The Pregnant Lineman

Brain damage isn’t the only way that football can kill you.  In 2010 the highly-esteemed New England Journal of Medicine published a study relating obesity to the risk of death within ten years.  The study only looked at non-smoking white males, but it is certainly reasonable to assume that similar trends exist among non-white males.

The study used Body Mass Index (BMI) to evaluate individual’s weights; the BMI essentially measures a person’s mass relative to the square of their height, on the assumption that a taller person will weigh more than a shorter person with an identical build. 

Individuals with abnormal BMI’s had higher risks of death.  Individuals with very high BMI’s had much higher risks of death.

Whenever someone suggests that football’s emphasis on producing morbidly obese players might constitute an unwise health risk, the NFL goes to great lengths to dispute the use of BMI as a measure of obesity.  They will contend that because football players have “athletic” builds and very high strength levels, their inflated BMI’s are not nearly as dangerous as those achieved by non-athletes.

The NFL’s objections are wrong-headed on two accounts.  First, although it is always healthier to be active than inactive at any given BMI, many of the health issues associated with obesity affect individuals regardless of whether the weight is muscle or fat.  Abnormally high BMI’s are dangerous even if the individual is carrying around lots of muscle instead of lots of fat.

Second, there are not many 300-pound lineman in the NFL who are anything resembling lean.  Very few are carrying around 8% body fat—or even 18% body fat. 

Want proof?  According to the World Health Organization, body fat percentages for males between the ages of twenty and forty ought to be no higher than 19%.  According to a 2005 study by the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, the average offensive lineman’s body fat percentage was 25%.  With an average weight of 308 pounds, that means your typical NFL lineman was carrying around an extra 18.5 pounds of blubber. 

This is about how much a doctor would like to see the average American woman gain. 

During pregnancy.  

Morbidity

So, NFL players are too fat—or at least, many NFL players are too fat, particularly offensive linemen.  Is that the end of the world?

It could very well be the end of theirs.  That study by the New England Journal of Medicine found that obesity significantly increases the chances of dying within ten years, and morbid obesity really increases the odds of death.  For individuals who are only slightly overweight (with a BMI of 25.0-27.4) the odds of dying within ten years are only about 1%.  For those who are obese (BMI’s between 30 and 34.9), the chances rise to about 1.4%.  But for those who are morbidly obese (BMI’s 35-39.9), the risk jumps to 2%, and when the BMI to 40-49.9, the odds of dying within ten years are essentially 3%.

Grave and spoon.

Obese people were 40% more likely to die than those who were simply overweight.  Morbidly obese people were 100% more likely to die, and super obese people were three times as likely to die—even when compared with overweight individuals.

Connect the dots.

We have made a national religion of a sport that rewards and glorifies obesity.  Across America, thousands of young men—virtually none of whom are underweight, and many of whom are already so heavy that they put their health at risk—are being asked to pack on the pounds.

This is a travesty.  A coach who asks an overweight young man to become even fatter ought to be decried as abusive.  Instead, our culture glorifies and rewards these coaches—we are willing to sacrifice the health of young people so that they can help move that oddly shaped inflated bladder more effectively. 

In 2009, I read an article by Mike Herndon, a journalist with the Press-Register in Mobile, Alabama.  He wrote about the “success” the Auburn Tigers had in identifying players who would be able to gain weight.  Knowing the impact of obesity on life expectancy, his examples sound downright macabre:

Spencer Johnson once weighed 240 pounds; his BMI was 30 and his odds of dying in the next ten years were only 1.3 percent.  Auburn got him up to 291 pounds and a BMI of 36.4; his odds of dying in the next ten years increased to 1.9 percent—and increase in his risk of death of about 46%.  Success!

Jay Ratliff came to Auburn weighing 230 pounds with a BMI of 28.  He had about a one-in-a-hundred chance of dying in the next ten years.  He went on to play for the Dallas Cowboys at 300 pounds with a BMI of 36.5.  For his efforts, he increased his odds of death by 66%.  All right!

