Keeping Our Fun, and Concussions

FOR A LONG TIME NOW, American American-football football players have been getting bigger...and bigger. Its been happening for at least the past fifty years, gradually...and steadily. When I was a kid, in the sixties, college starting lines averaged about 240, and NFL lines weren't much, if any larger. Theories abound. People are getting bigger over the centuries, as nutrition and body building improve. Natural selection, some speculate; American women prefer large American men. So many imaginative theories! The real reasons are two in number; fast food, and weightlifting machines. Abundant, cheap, super tasty calorie laden fast food, and very fancy weight lifting machines, which anybody can use to bench press five hundred pounds, because the machine balances the load so perfectly, and the weight slide so smoothly and predictably up and down the axel. Using free weights I'm a light weight; put me on one of those easy to lift machines, and I bench press twice as much. Everybody does. Extra strength and size, with less effort. Most of the added weight is fat, frankly, if you'll notice. Indeed, much of it is muscle, but muscle invites fat, and the fast food answers the call. Steroids might play a minor part, but American football is, overall, very closely monitored. On the other hand, many if not most professional and college players probably use some for of Performance Enhancing Drug, just barely within the rules, just beyond the current reach of chemical detection. Bigger, stronger, faster players all. Then come the concussions, as violent collisions supply the huge free market demand. Among the many many fundamental problems with which America must soon come to terms, among the many white but reddening elephants in the room, is our national epidemic of concussions. Twenty three percent of Americans report having had a concussion. Slips, falls, barroom fights, whatever. Since that fact might help explain the noticeably high rate of American mental instability, we ought to consider ways of reducing it. Like, making our fun and games less cranially damaging. Just a thought. Don't freak out and fly into a panic, American football fanatics. Chances are, we'll keep right on putting up with large, brain damaged middle aged men. Its just too much fun and excitement to give up.