THE FATE OF FOOTBALL: Part 3 of 4
Jim Brown, the retired NFL running back, reaches for a wooden pulpit with his left hand as he holds a black metal walking cane in his right. He gains a grip and pulls himself up from a chair inside The Priory, a brownstone with stained-glass windows on West Market St. in Newark. It is a half-century since a summer’s unrest seized the city; artwork in the room reflects urban revitalization. Brown is 81, a graybeard in town for a graduation. He is introduced as a transcendent figure, hailed for violent cuts on the field and feted for peacekeeping leadership in later years. He eyes 16 students seated before him. They are members of the Newark Community Street Team and Brown acolytes in his Amer-I-Can program. Applause accompanies Brown’s efforts to steady his body; he acknowledges speed lost to time as he ages.
“That was slow, huh?” Brown says.
He is quick to smile and allows himself a laugh, “He-he-he.”
Brown broaches his beginnings. He notes that he “ran into segregation and discrimination” right out of the womb on St. Simons Island in Georgia. His mother was 15 when he was born; his father was not around. His grandmother, Big Mama, raised him until he was eight. His mother took him with her on a northern migration to Great Neck on Long Island. She was a maid; they lived in a room over the garage. Brown mentions three Caucasians as the most important people who impacted his life, noting lessons on “the power of the mind” that they imparted to him. Brown also embraced the power of the shoulder pad and helmet. He was a decent student at Manhasset High and tells of how he came about earning a scholarship to Syracuse.
“They didn’t give it to me right away,” he says. “They said, ‘Come up here and let’s see how he plays football, how he could knock people down and we’ll see about that scholarship.’ Well, I went and played football and I knocked people down.”
He pauses.
“It did not bother me because I thought I played enough football, knocked enough people down,” he says. “They loved the way I played the game, loved the physicality. I saw the physicality was going to be my ticket to fame.”
Brown ranks as a colossus in a collision-based game. In 118 NFL contests, he rushed for 12,312 yards, averaging 104.3 yards per game over nine seasons before retiring early, at 30 years old, to star in movies, in 1966. He played a bruising brand of football, meeting the likes of Sam Huff in holes and meting out forearm shivers. He shed blockers and lowered his shoulder on counterparts as he ran continuous tests of the force equals mass times acceleration equation in Football Physics 101. Head injuries were ill defined as “dings” then. Down after down, Brown picked himself up off the dirt. He heard ringing in his head; he saw all black. He considers his legacy as a Hall of Famer from an era of hard men and loose rules.
“When I said I was 81, I didn’t say that to be funny,” he says. “I didn’t say that to cry the blues, though I get after it when I have to.”
Brown inches his way down the aisle. He is in a position to enlighten and remains cognitively sharp while many former NFL players combat debilitating body damage and brain disease. He tries to reconcile the amount of money in the league’s billion-dollar coffers with scientific statistics emanating from coroner’s offices. The numbers are numbing, and Brown knows them. In the latest round of testing, a neuropathologist examined the brains of 111 NFL players. Of them, 110 were found to have Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, the degenerative disease linked to repeated blows to the head. Pop Warner, the nation’s largest youth football league, is facing a class-action lawsuit that asserts it knowingly put players in danger by ignoring the risks of head trauma. Last year, the Ivy League eliminated tackling at practices during the regular season. The Canadian Football League followed suit this summer. Parents wring their hands about a recent study that found that playing tackle football under the age of 12 leads to impaired mood and behavior problems later in life; coaches focus on proper technique and toe the line regarding toughening tactics. Medical centers seek to gain a foothold on the landscape. In 2016-17, almost 23,000 fewer kids played high school football than in the year before, but the NFL remains a dream to work toward for many. Week in, week out, intrigue grows, from television ratings to rule tinkering to Jets safety Jamal Adams calling the field “a perfect place to die.” Brown assesses the concerns.
“It’s at a crossroads that we are in,” he says.