Sen’Derrick Marks owes fair Auburn for increasing his risk of death by 37%.  Over at Alabama, they made Evan Mathis 40% more likely to die, Chris Samuels 42% more likely to die, and Jay Ratliff 52% more likely to die. 

Things are even more grotesque in the professional game.  The Green Bay Packers wanted nosetackle Howard Green to play at 360 pounds, with a BMI of 46.2. 

I am 6’2” and weigh 180 pounds.  My BMI is 23.1; within the normal range, but not exactly underweight.  I have about a 0.8% chance of dying in the next ten years.  They are asking Howard Green to weigh twice as much as I do, and to have a risk of dying of approximately 3.1%; compared to me, he’s almost four times as likely to die—and similar examples are easy to find across the NFL.

For the sake of comparison, the pain-killers Darvon and Darvocet were pulled from shelves in 2010.  Some studies estimated that for each 120 million prescriptions, the drug may have caused as many as 2,000 deaths. 

If you prescribed Darvocet to 240-pound Spencer Johnson, you increased his risk of death by, at most, 0.0015%.  If you switch him to the offensive line and make him gain fifty-one pounds, the effect is over 30,000 times more dangerous.

At the time of this writing, the makers of Darvocet were fighting a lawsuit which some experts said might have bigger repurcussions than the famous lawsuit against Vioxx. 

Each year, coach Joe Whitt at Auburn prescribed something thousands of times more dangerous to several of the young men placed in his care.  He is not alone.  Thousands of professional, college, and even high school coaches are giving young men the same unbelievable, deadly prescription: bulk up.  Gain weight.  Get heavier.

Why do these men ask their athletes to assume risks that the FDA would leap to ban?

To win a child’s game.

Kate Middleton

Football fat has another way of impacting the health of our nation.  It is less direct, but broader, because it affects everyone.  To discuss this wider impact, let’s talk about the Dutchess of Cambridge, a shoe company, and Joe Camel.

In 2011, Wolverine Worldwide set sales records by moving $1.4 billion dollars of footwear.  Although Wolverine is primarily known for its sturdy boots and casual Hush Puppies, one of its stars of the year was a lesser-known brand: Sebago. 

Sebago sales took off when Kate Middleton took a Canadian boat tour in mid-July.  On one of the days of her voyage she wore Sebago boat shoes.  And all of a sudden, sales started to take off. 

Now, Sebago boat shoes are just great.  They’re well-made and look very nice.  However, they were just as well-made and good-looking before Kate Middleton slipped them on over her shapely toes.  The association of the product with an admired, extremely attractive individual didn’t change the product, but it certainly changed the product’s perceived value.

Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent each year to chase after this branding effect.  According to Forbes magazine, Michael Jordan’s brand generated $1 billion in sales to Nike alone—eight years after Jordan had last played competitive basketball.  The effect is obviously a powerful one: we want to become more like the people we admire, and we’re willing to pay good money to try to do so.

Cigarettes again provide useful insight.  When television and radio advertising were banned in 1964, approximately 42% of the American adults smoked.  After five years without television and radio branding, the figure was down to 37%.  By 1990, it was down to a quarter of American adults, and now it is fewer than one in five.  Branding changes what is perceived as acceptable or desirable.

This effect is not only driven by advertisements and celebrities; we change to become more like the peers we admire as well.  Recent research by Mir M. Ali, Aliaksandr Amialchuk, and Frank W. Heiland concludes that “[t]he social transmission of weight-related behaviors is a viable explanation for the spread of obesity in friendship networks”.  If a young person spends time with others who eat fast food, shun exercise, and gain weight, that young person is more likely to fall in line.

Another study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, studied over 12,000 people and examined what happened when one person gained weight.  The study made a shocking discovery: when someone’s friend became obese, that person was 37% more likely to become obese themselves.  News outlets jumped on this report: fat can be contagious.

