The Panoptiblog

I complained a couple months ago about Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker story about concussions in the NFL. And while I stand by my criticism, this story by Jeff Pearlman, about former Oakland Raider Dave Pear certainly lends credence to Gladwell’s overall point about the state it leaves people in.

He is, in basic terms, a train wreck — a football-inflicted train wreck. Pear walks with a cane and, often, simply doesn’t walk at all. He suffers from vertigo and memory loss. Over the past 18 years, he has undergone eight surgeries, beginning with a Posterior Cervical Laminectomy on his neck in 1981, and including disc removal and rod fusion in his back (1987), arthroplasty in his left hip (2008) and, earlier this year, four screws removed from his lower back. Though he chalks up his physical ailments to snap after snap of punishment, he pinpoints the biggest problems back to 1979 and ’80, his final two NFL seasons. While playing for Oakland, Pear suffered a herniated disc in his neck that never improved. Despite the unbearable agony, he says the Raiders urged him to keep playing.

Ta-Nehisi Coates said later that the piece had changed the way he watched the game, that it’s now harder to watch the vicious hits with the same enthusiasm. [Sorry, can't find the link!] I wouldn’t necessarily say Gladwell’s piece alone did that to me, but the combination of that piece, along with the other attention given to the issue of concussions, does make me think twice every time somebody gets blown up, or when someone gets carted off the field. Now if more attention gets paid to all the other ways players get chewed up and spit out, I wonder how the NFL will react.