Legalized Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, September 5, 2016 edition

Labor Day Weekend of 2016 was also the opening weekend of the American college football season.  An unusually high amount of mayhem, madness, and future cases of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy were on horrifying display.

First...

...we have Josh Bouette of Louisiana State University giving University of Wisconsin player D'Cota Dixon a flagrant cheap shot to the head as a reward for beating Bouette's team:

Bouette was ejected from the game, but LSU football head coach Les Miles called it "a mistake" and has suspended Bouette for...  a whopping one game.  Fortunately for LSU football fans, that game will be against Division I-AA (FCS) Jacksonville State—a cupcake match that the LSU Tigers should be able to win without trouble.

Second...

...we have University of Iowa Hawkeyes linebacker Josey Jewell who targeted Miami (Ohio) University player Matt Merimee so mercilessly that the Redhawk player's head snapped around like a crash test dummy:

Jewell also was ejected, but it hardly mattered; the Hawkeyes blew away the MU Redhawks, 45-21.  Cedar Rapids Gazette reporter Marc Morehouse quoted Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz, who seemed to care little about the vicious hit on Merimee:

“Josey is one of our better players, I think the fact that he was elected captain last year says it all.  But all that being said, that’s football. We’re going to have guys come out of the game. If we want to look for excuses, it’s not going to take us very far.”

In other words, Ferentz doesn't have time to care about Merimee because he has an all-important game against Iowa State next Saturday. That's more important than some kid from some Mid-American Conference team.

How it is that Merimee wasn't critically injured is beyond me.  But one half-wit on Twitter congratulated him for "taking it like a man."

@mjmerimee22 way to take it like a man https://t.co/0Scu9pFJ6H

— Brian Schoeffler (@BSchoef10) September 3, 2016

It is amazing that Merimee is not a dead man today as a result of Jewell's vicious head-shot.

Third...

this is not a head-shot, but University of Southern California defensive end Jabari Ruffin took a vicious cheap shot at Alabama's Minkah Fitzpatrick:

Stupid and pathetic cheap shot by USC's Jabari Ruffin, who stomped on an Alabama players's groin area. Suspend him another game for that.

— Jon Solomon (@JonSolomonCBS) September 4, 2016

Ruffin was ejected and suspended for a whopping 30 minutes of USC's next game, against Utah State.  But as Yahoo! Sports' Nick Bromberg reports...

"USC coach Clay Helton said Sunday that the senior will also have to write an apology letter for his actions. Perhaps it can be an open letter published on USC’s team website."

Fat chance.  I would bank on Ruffin getting somebody in the USC athletic department to write the letter for him, too.

How is it...

...that nobody was killed playing American football this past weekend?  These horrific videos will not help the public relations efforts of the NFL, Pop Warner, or any other organization.  Increasing numbers of parents have obviously been forbidding their children from playing American football, as a number of studies have shown, including this one in the Arizona Republic.  The newspaper interviewed neurologist Javier Cárdenas, M.D., of the Barrow Concussion & Brain Injury Center and he provides some insight into which parents are taking this action.  Not surprisingly, some socio-economics is at work here:

Dave Nichols, whose son Andrew is a junior tight end/defensive end at Peoria Centennial High, said he reluctantly lets his son play. Andrew played flag football until he was in the sixth grade, Nichols said, because, “It’s terrible to play tackle football that early before your brain develops.” 

“If I was a millionaire, I wouldn’t have him play football,” he added.

“It is his way of getting a better opportunity in life. (Concussion) is something I think about all the time, every time he gets on the field. It’s something that can happen. But what can you do? It’s their way of making him a better person in life.”

A family's economic status does influence their decision, according to Barrow's survey. It found that, in families with an income of less than $55,000, nine out of 10 parents said they would allow their children to play football. In families with an income of more than $55,000, only half of the parents said they would let their kids play. Cárdenas believes the disparity is due in part to opportunity -- the cost of playing the sport -- and  "the educational level in terms of understanding or perceiving the risk. ... Clearly there's a distinction between these two groups."

In 1982, ABC sportscaster Howard Cosell abandoned his work on boxing, a famous story briefly documented on Wikipedia.  Just two weeks after Korean boxer Duk Koo Kim died after a match against Ray Mancini, Cosell was broadcasting what turned out to be a shocking one-sided fight between Larry Holmes and Randall "Tex" Cobb.  Disgusted, Cosell told his ABC-TV audience:

"I wonder if that referee [Steve Crosson] understands that he is constructing an advertisement for the abolition of the very sport that he's a part of?"

But how much more time will pass before an NFL or college football player dies either during or shortly after another horrific on-field injury?

From the monstrous behavior of Josh Bouette, Josey Jewell, and also Jabari Ruffin this past weekend, we can be legitimately worried that it might happen this season.

And even if no players die this season, the statistical probability of Dixon and Merimee suffering from Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy seems awfully strong.  This looks like an excessively steep price to pay.