Poe’s Perspective: The concussion issue is more than just a moral dilemma

As we head into Super Bowl mania, it’s hard to escape football in any aspect of life. Especially here in Los Angeles, where fans are enjoying the city’s first Super Bowl in decades only a few years after the Rams’ relocation. It seems like L.A. might just become a football city after all.

But a separate story about the state of football has been brewing quietly on the sidelines, in the background of the past week’s show-stopping finishes and referee debates. Last week, an ESPN investigation revealed that the NFL is struggling to insure its players.

Only one insurance company — a subsidiary of American International Group — will continue to work with the NFL anymore, due to the massive demands of workers’ compensation in a sport that guarantees regular injuries. Due to its lack of options, the league is now at the mercy of this company, and can no longer offer general liability insurance that will cover neurological damage for its athletes. This means that an NFL player who is sidelined with a traumatic brain injury will not receive any type of insurance as he recovers.

This stark reality reflects the practical, business-minded underbelly of this crisis — concussions are just too damn expensive. As the insurance and legal industries continue to come to grips with this realization, football will begin to see the effects.

Since the concussion conversation became mainstream, the main question gripping fans of the game has revolved around its timeline: How long does the sport have left? There are small ripples throughout the NFL, with a player or two leaving the sport to avoid brain trauma each year, and there are even larger effects at the youth level, where a pivot towards touch and flag football has been emphasized with hopes of preserving the game.

But the idea that football could actually just disappear seems outlandish and outrageous. College and professional football are mainstays of the American economy and lifestyle. Too many people wear jerseys, buy tickets and plan their weekends around their teams, right? Concussions are a frightening, gruesome challenge, but it simply doesn’t seem as if anything is quite big enough to topple America’s game.

That’s true, to a degree. No moral indignation will ever be strong enough to upend football — not over race or sexism, domestic violence or head trauma. As much as I, or any sportswriter, might belabor the point, there’s always the understanding that enough will never be enough. It won’t even matter if — or, more likely, when — a player is paralyzed or killed on the field. Football will continue to march on, unencumbered by moral dilemma.

But football can’t march on without insurance. This raises an argument that isn’t moral, but rather pragmatic. As concussions worsen, insurance will get more and more costly, and at a point, it will become completely impractical for any company to insure players. Why insure a franchise when every single one of its employees is guaranteed to sustain a life-altering brain injury? Why buy in when the risks are well-known, accepted and inevitable?

It’s been widely accepted that football will fall at the youth level before it will diminish at the upper levels, where it has become a major industry. When it comes to this insurance dilemma, this pattern will certainly follow.

Rising insurance premiums are already threatening the viability of programs at the youth, high school and even community college levels. Last year, the Maricopa County Community Colleges in Arizona completely cut their football programs because their insurance plans and overall liability were simply too expensive for the schools to justify keeping the program.

Only two days after Los Angeles teachers finalized a deal to end a week-long strike for higher wages, it’s hard to imagine how public school districts will continue to rationalize the soaring costs of insuring their athletes while continuing to struggle to pay educators. Although the idea of high school in America without football might sound foreign, it could become a foregone conclusion as schools struggle to balance their budgets.

And a decrease in the youth pipeline would spark the slow demise of football that many have predicted. Fewer players at the youth and high school levels will mean a smaller pool of both players and fans, as both athletic and non-athletic children are raised on basketball and baseball over the years rather than football. With fewer kids playing, fewer athletes and superfans will be bred, leaving the NFL weakened in the shadow of the already-booming NBA.

The concussion conversation will inevitably spell the end of football as the powerhouse of American sports, and it deserves a place in every aspect of football, including the festivities of Super Bowl weekend. But when looking toward the eventual downfall of the sport, it’s becoming increasingly naive to predict that purely emotional arguments will drive this demise. Instead, just follow the money — that’s what runs, and will ultimately end, the industry of football.

Julia Poe is a senior writing about her personal connection to sports. Her column, “Poe’s Perspective,” runs weekly on Thursdays.