Football is facing an existential crisis, whether the game and its culture want to admit it or not. In Welcome to the Machine, author, former Division 1 football player, and war veteran Glen Hines explores how various forces in American culture try to salvage football despite the growing medical evidence of its destructive impact. Part memoir, part cultural analysis, part chronicle of the biggest medical crisis facing American sport in over 100 years, this series is mandatory listening for parents and a cautionary tale for thinking people who continue to fuel America’s gladiatorial spectacle.
Two days after my father passed away from stage 4 CTE, I had to travel to military training. I decided to drive. As if somehow ordained, the day was Super Bowl Sunday, and the roads across the southeastern United States were virtually clear. While football culture spent the day glued to the television, I traveled quietly over 700 miles and escaped the machine. It was an example of what life can be, beyond the game.
1 Jan 2022
The Longest Drive
In late January, 2019, I got the call I always knew I would dread. Although my father had been having some serious long-term physical and neurological problems for a very long time from playing football in college and the NFL, nothing could have prepared us for how rapidly his last days came and what brought us all back together for one final vigil to bear witness to what the machine had wrought.
19 Dec 2021
League of Deception: The NFL's Refusal to Honor the Terms of the Settlement It Made with Former Players
In April 2016, a U.S. federal appellate court approved the settlement agreement in the case of In re: National Football League Players Concussion Injury Litigation. The league agreed to an uncapped compensation fund that would potentially cover over 20,000 retired players in exchange for a release of all concussion-related claims against the league. A lawyer who helped negotiate the settlement for the retired players, said players, "Will now receive much-needed care and support for the serious neurocognitive injuries they are facing.” Unfortunately, this hasn’t happened in the overwhelming majority of cases. To call what transpired a "settlement" in the classic, legal sense, is in and of itself a lie. As former players have learned over the past five years, it is actually a Byzantine claims management process set up by the league to make it almost impossible for players to receive much-needed medical treatment and care that they already qualify for under the terms of the agreement. Claims are deliberately drawn-out, delayed, and rejected in the hopes the players will pass away before the league has to make good on their agreement. As a result, it can be argued the NFL has hastened and is responsible for their deaths.
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