He taps his cane. His game is golf now, but aspirants suiting up for football teams at all levels across the tri-state area continue to follow his path, knocking down opponents in the name of weekly victory and long-term advancement. As Brown slides into the shotgun seat of a black Cadillac CT5 for a ride to the airport and a flight home to Los Angeles, the Central Ward Blue Devils practice at Nat Turner Park on Muhammad Ali Ave. a few blocks away. They range in age from 5 to 13, the youngest playing flag and the rest competing in full contact. Cheerleaders form pyramids on the sideline. Players hone three-point stances and time four-man rushes. Their coaches, Steve Roberts, the captain of detectives at the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, and James Wright, a retired policeman, are Newark natives. They look at 160 football helmets Wright paid $5,200 to have refurbished recently.
“We let the kids know that only one percent of the people in football go to the pros and make it,” Wright says. “I deal with everyday issues: staying out of gangs, drugs, how to interact with police. I worked in homicide 10 years. I would see kids from this program, respond to them and find them dead. That’s them in the streets.”
Brown knows he is the exception. He no longer needs a helmet. He sports a hat with the NFL’s shield and “Alumni” stitched into it as he continues to the airport.
“The owners, players, union, agents, all have to sit at a table and work it out,” he says. “It’s very popular and it may be slipping, but they can make it go out of this world if they would get together and come up with some things that they all agree on that’s good for the league and good for the communities.”
* * *
Stress balls shaped like human brains sit on a table beneath the stands at Robert K. Kraft Field in Inwood. It is Columbia University’s home turf on 218th St., but NYU’s Langone Medical Center brands the brains with its concussion center’s website and phone number. The day’s event is a free youth football safety clinic. It is called Kids & Pros. Former NFL players teach proper techniques to children; a doctor from NYU details symptoms to look for in the case of a mild traumatic brain injury. Concussion goggles are available for test use. Model brains with notations about the lobes and what they control are on display. The Childress Institute for Pediatric Trauma and NYU’s Concussion Center are official co-sponsors. Former Atlanta Falcons linebacker Buddy Curry gathers the parents for a talk as kids play.
“Football is under attack,” he says. “A lot of people saying do away with it and at least under 14, no contact. Well, what we are is an evidence-based company. We want to see the evidence. Right now, there is no conclusive evidence of every person that plays football is going to have CTE.”
Parents nod. Most are aware of a chorus of concern that echoes across the country. Dr. Bennet Omalu, the forensic pathologist who first discovered CTE in former Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster, considers youth football to be “child abuse.” He maintains that no one should play the tackle form of the game under the age of 18 and likens America’s addiction to the sport to the tobacco industry. Curry, 59, counters that all players come to a point where they recognize the game’s toll.
“It has been really disheartening to watch some of my teammates go through severe health challenges,” he says. “I don’t know what the future holds for me. I do know that if I was to do it all over again, I would do it, but I would use the techniques now.”
Curry comes equipped with modern teaching methods. He touches on the approaches to tackling: dipping hips, rotating through and striking with force. The impact points range from hitting the shoulder to wrapping the knee and driving forward. He emphasizes the removal of the head from the initial contact, but he also notes that all contact cannot be erased. He allows that a knee to the head remains possible and that it can result in a concussion or head and neck injury. He trains his attention on the equipment, as well, instructing parents on how to test helmets and shoulder pads to know if they fit their children properly. He insists that light is being shed on every corner of the game as player health draws increasing attention.
“Fifteen years ago, if the kid has a concussion, you’d make sure he didn’t go to sleep, keep him in a dark room,” Curry says. “That’s exactly the opposite of what you want to do.”
He explains proper procedure and pivots to a rallying cry in reviewing the concussion protocol.
“Any doubt?” he says.
“Take them out!” the parents reply.
Down on the field, there is a white tent set up by NYU’s staff. Dina Pagnotta, the director of the Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation Network and Programming, wants to be clear about the concussion center’s view on tackling in youth football.
“That is not something that we condone,” she says. “We do not support that. We stressed that we do not want any tackling to be part of this. We really want it to be about teaching safe play and about camaraderie. The last thing we want to do is discourage kids from playing sport because we have an obesity epidemic. We want to support that as much as possible rather than ignoring that football is still around.”
