Yesterday Bears free safety Chris Conte, who has suffered two concussions this season, declared that he would gladly trade a decade or two of being alive for a few years of NFL glory, life-threatening injuries be damned. “I’ll figure things out when I get there and see how I am” Conte said of his post-football life.
The announcement shook the football faithful to their core. The four-year veteran’s oath to the shield and the sport took the “NFL players know the risks!” rationalization for the sports’ lethal ways to a whole new level. And football fans—many learning for the first time who Chris Conte actually is—were forced to reckon with him as an actual, fragile human being.
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This is not something we are used to doing. Conte, if he exists, does so as a collection of stats: one-eleventh of the Bears defense, which fantasy football fans would normally be following intently, but haven’t been this season because the Bears’ D sucks.
In the modern football age, people like Conte are mere cogs in an audience-engagement, cognitive dissonance machine. We consume football through fantasy leagues (fantasy football now being a multibillion dollar behemoth of an industry), through daily skill-game sites like FanDuel and Draft Kings, and a litany of other sports-betting mechanisms like weekly pick-ems and survivor pools.
In sum, we Americans just want to have fun, chug light beer, and bet on football in peace, without being reminded of the early grave that awaits Chris Conte, Kyle Turley, Dave Duerson, and the tens of thousands of other NFL players, past, present, and future. Because, hey, they get millions of dollars, and willingly choose to do so.
But what about fans? Especially the millions who populate the fantasy football space? Are we the leading culprits here, for adding a layer of obfuscation between ourselves and the actual human beings whose brains are inside those helmets on Sunday afternoons? For thinking of those humans as point-producing pawns in some game?
“Want to talk about the impossible nature of separating CTE from the sport of football?”
“Get back to me in 20 years; I need to focus on my big-money fantasy finals this week.”
It’s simple economics, really. Imagine the $70 billion dollar industry, spread across some 32 million players. As you move up and down the spectrum, the hazy pendulum of morality swings accordingly. For example, take on one hand a 35-year-old Facebook employee named Randi, she’s in her 12-team, $20 buy-in, winner-take-all Yahoo league-final this week—she’s up 6 points against her geeky developer colleague Mark. Every player is on the books, except for one: DeMarco Murray. And Mark “owns” DeMarco.
So, with enough scratch to get herself an early Christmas present on the line, does Randi root for anything life-threatening to happen to the NFL’s leading rusher? Probably not. But would she be okay, if say, Colts linebacker D’Qwell Jackson drove the top of his helmet into Murray’s recently surgically repaired left hand and ended his afternoon in Dallas? Probably so.
Meanwhile, somewhere in Los Angeles, the very same scenario is playing out with Louis Lombardi, the actor who played Edgar on 24, and founder of CelebrityBookie.com.
Only instead of Randi’s $20, Edgar has a few more reasons—20 dimes, in fact—to root in the direction of DeMarco’s demise. How much does he care about Murray’s hand, or leg, or head at that point? If the payout means a $360,000 house (or at least, say, a down payment on a spot in Marina Del Rey)?
Shit, I’ll admit, I was in a $100 buy-in survivor pool with over 8,000 entries, got to the last 800, and busted on Colin Kaepernick fumbling away a Niners win at the goal-line in Week 9, at home against the Rams. I’m still coming to terms with the tragedy.
But, man, if that was the final 8, and I stood to win a couple hundred grand? I couldn’t have cared less how San Francisco won, only that they did. James Laurinaitis’s threatened-livelihood coming out of a fumble scrum? Absolutely collateral damage to my financial windfall. It’s human nature, plain and simple.
So, in spite of the dizzying, overwhelming, and perhaps concussion-inducing evidence to the contrary, football just keeps on keepin’ on.
Lawsuits, filed. TV specials and films, made. Stands, taken. It doesn’t matter. The most famous figures in our country, President Obama, LeBron James, hell, even Smilin’ James Harrison, all questioning wanting to ever to watch their children play in the NFL, where brain injury, paralysis and even death are everlastingly possible.
As for us citizens, consumers, and fans? We keep on keepin’ on, too, keeping up with our fantasy rosters, hopping on Demaryius Thomas’s shoulders and hoping for glory for two more weeks, then keeper leagues, until next September rolls around.
And Chris Conte? Well, just as long we keep watching, he’ll keep on trucking:
“As long as I outlive my parents, then we’ll be all right,” the 25 year old L.A. native reiterated.
Here’s to hoping for a clean bill of health for Conte while he soldiers on. Because fast as he might be, it’s no sure thing he’ll be leaving the NFL all right at all.
Just ask Cowboys legend Michael Irvin, who saw his career ended in 1999 on the unforgivingly cold turf of dearly departed and dilapidated Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. He caught a first-quarter pass from Troy Aikman, got his neck twisted, and never played another NFL down.
At the time, as Irvin laid motionless, it looked like he may never walk again. And Eagles fans cheered wildly.
Emmitt Smith offered his reaction that day: “It disgusted me to death. This is just a game. Life, paralyzation and death are a reality. Sport is sport.”
Irvin, meanwhile, responded with a slightly opposing tact: “It was a compliment for Philly to cheer me,” he seemingly admired, later discovering that a narrowing of the spinal column made it too dangerous for him to continue his career. “Philly wasn’t cheering my injury. They were cheering my departure.
“Thank God he’s leaving the field, he’s been killing us. Thank God, maybe now we have a chance to win.”
15 years later, maybe it’s that same chance to win today that keeps each of us cheering wildly.
(God help us.)
