Mike Luckovich, editorial cartoonist of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for cartooning. His work also appears in Time, the New York Times and other media. He is distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate.
© Atlanta Journal-Constitution - All Rights Reserved.
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Bruce4671 said, 4 months ago
http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2011/03/01/top-10-most-dangerous-jobs/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sportspeople_who_died_during_their_careers
http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/04/health/football-brain-disease
Ok fine. Are we going to ban football now? How about all the other dangerous jobs? Please look at the top ten list, football isn’t there. But it IS a dangerous profession.
Football is also lucrative. It creates a BUNCH of jobs.
Haven’t we always know that being a “gladiator” can kill you?
The Wolf In Your Midst said, 4 months ago
@Bruce4671
We shouldn’t have to ban football. We should be too revolted by it to watch a single minute of play. But tribalistic violence- watching “us” hurt “them”- is the underpinning of American society.
We should at least be honest enough with ourselves to say “Yeah, we’re barbarians; we pay young men millions of dollars to destroy each other on a field for our amusement, rather than educate them to advance us as a species”.
Gore Bane said, 4 months ago
So in the mind of Luckovich, NFL players are being forced to play the game against their will. We all have a moral duty to rescue them!
Mhic Dhu Ghaill
said, 4 months ago
Article in AUTOWEEK , developer of racing helmets and HANS device turning to football/lacross etc…a fix is possible. Maybe the best would to remove all padding like rugby and aussie foot ball.
DrCanuck said, 4 months ago
Ah, c’mon. If they HAD brains, they wouldn’t be football players in the first place, now would they?
trusty2 said, 4 months ago
Wow, this very graphic cartoon is very powerful. It gets you really thinking about whether the glory is worth the grotesque reality of scrambled brains. If grown men want to take this risk that’s up to them. But I like to think of some junior high or high school athlete looking at this cartoon and asking himself if the game of football as it exists today is really worth it — to him, to his family, to his friends.
Rockngolfer said, 4 months ago
There is a new fabric cap that has wires and sensors that can be plugged into a usb port. When the players helmet takes a hit, you plug the cap into a computer to see a green, yellow, or red indicator to determine if the player should continue the game or be checked out by a doctor before playing again.
Rockngolfer said, 4 months ago
Hmm. There are several companies working on various systems to put sensors in helmets. Some cost upward of $1,000. Hope this doesn’t go like the Beta-VCR or the Blu-ray and other format wars where consumers lose a lot of money.
braindead08 said, 4 months ago
^ If the indicator comes up red, and there is a penalty, either live or upon further review, the hitter should be out of the game for as long as the injured player is out — without salary for the pros.
-
You would see the game change in a hurry.
trusty2 said, 4 months ago
@Rockngolfer
Pretty cool!
Rockngolfer said, 4 months ago
Some of the rule changes that went into effect (last year?) like moving the kickofff up, calling a penalty for hitting with the helmet, and automatic review of some plays may have helped some.
I think that they can make the game exciting without hauling someone off the field every few minutes.
hippogriff said, 4 months ago
Mhic Dhu Ghaill: Do any readers have comparative figures on brain injuries in US football versus more open movement games like Canadian football, rugby (at least the scrum starts in contact), Australian rules, etc.?
.
braindead08: Good in theory, but “the hitter” is just the last in a long series of hitters. It is the cumulative effect that is what does the damage.
Bandusia15 said, 4 months ago
@hippogriff
Australian Rules doesn’t seem to have any brain injuries despite the players not wearing helmets. Intelligent men, some with university degrees have played the game, become fathers and gone on to become football coaches, all without brain injury.
echoraven said, 4 months ago
@The Wolf In Your Midst
Lots of people have taken some smart pills today. Well said!
singlespeed said, 4 months ago
Considering the number of NFL players that suffer from multiple concussions and then exhibit long-term effects of multiple concussive impacts to the head (not to mention the physical strains) the NFL pretends there isn’t any evidence to link head-on collisions to concussions. They can move the kick-off locations all they want and even put sensors in a helmet but until the NFL and the players’ union put a rigorous helmet standard in place there will still be brain-damaged players out there.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/sports/football/despite-risks-nfl-leaves-helmet-choices-in-players-hands.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Heck even the NHL realized after years of not requiring helmets and visors (after older retired players died of similar brain damage related issues) has a standard for helmets.
People think spending more than $50 on a bicycle helmet or $100 on a motorcycle helmet is crazy but when you think about it, if you’re not willing to spend some money on a well designed, well tested and higher performance helmet for the most important part of your body then don’t complain when you end up with a brain as effective as swiss-cheese.
Having received mild-concussions snow-boarding and on a couple of bike crashes a good helmet is my most important piece of equipment. I’d rather spend $100 replacing a cracked helmet than who knows how much on a cracked brain-pan. One is replaceable, the other is not.