You didn’t hear much about the dangers of football on Super Bowl Sunday, even though people do talk about it.
But in the days before the clash between the Chiefs and 49ers on the field, there were some people talking about it, having run into them here in San Diego.
A mom for instance who told me her kids, who are now adults, telling her that they were not happy with her when they were growing up because she wouldn’t let them play football because she worried about the serious injuries that can happen.
And in the days before the Super Bowl someone who knew Junior Seau very well told me about the scary lack of memory and the depression that happened in Seau’s life before he took his own life.
Seau and many other players did and some still do suffer CTE, the neurodegenerative disease associated with football brain trauma. And a few players have recently retired early to avoid it.
And then there was a sportswriter at Time.com who wrote a piece in the days before the Super Bowl raising the question, that even with pro football being the most watched sport, whether it’s bad for kids to watch it for fear of becoming attracted to it, playing it and being hurt by it.
But with the Super Bowl behind us and the football season now over, maybe it’s a good time for all of us to talk about it.
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