Opinion: Contact sports cause CTE. So why are Americans watching more football than ever?
A neurologist explains why knowing about CTE doesn’t keep Americans from watching football.
In January 2023, minutes after Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field following a tackle, my cellphone was humming with a steady stream of messages from friends, family, and acquaintances who had been watching the game. How could this happen, they wanted to know. Could a single, seemingly routine collision between two very-large men really cause one of their hearts to abruptly stop beating?
It could, and it had, I found myself explaining to the non-physicians in my social orbit over the next few days as Hamlin remained on ventilator support in the ICU. At the time, Hamlin was 24 years old and appeared to be in peak physical health. To have seen the life, quite literally, clobbered out of him was highly distressing, to say the least, and those who witnessed the sudden collapse — even if from the comfort of their own recliners — were, understandably, shaken. I had many football-focused conversations that week, and a significant number of them ended with my interlocutor somberly vowing to take the dangers of the game more seriously.
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