James Merchant rallies his three sons together as they ready to leave the field. His eldest, Adrian, is 9 years old. L.J. is 8 and Kaylib is 6. They sprint on the turf; L.J. spikes the ball after winning a footrace. Merchant reminds them that they have to hurry out after a full afternoon of football. They walk through black wrought iron gates that feature an old player in a leather helmet and pads. Contact is coming for the members of the Elmont Panthers. It is 5 p.m. on a summer Friday.
“Come on, guys,” Merchant says. “Straight to practice at 6:30.”
* * *
“I am a nurse by profession,” says Lesley Koram, a mother of three boys. Fresh off a shift at New York Presbyterian Hospital, she stands behind the north end zone of the field by Evander Childs Educational Campus on Gun Hill Rd. as her sons practice with the Bronx Giants. “When the boys talked about football I was not too happy. You hear scary stories about concussions. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ You see them play on TV and they hit each other so hard. I got started here because if they wanted to do it, I decided I needed to be here in case of an emergency, at least I could be the first responder, maybe save their lives until the EMS comes.”
Koram hails from Montserrat, a Caribbean island. She lives by 215th St. now. Her oldest son is Kyle. He is 14. Kevon is 11. Her youngest, Kris, commenced his playing career at 4 years old. He was the youngest member of the team then. He’s 9 now. They play for coach Thomas Wilder, a maintenance facility director for a nursing home the last 20 years. Once an All-City grappler in freestyle wrestling at Alfred E. Smith High, where there was no football team, Wilder oversees preseason training on a summer morning. His charges perform high knees, short sprints and bear crawls before lunging at a pad to perform proper tackling to end an obstacle course. There is one girl among the group. Her name is Lexi and she is 10. Wilder is her father. He recounts the conversation he had with her when she decided to leave her pom poms on the sideline and take handoffs as a football team member.
“She said, ‘I want to play football,'” Wilder says. “I said, ‘You want to play football? Let me take you to your mother because I am not making this decision.'”
Lexi’s blue T-shirt is emblazoned with “LADY GIANTS” and the silhouette of a cheerleader, but she is a running back now with a four-touchdown game on her resume. She has expanded roles to wideout and quarterback. She knows all the plays, and her father accepts the risks. He is certified by USA Football’s youth coaching board, as are his volunteer assistants. They monitor hydration and hitting, instructing players to keep their heads up when readying to wrap up. Wilder’s teams have traveled as far as Florida to compete in nationals; they bounce around the boroughs each weekend for games. In the last six years, the program has grown from one team to six. It was just 9 and 10 year olds at first. Now they range from 5 to 16. He attracts talent from Yonkers, Manhattan and New Jersey to his program. A sponsor for the team is CityMD Urgent Care. The company helped to buy helmets.
“Not everybody agrees with the statistics that say it should be taken away,” Wilder says. “Some of the programs out there should shut down and say, ‘It is not working for us.’ You have to realize that. You also have to realize that if they don’t have football, they need something else. What’s the alternative?”
Wilder harps on accountability, community service and self-discipline. The Giants march in the Puerto Rican Day parade on the Grand Concourse each year, participate in a breast cancer walk at Orchard Beach and help feed the homeless at a Lutheran church. One former Giant is now a Cadet at West Point. His name is Christian Anderson, and he is a 6-foot-1, 165-pound plebe playing quarterback for the United States Military Academy. He starred at Cardinal Hayes, throwing for 3,656 yards, which is the second most in New York state history. He met with and posed alongside Eli Manning at a National Football Foundation banquet in April.
“Sky’s the limit now,” Wilder says.
He walks to mid-field for drill work. Cheerleaders rehearse on the side.
Who rocks the house?
I said the Giants rock the house
And when the Giants rock the house
They rock it all the way dowwwnnn
The din dominates the space. There is no shade for nurse Koram to stand in.
