Lowell Cohn: NFL not the villain

Come one. Come all. It's time to dump on the NFL.

One local writer likened the league to the totalitarian government of North Korea, although last anyone heard, the NFL has no nukes, no army, no wacko dictator.

But OK. Dump away.

It's all about concussions and the class action lawsuit of former players, and how the players and the league just settled. The league pays former players — even ones not in the class action suit — 765 million bucks.

That's a lot of bucks by anyone's reckoning, but disgruntled sports writers who never suffered a concussion except falling down drunk in a bar say it's not enough because the league earns as much as some countries, and it got off cheap and the league is immoral and, well, dump on.

In my younger and more vulnerable years (thanks, F. Scott), I would have agreed with all that stuff. I went to college in the '60s, helped close down Stanford during student sit-ins, embraced the concept "pigs of the power structure," and lectured my poor, long-suffering parents that if they weren't part of the solution, they were part of the problem.

So, I can relate to younger writers who consider the NFL the evil empire. It's just that life has complexities, which I'm still learning about — thank God. It's just that the NFL could have held up this litigation with former players for years, maybe even decades. It's just that the NFL is willing to pay now while these poor men who suffered brain trauma are alive and can benefit from the dough.

Why is that so awful?

In my brain, admittedly addled from years of finding the right verb and avoiding adverbs, the NFL seems — dare I say? — humane.

I feel like I just sold out my entire generation.

Writers are peevish because the NFL admitted no liability, even though it's pretty clear the league knew for a long time about the inherent dangers of football. And writers are peevish because the league specifically is not liable for money damages resulting from lawsuits over brain injuries current and future players may suffer — will suffer.

This lack of liability in the future is supposed to make the league bad. Not to me it doesn't. For me this is the big issue. Please allow me to explain.

Football is a dangerous game, really dangerous. Every current player and every future player knows about the danger. If he doesn't, he's been living under a rock. When a player chooses to enter the NFL, he makes that choice with full knowledge of the risks.

We live in a world of free choice. This is my axiom. I am confident in my axiom.

If a current or future player freely chooses to enter the NFL, he has no right to sue for money when his career is over because he suffered brain injury. Sorry, he just doesn't.

I want to make a detour to boxing, my favorite sport, but this also could apply to mixed martial arts, so popular now.

In boxing and football, competitors suffer head trauma. Muhammad Ali has not been able to talk for years. By the time Rocky Graziano died, he didn't know who he was.

Brain trauma.

No boxer, to my knowledge, ever sued anyone because he got hit in the head. Every boxer knows going in he will take one in the kisser. Sugar Ray Robinson, the greatest fighter ever, ended up confused and babbling. He knew the risks when he took up boxing and he suffered for those risks that he freely took. "Freely" is the operative word.

Note: Some people want to ban boxing. I am not arguing the issue here. That is for another day.

I applaud people who choose to take risks and accept the consequences — boxers, mountain climbers, soccer players, football players.

No one ever made such a fuss about boxers, the kind they're making about football players. Boxers don't have a union. Most boxers didn't go to college. They are individual practitioners who bravely embrace the perils of their profession. And they don't complain.

Writers don't much care about boxers. The sport is small and the fighters often are from the Third World. Football players, the writers can relate to.

I want football players to be as brave and uncomplaining as boxers. I guarantee an offensive lineman now in college will eventually enter the NFL and suffer life-changing brain trauma, the kind former welterweight and middleweight champ Emile Griffith suffered. I want this hypothetical lineman to suffer his fate bravely — a fate he freely chose — to suffer his fate without suing the NFL.

If he can't do that, he should become a sports writer. The pay isn't so hot, but you live a long life and no one tackles you or wallops you in the coconut.

For more on the world of sports in general and the Bay Area in particular, go to the Cohn Zohn at cohn.blogs.pressdemocrat.com. You can reach Staff Columnist Lowell Cohn at lowell.cohn@pressdemocrat.com.