Weekly NFL Picks Thread

[Tonus]

I guess I can appreciate your compassion for other people, but for me, it's one of the many inherently dangerous contact sports that people get paid lots of money to play. It's entertaining just like boxing.

Oh, I understand that. And the players seem to understand it as well, or at least they feel indestructible enough that they don't think it will happen to them. I think what makes it scary is that it's damage that you don't know is happening. If a guy goes down with a sore shoulder or bruised ribs, you know that he'll get medication and rest and he'll be ready to go again. We understand that a career of such unbridled violence will result in twisted fingers and bum knees. But brain injuries scare me, and I think they scare a lot of people; watching a man in his early 50s in the throes of dementia is both sad and terrifying.

And since it can't be quantified, my imagination is free to run wild in the most horrible ways. Watching Arturo Gatti play ping pong with Joey Gamache's jaw, and then watching Gamache's head bounce violently off of the canvas when he fell, just makes me cringe. We kind of have an idea of the damage it did to him (he almost died that night, and suffers from brain damage that causes migraines, depression, and memory loss), and that just makes it scarier for me.