletes' risk.

The link between the NFL and college sports isn't subtle.  Watch a game and as the on-screen stats pop up, notice where each player went to college.  At the professional level, college affiliation doesn't matter.  Instead, it reinforces which school is a good football school.  It's a feedback loop that promotes college programs and helps recruitment.  The academic implications are worrying enough, but the documentary goes on to make a profound criticism.

One of the world’s leading authorities on the topic, Dr. Ann McKee, told the filmmakers she thinks it’s possible every athlete in pro football has CTE in one form or another, and that the condition may also affect high school and college players. This means there are tens of millions of former and current players who are potentially susceptible to the disease’s long-term effects—anger, agitation, a loss of focus and memory. Even those who don’t care about football should care about what resembles a public health crisis. [Emphasis my own.]

So while we as consumers of athletic entertainment demand teams with higher win-loss ratios, we inadvertently expose our children to exponential levels of harm.

Certainly, this is not a call to end high school, college, or professional sports.  But it should be a call to re-evaluate our roles in a worrying trend, and ponder how we think about our athletes.

I'll just leave this here to think about.

Are they human beings and (as Kant said) worthy to be considered as ends unto themselves, or are they facilitators of our entertainment?  Because if they are merely cogs in the machine whose goal is literally a goal, then we needn't accommodate demands for increased protection any more than we would for a prize horse, or a NASCAR stock car.

The very fact that we do consider their appeals for basic protection reveals that we are uncomfortable making that distinction.  I'd argue that we should in fact be working toward maximizing protection, which might mean slowing down the game, or de-emphasizing our own need for entertainment.

This isn't to say that all risk can or should be eliminated from our lives.  Hardiness and resilience are necessary virtues, and should be cultivated in our children.  Moreover, college sports have consistently facilitated social mobility, offering an opportunity for low-income students to access advanced education.  And lest we become the Long Island middle school that banned cartwheels, we have to accept that some risk is unavoidable.  But we ought not revel in it, or reduce players to means to an end.