Donald Trump is an Idiot

Say what you will about his xenophobic and racist rants, his spray tan and ridiculous hair.  But Donald Trump’s statement that professional football has gotten too “soft” because the players don’t tackle head on anymore is ignorant  and close to criminal.  Why?  Because the mighty head-on tackles that Trump wants to see actually cause the players to contract severe neurological diseases later in life.

Here are Trump’s exact words (well, maybe “exact” isn’t the best term, since he rambles so much…), as quoted in the Washington Post:

 “…so I’m watching a game yesterday. What used to be considered a great tackle, a violent head-on [tackle], a violent — if that was done by Dick Butkus, they’d say he’s the greatest player. If that were done by Lawrence Taylor — it was done by Lawrence Taylor and Dick Butkus and Ray Nitschke, right? Ray Nitschke — you used to see these tackles and it was incredible to watch, right?

“Now they tackle. ‘Oh, head-on-head collision, 15 yards [penalty].’ The whole game is all screwed up. You say, ‘Wow, what a tackle.’ Bing. Flag. Football has become soft. Football has become soft. Now, I’ll be criticized for that. They’ll say, ‘Oh, isn’t that terrible.’ But football has become soft like our country has become soft. [Applause] It’s true. It’s true.”

Apparently, Trump hasn’t been reading my blog (bingo!  bingo!  bingo!  bingo!) or the newspapers all over the country.  The NFL recently lost a class action suit brought on by former players who are suffering from all sorts of neurological diseases caused by the countless concussions they received playing pro football.

Surprisingly, the NFL agreed during this court case that pro football players are likely to suffer from concussion-related illnesses after they retire.

To quote from a NY Times article about this:

Experts for both sides have said they expect about 6,000 of the [NFL] retirees — or nearly 3 in 10 — to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease or moderate dementia someday. The settlement would pay them about $190,000 on average.

Dozens of others are expected to be diagnosed with Parkinson’s or Lou Gehrig’s disease. Younger men with these conditions could get up to several million dollars for medical care and other expenses

But medical evidence be damned, according to troglodyte Trump!  That’s why I say it’s criminal for him to bemoan the lack of “violent” (his word) head-on tackles these days.  Sports like football and boxing, as they are currently played, inevitably result in permanent brain damage to the athletes, which in turn often ruins the rest of their lives.

For an example of what happened to one NFL star, here’s a summary of Mike Webster’s life after he left pro football (from GQ):

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.

If you read the GQ article, you’ll find case after case like this.  You’ll also find ample evidence that the NFL did everything it could to discredit neurological findings on diseased football players.

(Side note:  here’s Wikipedia‘s explanation on Webster’s death:  “His exact cause of death was first announced to be a heart attack by the Steelers’ management, but this was later recanted.  Webster’s cause of death has not been released from the hospital at his family’s request.  His doctors were of the opinion that multiple concussions during his career damaged his frontal lobe, which caused cognitive dysfunction.“)

I wracked my own brain trying to come up with a suitable conclusion to this post, but then decided to let a recent New Yorker cartoon do the work for me.  It’s about boxing, but the sentiment applies.

“Oh, that sounds awful—I can only imagine how you must be feeling.”

Note:  Photo of Trump at the top of this post is by Michael Vadon, downloaded from Wikimedia Commons.