We become what we admire, and we become what we habitually see.  Have we reached a tipping point, then, with regard to obesity? 

The statistics are shocking: percentage of obese Americans (BMI > 30) has tripled since 1960.   The percentage of morbidly obese Americans (BMI > 40) has risen by five hundred percent.  Obesity costs America $190 billion dollars a year in health costs; that’s over 20% of every medical expense in the nation.

Because obesity is strongly correlated with higher absenteeism from work, Eric Finkelstein of Duke University estimates that obese Americans cost businesses $30 billion dollars, simply due to lost productivity.  And because our cars have to lug overweight Americans around, they burn a billion more gallons of gas than they would if we weighed the same as we did fifty years ago.

What does any of this have to do with football?

Well, certainly thousands of young men whose coaches pressure them into bulking up contribute directly to the issue; however, reasonable people ought to conclude that the effect of branding plays a role.

Little Johnny sees Big Bubba Lineman and his belly tumbling around on national television.  Dad loves Big Bubba, which means that Johnny does, too.  When Johnny starts to notice his own little bundle of blubber, he’s downright proud of it; he’s a little more like that guy on TV.

Don’t believe it?  Here’s a the way an article on bleacherreport.com introduced a slideshow called “Glutton Bowl”:

“[T]his is American football. We like to drink multiple beers with hot dogs and hamburgers at 10 a.m. before the games officially kick off.

Isn't it natural for us to be drawn to the big guys that get it done on the field every week? As a big guy myself, I have to be honest—I tend to cheer a little bit harder for the fat boys.

Here's an homage to the guys that do their part to re-define what a professional athlete looks like—these are the men that made it honorable to be huge.”

Sound familiar?  If it doesn’t, you haven’t been paying attention.  Football coverage is replete with similar examples.  The sport can’t hide from the obesity, so it revels in it.  Fat is glorfied.

If branding is powerful and fat can be contagious, can the impact of all these hulking bulks be anything but detrimental?  Are there millions of Americans who can thank football for thinking it is “honorable to be huge”?  Have we somehow made it un-American to be healthy, and American to be disgustingly obese?

If so, it costs us billions of dollars.  More importantly, obesity kills as many as a thousand people every day. 

In nine years, the nation has lost over 4,000 soldiers in Iraq; obesity kills more people every week.  We glorify obesity at our peril

You can Help

What can you do about this?  Obviously, if you hear about a local coach asking an overweight young man to bulk up, you can report it and protest it.  Expect to meet a form of resistance that completely ignores a rational risk-reward analysis; on-field prerogatives will be given undue emphasis.  When they tell you that it will help the team, or help his athletic performance, help them to reprioritize.  Remind them that concerns about health ought to outweigh any concerns about winning a child’s game.

Obviously, keep yourself and any loved ones away from the game of football.  There are a hundred other healthier and safer activities in which to participate.

But more than than, turn off the game.  Watching football can make obesity see normal or admirable; it warps the viewers perspective on acceptable or desirable weight.  Encourage others to do so as well.

I repeat: TURN OFF THE GAME!

All Doped Up

There is one final way in which the game of football damages our national health: performance enhancing drugs (PED’s).

PED use is absolutely rampant in the NFL.  The NFL denies it.  They use all of their public-relations machinery to make it seem like there is no problem.  They even used their leverage to induce ESPN to cancel Playmakers, a highly-rated and critically-acclaimed series, in large part because it created the (true) impression that professional football players use steroids to cheat.

This is understandable, but abhorrent.  The league has seen first-hand what happens to other sports in which cheaters get caught: high-profile, highly-publicized PED busts create the impression that the sport has a drug problem.  This negatively impacts the sport’s image.  Ratings go down, money dries up. 

It’s better for the bottom line to pretend that you have a stringent testing, set up a laughably weak testing policy instead, catch a few offenders who are brazen or stupid enough to still get caught, give these offenders nothing more than a slap on the wrist, and rake in the cash.

