‘The sport is designed for this to happen’: Tua Tagovailoa is not an exception

IIn Thursday night’s NFL game between the Miami Dolphins and Buffalo Bills, Miami’s $212 million quarterback Tua Tagovailoa suffered his fourth documented concussion, and his third since entering the NFL, after colliding with defensive back Damar Hamlin, who himself nearly died in a game less than two years ago. The reaction from around the football world was immediate and telling.

• Dez Bryantlongtime Dallas Cowboys wide receiver: “That’s it … NFL go ahead and do the right thing. Tua has had way too many concussions. He needs to retire because of his health issues.”

• Shannon Sharp: Three-time Super Bowl champion turned pundit: ‘I really hope Tua is OK, but he needs to seriously think about taking it out’ [down]. I [hate] saying this. His concussions are getting worse and worse and he is a young man with his whole life ahead of him.”

• Antonio BryantFormer All-Pro wide receiver: “Seriously, Tua may want to reconsider playing football in the future, depending on the severity. Concussions are not something to mess with.”

• Robert Griffin IIIHeisman Trophy winner: “I’m really just praying for Tua’s long-term health. Another concussion puts him officially at 3 and countless other scares. Think about the person, not just the player.”

But however well-intentioned these pleas may be, they should not be the main takeaway from this event.

The fact that we all need to face after yet another spectacle of extreme harm is that this sport is profoundly and irreparably unsafe. It has killed or changed the lives of far too many participants. There is no credible denial of the consequences. This is not the time to spin personal responsibility narratives about what is the right “choice” for Tua Tagovailoa, who signed a team-record contract extension seven weeks ago. He is simply the most visible representation at this time of the harm this sport inflicts on everyone who participates in it.

Every 2.6 years of participating in tackle football doubles the risk of developing CTE, and children begin playing the sport as young as five years old. Concussions are the most extreme manifestation of the problem, but they are not the only ones. For members of the offensive and defensive lines in particular, constant head contact is an inherent part of the game as it is currently understood, and it is that contact that leads to brain deterioration.

Former John “Jabo” Burrow was once in this exact position as a power five college football player who suffered a traumatic head injury in the sport that he could not recover from. As did others who would follow in his footsteps, such as Chris Borland And Andrew HappinessBurrow made the difficult decision to retire from a sport he loved.

“I believe the sport is specifically designed to allow for this type of thing to happen,” Burrow told us in response to Tagovailoa’s injury. “Violence and inflicting physical trauma is a necessary step in successfully advancing the ball or preventing the other team from doing so. We’ve accepted that. It’s bare-knuckle boxing that’s socially acceptable for kids to participate in. I see videos of seven-year-olds taking and throwing similar punches and being applauded, but if they were in an organized bare-knuckle fight at the same age, people would be arrested. I don’t see much difference between the two sports anymore.”

He added: “Violence and trauma are necessary to participate in the game, but the natural outcome of those things is brain trauma and the risk of death. I just hope Tua can be OK. It makes me very sad for him.” Dtamar Hamlin had some comments I read about using counseling to help him work through his trauma and get back to a place where he feels safe on the field, and that saddens me too, but for different reasons.

“The game is traumatic.”

Similarly, in the research for our forthcoming book The End of College Football: On the Human Cost of an All-American Sportwe spoke anonymously with 25 former top university football players about their experiences in the sport. Traumatic head injury was a recurring theme in those discussions.

While formally diagnosed concussions are often the focus of the discourse surrounding the problem in sports, the truth is that most traumatic brain injuries, with or without concussion, that occur in American football are never formally reported.

A former player told us, “We had maybe 30-ish pad workouts in 28 days … you hit your head in those four weeks, thousands of times with at least 20 G’s. You know it from experience, but you don’t know the science behind it. So ‘camp fog’ or ‘camp brain’ was something we talked about. And it was just so normal. I was never diagnosed with a concussion. There were a couple of times I had a concussion. And my sophomore year I was … throwing up on the sideline. And [linebackers’ coach] looked at me and said, ‘Are you okay?’ And he didn’t ask me, he told me.”

As this example shows, a large part of the problem is that head injuries are still not taken seriously by those in positions of authority as coaches in sports.

Another player explained, “They scare you into not reporting your injuries, especially concussions, because they treat you even worse as a person, because they think you’re just faking it.” A third said, “It was mild bullying … sarcastic comments. Like, ‘Oh, you seem fine. You’re moving fine, you could come out of here.’ Or, ‘You’re not training today?’ which was like, ‘You need to get your butt out.'”

It’s the players who have to live with the consequences, not the coaches. One of them explained that the scariest thing for him is that he doesn’t even “know [the] “What is the price I paid in terms of cognitive ability, in terms of how many concussions I’ve played through, how many times I’ve had a concussion and not reported it?” Another says he suffers “from a panic disorder that’s probably related to all the subconcussive blows.”

The fact that people are concerned about the health and well-being of Tua Tagovailoa is only right. We must be humane toward the athletes whose sacrificial labor sustains our emotional investment in sports fandom, and expressing fear on his behalf—just as people did after seeing Damar Hamilin lying on the court after his heart stopped—is exactly the right response.

But we can’t kid ourselves that Tagovailoa or Hamlin are tragically rare exceptions. They are simply the visible consequences of the toll tackle football takes on everyone who plays it.

“I think there’s a good chance I’ll get CTE,” one player told us. “Certainly if I keep playing, it’s probably guaranteed.

“But I won’t know that until I die, and that’s no comfort at all.”

That shouldn’t be the case for any of us.