I should be watching Super Bowl 50 with my little brother…

My little brother’s death came 7 years, to the day, after his Father’s death from cancer.

Tom grew up a high school quarterback. His favorite story was the 96-yard TD pass to open the half against his rivals, Bedford Road.

1970 city semi-final — Aden Bowman completes the first quarter without so much as one first down. At the half, Bowman trails Bedford 20–0. Then Tom Taylor connects with Gary Thompson for a 96-yard TD, and, as Keith Jackson would say, Whoa, Nellie… Bowman wins 23–22.

He would tell me that story while I practiced catching deep passes on the run. He would mention the concussion he suffered when blind-sided by Bedford Road’s top lineman earlier that season. He would tell me stories of how crazy the running backs had to be as they ran through a line of pads trying to smash them to the ground. He did that drill once and said he never wanted to do it again.

“He is crazy, all of these linebackers and running backs are crazy”, Tom would say as we watched Junior Seau and Tedy Bruschi smash people around.

And yet we watched.

I held season tickets to the CFL’s Blue Bombers games for three years. Tens of thousands of us would cheer from the stands as grown men made a tenth of their NFL counterparts playing the same crazy game.

My last real memory with Tom was watching Reggie Bush’s final college game together. He died 4 days after that Rose Bowl, aged 52.

Tom measured smoking in “packs per day”, did drugs regularly, drank Coca Cola by the liter and finished a whole bottle on “Jack Daniel’s nights” with his best friend.

We have to assume that he knew the risks his lifestyle brought.

The risks of CTE are not mild. In fact, the latest research seems to indicate they are a near certainty for football players. That’s just the head trauma, let alone the bevy of injuries, the torn ACLs, the dislocated shoulders, the herniated disks and the heavy duty drug prescriptions just to keep everyone moving.

Here’s Eben Britton talking about his Adderall experience:

I began taking Adderall regularly back in 2010, my second year in the league, as a member of the Jacksonville Jaguars. Towards the end of OTAs and mini-camp, I suffered a herniated disc during a workout — a mini-explosion just above my tailbone. My right leg tightened as if someone had just stuck a knife in it. There was burning, then cold. My leg felt twisted, even mangled.

I wore braces and plasters (think of them as extreme heating pads) to every practice, and, needless to say, my play suffered tremendously. Coaches couldn’t understand what had happened to the player they’d seen less than a month earlier. I’d gone from gridiron golden child to roster also-ran. Sure, those same coaches and the team’s trainers knew what was going on — they’d seen the MRIs showing the herniated disc — but nobody cared.

Announcers and pundits use this word “Durable” to signal a player’s capacity for longevity in the league. We call them “tough as nails” and praise their ability to show up every week while completely ignoring that their absence probably has nothing to do with their desire to play. Torn ACLs and dislocated shoulders are very common in football and generally have nothing to do with “durability” and more to do with getting hit the wrong way. Or frankly just being unlucky.

But NFL coaches don’t want injured players on their payrolls.

That’s how much the NFL cares about money versus the care of the bodies in their employ. Teams will hire a private investigator to trail a player they suspect is cheating them, but won’t hesitate for an instant to push that same player onto the field when he should be getting treatment.

But the broken players don’t walk away with money. When Jalen Watts-Jackson scores the most famous TD in Michigan State’s history, his broken hip is a reminder that his payout is nothing. His months of rehab don’t net him a single penny and he’s never going to make an NFL payroll.

Making the NFL is about far more than just skill, you have to be lucky.

Anthony Calvillo of the CFL has thrown for 79,816 yards, won three Grey Cups and three MOPs. That 79k yards is the current Pro Football record. He was a game or two short of 80k when he was concussed on a hit midway through the season. He never played another snap after 19 years in the CFL. How do you measure “durability” when a player’s brains are involved? What if that fateful hit had come 5 years earlier? 15 year earlier?

When Jason Brown quit football early to farm for local food banks. I pointed out to a Facebook friend how many people he could have helped with that extra money. If you wanted to feed the poor an extra $20M seemed like a good way to do it. What I had never considered was the very real risks he took in acquiring that money.

Jason Brown was being asked to trade health for money. He already had enough money, he needed to keep what was left of his health.

I get it now, I was wrong, he was right.