BENNET OMALU, CONCUSSIONS, AND THE NFL: HOW ONE DOCTOR CHANGED FOOTBALL FOREVER.
On a foggy, steel gray Saturday in September 2002, Bennet Omalu arrived at the Allegheny County coroner’s office and got his assignment for the day: Perform an autopsy on the body of Mike Webster, a professional football player. Omalu did not, unlike most 34-year-old men living in a place like Pittsburgh, have an appreciation for American football. He was born in the jungles of Biafra during a Nigerian air raid, and certain aspects of American life puzzled him. From what he could tell, football was rather a pointless game, a lot of big fat guys bashing into each other. In fact, had he not been watching the news that morning, he may not have suspected anything unusual at all about the body on the slab.
The coverage that week had been bracing and disturbing and exciting. Dead at 50. Mike Webster! Nine-time Pro Bowler. Hall of Famer. “Iron Mike,” legendary Steelers center for fifteen seasons. His life after football had been mysterious and tragic, and on the news they were going on and on about it. What had happened to him? How does a guy go from four Super Bowl rings to…pissing in his own oven and squirting Super Glue on his rotting teeth? Mike Webster bought himself a Taser gun, used that on himself to treat his back pain, would zap himself into unconsciousness just to get some sleep. Mike Webster lost all his money, or maybe gave it away. He forgot. A lot of lawsuits. Mike Webster forgot how to eat, too. Soon Mike Webster was homeless, living in a truck, one of its windows replaced with a garbage bag and tape.
I say this exceedingly rarely about anything in GQ, but read the whole thing.
I found the above 2008 article last night after Glenn linked to the article by Webster’s son on his dad’s phenomenally tough training regimen. I knew Webster’s life ended badly, but had no idea how nightmarish his last days truly were. But it is fascinating to see the DNC-MSM pivot from “OMG, we must disband the NFL right now – if it saves one player’s life, it’s worth it,” to “OMG, look at how brave the athletes are and what a wonderful platform the NFL provides them to speak out for social justice,” thanks to one speech from Trump. Or as Howie Carr wrote last Sunday in the Boston Herald, “The Liberal Media Hated the NFL – Until Yesterday.”
The GQ piece explicitly compares the NFL to the tobacco industry during the ‘60s and ‘70s, and as Michael Walsh wrote last week in a piece titled “Farewell to the NFL,” “Football, which is practically the state religion in Texas and across the South, used to be closely tied up with patriotism and love of country. The militaristic component of the sport, which was presented as akin to war, appealed especially to red-state dwellers. But sportscasters and sportswriters are overwhelmingly leftist in their outlook, and their eagerness to turn Kaepernick into a civil-rights icon has repelled a sizable section of football’s core audience — and one that, by the current evidence is growing.”
And Roger Goodell played along from the start — in an era when he’ll need as much support as possible from fans to keep his sport alive moving forward.