Willful Ignorance – they should have known!

Football, Laurie Carr, Research

Dementia in football: Ex-players three and a half times more likely to die of condition
Former professional footballers are three and a half times more likely to die of dementia than people of the same age range in the general population, according to new research.

Read in BBC News: https://apple.news/AwI69TRGZRWiW37jLsr297Q

Regardless of what many continue to say, the research is devastatingly clear. The pattern is unmistakable. The science is irrefutable! The human brain was not designed to be battered. Serious and predictable consequences happen, short term, long term as well as progressive chronic changes. The actions that cause the beginnings of disease continues even after the outward symptoms of injury are thought to be gone, and the athlete is often encouraged to return to the field just to add injury on top of injury. It is madness! These actions can affect the God given potential of good people. It affects spouses and families and steals a future of joy and happiness. I know. It cost me a career and nearly cost me my marriage and my life.

To dismiss this health crisis is self-serving and in many situations, dangerous. There are answers, but the football powers are so fearful of losing the goose that lays the golden egg, they are willing to move forward and choose to remain in an inexcusable state of willful ignorance. This excuse of ‘not realizing something bad was happening’ destroyed Joe Paterno’s legacy and continues to send high-powered university administrators and coaches once thought untouchable packing. One day the people who continue to look the other way, or worse, willfully ignore and/or fight against solutions while they, their families and their friends suffer, will realize the sad consequences of their inaction.  There are answers. You just need to look!


Published by Larry Carr Ph.D.

Why faith and football? It's easy. Outside of my relationship with my wife, these 2 issues clearly define my life. They seem almost like opposites, certainly unrelated. My faith has always provided me a foundation that not only kept me moving forward when everything inside said to quit, but eventually led me to a discovery that changed my life. I actually played the sport of football for a relatively brief period of time, just over 10 years. But during that time I created memories and friendships that continue today, some 40 years after my last play. I loved my time playing football, but it came with a heavy price. In 2008, I was diagnosed with concussive brain damage, due to those years of football. My symptoms, which started some 20 years before my diagnosis, began with language problems and culminated in severe emotional and significant cognitive disabilities. At that time there was, and continues to be no cure or effective treatment for the disease, and so the symptoms progressed to the point where I nearly gave up all hope. It was the faith of my wife which eventually led us to serve a mission for our church in Boston. There, some 2,500 miles from our home, we found the answers we were searching for, the only place in the world where such answers could be found. This blog chronicles that search and what we found along the way.

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