The whole article is gut wrenching but I think this quote sums up the reason football, in its current form, may be ended.
McKee got up and walked across the corridor, back to her office. “There’s one last thing,” she said. She pulled out a large photographic blowup of a brain-tissue sample. “This is a kid. I’m not allowed to talk about how he died. He was a good student. This is his brain. He’s eighteen years old. He played football. He’d been playing football for a couple of years.” She pointed to a series of dark spots on the image, where the stain had marked the presence of something abnormal. “He’s got all this tau. This is frontal and this is insular. Very close to insular. Those same vulnerable regions.” This was a teen-ager, and already his brain showed the kind of decay that is usually associated with old age. “This is completely inappropriate,” she said. “You don’t see tau like this in an eighteen-year-old. You don’t see tau like this in a fifty-year-old.”
With technology now able to see the effects of concussions and other brain related injuries football, and the wear and tear it causes on the body, are being examined even more closely. Will the sport go away entirely? No, there is too much money being made from it. Instead we will see more and more regulation put on the sport, especially at the high school and college levels, until eventually, it becomes unplayable.
