What Else Can You Do?

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Brain damage. They all have brain damage. And they’ll likely die from it. Like Aaron Hernandez.

99 out of every 100 football players have serious brain damage.

Kneeling for CTE #

NFL players and owners decided to show their disrespect to the flag, law enforcement, and the USA by kneeling during the national anthem. In a foreign country.

The president responded by saying the NFL (and the TV networks) would be in big trouble if people stopped watching or attending games.

Not everybody will stop watching football, of course. Just certain people. People, like me, who served in the military. People, like me, who have kids in the military. People, like me, who have loved ones in law enforcement. People, like me, who put America first.

Even among people like me, though, there’s a problem. What else can you do? On a Sunday afternoon, a Monday or Thursday night, what else could you possibly do?

What Else Is There? #

It’s not like you have any choices. I mean, can you think of anything to do besides watching football?

Of course not. There’s nothing else on television. Netflix shuts down during football games. You don’t have any family or friends to visit. There’s no work to be done. No floors to be swept. No bedrooms to be painted. No laundry to be folded. No books to be read. Nothing to be done, is there?

When there’s a football game on, there’s nothing else to do. You almost have to watch those large, mostly minority men, get concussed. In fact, the new American pastime is watching men develop brain damage one play at a time. (See Aaron Hernandez family’s lawsuit against the NFL.)

Football, Suicide, Homicide, and Assault #

Sure, you could go to PredictIt.org and bet on the next NFLer to commit suicide or kill a loved one, but that only takes a minute. Football games last 3.5 hours with all the commercials. But you could, if you wanted to make some money on it, bet on NFL player suicides and felonies. It’s one way to take back some of the money people wasted on Rams' personal seat licenses.

Several ex-NFL players (Junior Seau, Dave Duerson, Andre Waters, Ray Easterling) who took their own lives were diagnosed with CTE postmortem. CTE victims have struggled with impulse control, turned violent against their spouses, abused drugs, raged and acted irrationally. In 2012 Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher, who had CTE, killed his girlfriend before shooting himself. —TIME Magazine

Come to think of it, maybe that’s what the whole NFL is doing by kneeling: committing suicide as a league.

Yesterday, I was a little angry at the NFL. Today, I’m angrier. Yesterday, I was angry about the anti-American sentiment of the commissioner and the players he owns. Today, I’m angry at the NFL and its owners. They make money by damaging men’s brains. The NFL and its sponsors are as bad as cigarette makers.

How Can You Watch? #

After reading this TIME magazine article, I feel sorry for NFL players. They’re basically emotionally disturbed. Because of football. Football makes you crazy. Mentally or emotionally, football players can’t really be considered competent:

[T]he Journal of the American Medical Association published a study in which researchers examined the brains of 111 deceased NFL players; 110 of them, or 99%, had CTE. Just this week, a study in the journal Nature’s _Translational Psychiatry _found that among of sample of 214 former high school, college, and professional players, playing tackle football before the age of 12 increased the odds of problems with behavioral regulation, apathy and executive functioning later in life by twofold, and the odds of suffering symptoms of depression threefold.

If you can think of something else to do while football’s going on, please share it in the comments below. Consider this a public service. You wouldn’t want to take pleasure in watching men get brain damage for their owner’s enrichment, would you?