Could that possibly be true?  Well, it’s fairly easy to prove that football has deleterious effects on players’ brains.  The cases and the statistics speak for themselves.  It’s just as easy to demonstrate football’s emphasis on unhealthy weight.  Because of the wall of misinformation and obfuscation put up by the NFL, it’s more difficult to persuade your average person on the street that professional footballers are a bunch of steroid-inflated cheaters.  However, the evidence is compelling:

First, compare the testing policy of the NFL to that of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)—the organization in charge of testing Olympic events, and the most stringent testing agency on the planet.  WADA requires athletes to inform them of their whereabouts every single day, so that they can be available for random drug testing.  Both blood and urine samples are taken and analyzed for the presence of PED’s, their chemical byproducts, masking agents, or the chemical byproducts of masking agents. 

A player is presumed to be responsible for whatever is in their body; ignorance is no excuse.  In fact, there are almost no excuses whatsoever.

The NFL, by contrast, conducts one annual blood test, in which they might detect the presence of a substance like Human Growth Hormone (HGH).  Dr. Gary Wadler, former chairman of the WADA, called the protocol “blatantly ridiculous”.  They state that they conduct random drug testing, but lineman-sized loopholes exist. 

For instance, the New York Times reported in August of 2011 that NFL players are NEVER tested on game days.  This is unbelievable.  Olympic athletes are always being taken from the finish line to the testing area—it will happen to every single medalist at the next Olympics.  The sports care about whether or not they are clean.  The NFL does not; it is not in their interests to catch teachers.  Refusing to test on game days makes it legal, de facto, for players to take any drugs which clear the system in twenty-four hours.

There have been numerous reports that players are given advance notice of impending tests, several days in advance.  This completely defeats the purpose of random testing.  There are no repercussions in place for players who are not available for their random tests; players who know they’ll test dirty can simply make themselves scarce.  According to Don Catlin, former director of the Olympic Analytic Laboratory at UCLA, even a few hours of notice is sufficient to allow athletes to get away with substantial PED use.  Several days’ notice essentially makes the entire program worthless.

Shawn Craford tested positive under WADA protocols.

Michael Garvin never tested positive under NFL protocols.

 

Conspiracy and Penn State

But, you might protest, could there really be that broad of a conspiracy?  Wouldn’t somebody spill the beans?

Consider Penn State University.  Over the course of a decade, a number of people in positions of power worked in conjunction to cover up something even more sordid than performance-enhancing drug abuse: the sexual assault of children.  An investigation into the incident determined that, for over ten years, the school President, vice President, athletic director, and head football coach had “failed to protect against a child sexual predator”.  A significant contributing factor in this awful debacle had to have been the desire to protect the school’s Big Football program.

If rooting for good ol’ PSU can cause men who knew better to cover up criminal sexual conduct, then do you think it would be much of a stretch for the football culture to cover up PED use?

Victims of the Crime

So the NFL’s testing protocol has been assembled to give the best possible appearances with the least possible impact.  Why else would you announce that you will begin testing for HGH, for instance, and then implement the test so laughably poorly that it is guaranteed to catch absolutely no one?

Consider that the WADA, utilizing the best available testing protocols, doesn’t catch all of the cheats.  Marion Jones, who had her Olympic medals stripped after admitting to prolonged PED use, passed 160 tests.  The cheaters are almost always a step ahead of the authorities, even if the authorities are allowed to use every weapon in their arsenal.  Tie both their hands behind their backs and put a few cement blocks on their feet—as the NFL and the players’ union have deliberately done—and you have no drug testing policy at all.

To make matters worse, football allows for all sorts of excuses.  As of this writing, 111 players tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs.  How over a hundred players were stupid enough to get caught is mystifying enough.  What’s more amazing is that only 54 of them were suspended.  So, even if you do get caught, there’s a better than fifty-fifty chance that you’ll get absolutely no punishment whatsoever.

