{"id":29836,"date":"2019-08-09T22:44:03","date_gmt":"2019-08-10T03:44:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=29836"},"modified":"2019-08-09T22:44:03","modified_gmt":"2019-08-10T03:44:03","slug":"briefly-as-much-as-i-love-football-latest-evidence-convinces-me-its-harmful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=29836","title":{"rendered":"Briefly: As much as I love football, latest evidence convinces me it\u2019s harmful"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Alabama-football-players.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-29837\" src=\"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Alabama-football-players.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"460\" height=\"247\" srcset=\"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Alabama-football-players.jpg 460w, https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Alabama-football-players-300x161.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 460px) 100vw, 460px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I love college football and I\u2019m eager for the 2019 season to kick off for my alma mater in three weeks. But as much as I enjoy Alabama football, I would strongly encourage a child not to play the sport. If I\u2019m fortunate enough to have a son, I hope to steer him in the direction of something safer. We\u2019ve known for years that serious injuries are common in football, but the evidence is piling up that the sport does long-term brain damage, even for those who never had obvious injuries. <a href=\"https:\/\/jamanetwork.com\/journals\/jama\/fullarticle\/2645104\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Evidence of brain damage<\/a> called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) has been found in 99 percent of the former NFL players whose brains have been studied after their deaths. And now a new study shows that playing even one season of college football causes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencemag.org\/news\/2019\/08\/just-one-season-playing-football-even-without-concussion-can-cause-brain-damage\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">hidden long-term brain damage<\/a>, even in players who never suffered from a concussion. I still love the game, but I can no longer doubt that it\u2019s too risky for people I care about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I love college football and I\u2019m eager for the 2019 season to kick off for my alma mater in three weeks. But as much as I enjoy Alabama football, I would strongly encourage a child not to play the sport. If I\u2019m fortunate enough to have a son, I hope to steer him in the <a href=\"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=29836\" class=\"more-link\">Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[556],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-briefly","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-7Le","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29836"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29838,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29836\/revisions\/29838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}