Additionally, the financial incentive to cheat is much, much greater in football than it is in Olympic sports.  Superstars like Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps make millions of dollars, but the vast, vast majority of Olympians are, these days, working full- or part-time jobs to make ends meet.  If a long-distance runner takes Erythropoietin (EPO), it gives him or her a better chance at making a couple thousand bucks.  If a running back takes steroids, it gives him a better chance at making millions.

Football players have a much greater reward associated with performance-enhancing drugs, and a much, much smaller risk.  Is it any wonder, then, that a 2009 study by Scott Horn, Patricia Gregory, and Kevin Guskiewicz found that players suspected that 90% of professional football players had used steroids?  As far back as 1990, when the game was less lucrative and the players much smaller, a survey of NFL players found that 67% of offensive linemen admitted to using steroids.  These days, the 90% figure is probably not far from the actual mark.

Some people have no philosophical objection to the use of PED’s.  They players, they’ll argue, have the right to do what they want to their own bodies.  They understand the risks, and decide to assume them.

Unfortunately, this creates an environment in which only PED-users can be successful.  It means that when a young man starts aspiring to play in the NFL, he will one day be forced to decide whether to forgo that aspiration for the sake of his health.  PED restrictions exist—or at least, they ought to exist—to try to level the playing field, so that individuals who want to compete cleanly are able to do so without having to sacrifice their health.

Unfortunately, the way drug testing is conducted in the NFL—with its winks and nods to drug users—nearly forces any NFL aspirant to make that choice.

Creeping Impact

The impact is starting to be seen at the lower levels of football.  Most NCAA Division I football players would love to play professionally.  They all want to win.  The pressures are adding up to more and more drug use in the college game.

On average, every team at a bowl game has one player who is going to test positive for PED’s.  Again, the tests can only catch a fraction of the—especially since the NCAA affords athletes 48 hours notice about tests.  The actual figure is likely much higher.

Jason Scucanek, who played for Brigham Young University (BYU), stated that on his team, he had proof that over a dozen players were using steroids, and that the number might have been as high as twenty.  Keep in mind, this is BYU; the school is hardly the anything-goes, football-first institution that you might find in the Deep South.  If BYU has twenty players on steroids, what do you think is the case at Florida, Florida State, LSU, Alabama….

Even at the high school level, football players are abusing PED’s.  A 2003 survey of 15,000 players found that six percent admitted to PED use.  With over a million boys playing football each year, that’s 60,000 high schoolers taking steroids!

Once again, the health effects are hardly worth it.  Liver damage.  Enlargement of the heart.  Increased risk of heart disease and death.  Depression.  Suicide.  Testicular atrophy. 

And again we have to ask why our young men are choosing to shrivel their balls and shorten their lives?

To succeed at a child’s game.

Get Out

I started taking anabolic steroids in 1969 and never stopped. It was addicting, mentally addicting. Now I'm sick, and I'm scared. Ninety percent of the athletes I know are on the stuff. We're not born to be 300 lb (140 kg) or jump 30 ft (9.1 m). But all the time I was taking steroids, I knew they were making me play better. I became very violent on the field and off it. I did things only crazy people do. Once a guy sideswiped my car and I beat the hell out of him. Now look at me. My hair's gone, I wobble when I walk and have to hold on to someone for support, and I have trouble remembering things. My last wish? That no one else ever dies this way.

--Lyle Alzado, former NFL great

Lyle Alzado: 1949-1992

             You can save somebody from that fate.  If you play football, stop.  Get out of a sport where your highest aspirations are almost forced to include steroid use.  Get into a sport that cares about catching drug cheats. 

            If you have a son, keep him away from the game.  Don’t let him get sucked into the mania that inclines otherwise rational individuals to ruin their lives for a moment’s glory.

            Spread the word.  Get other people out of the sport, too.  Turn off the game, and encourage others to do the same.  It’s guaranteed to make our lives healthier, happier, and longer.