“Every year I have said I am not coming back,” she says. “Every year. But my kids are like, ‘Ma, I want to go play football.’ They don’t want to play for any team other than the Giants so I am back. I’m just tired. It is a lot of work, three days per week. As they get older, you realize they are playing bigger kids and they play rough. I worry, like, ‘Oh my God,’ but every year they say they want to do it. It is better for me to bring them here to run and play than sit at home and play video games. That is the only next option, them sitting with a controller in their hand in their room.”
She eyes her oldest son Kyle. He is straying from the pack between drills.
“Kyle,” she says. “Go back to your team.”
* * *
Nunzio Campanile, the head coach at Bergen Catholic in Oradell, N.J., calls for quiet on an August morning. All 69 Crusaders on the varsity team crowd around him. They wear helmets covered by gold Guardian pads for additional protection.
“Listen up!” Campanile says.
They take a knee following a period of calisthenics and clapping. He informs them that the crack-back block is going the way of the clothesline and horse collar. He explains that if there is an interception and action starts going the other way, a lineman cannot come in and wipe out an opposing player. They can no longer strike defenseless opponents for old-fashioned clock cleanings. Campanile cautions them.
“You have to be smart,” he says. “If we have a great play and it comes back because you’re too selfish to do it the right way, shame on you.”
Campanile, 40, holds a unique position. He coaches in a well-to-do corner of the country that is doubling down on football development despite concerns. He is the son of a coach, Mike, and played both quarterback and defensive back for his father at Paramus (N.J.) Catholic. He went on to Amherst College before finishing his career at Montclair State. He remained in the game, first with Don Bosco Prep, another all-boys school, where he employed a creative offense as coordinator under coach Greg Toal. When Campanile accepted the head coaching position at Bergen Catholic, Bosco’s blood rival, he attended a roast for Toal, with whom he won six state titles. Campanile was gifted a poster board featuring a pig with wings. The message was simple: Bergen will beat Bosco under Campanile when pigs fly. Tough love is fundamental to his understanding of football. He details hits he has absorbed.
“I got knocked out cold once in a game,” he says. “It was a scrimmage, as a senior. I got knocked out cold and I literally was in two plays later. I had no concussion symptoms, but I got freakin’ hit like whoa. A wideout was running a post and I was like, ‘I got this for a touchdown.’ From behind, I got blind-sided. I woke up, and my father was standing over me, like, ‘Whoa, holy sh–! Are you okay?'”
Campanile gathered himself. There were tears coming out of his eyes. He had fumbled the ball, which went back 30 yards or so. The opponent scored a play later. He retreated to the sideline and re-entered the game following the ensuing kickoff.
“Imagine that now? They’d murder you,” he says. “It was my dad. It wasn’t like he didn’t care about me. It wasn’t like he didn’t want to take care of me. It’s just ….”
He transitions to a concussion he witnessed in college. A fullback took on a safety on a sweep play. A collision occurred. Confusion followed.
“He was so messed up, he got up and walked into the other team’s huddle,” he says. “They were like, ‘Hey, wrong way, buddy.’ They took him out of the game. And they had him on the bench and he thought he was talking to his third grade teacher or something. I remember thinking, ‘Whoa, that’s serious business right there.’ He wasn’t messing around. It put it in perspective for me a little bit.”
There is a post-mortem that stays with Campanile. In 2014, one of his former Bosco players, Kurt Schmitz, was found dead in his apartment at the University of Richmond. Schmitz suffered multiple concussions as a college player and gave up the game after his freshman campaign. He became a student assistant coach and advocated for greater awareness regarding head traumas. He experienced memory issues, mood swings and depression. The medical examiner determined his cause of death to be an enlarged heart and hypertensive cardiac disease. On a late night ride back to Richmond from New Jersey, he mixed two substances — an energy drink to keep him awake and an oxymorphone pill, a painkiller, to calm him down once he got there, per his mother, Yvonne. He was 22. His family donated Kurt’s brain to Sports Legacy Institute (now Concussion Legacy Foundation) in Boston. Schmitz did not have CTE, but Dr. Ann McKee found that he had cavum septum pellucidum, or CSP, which is a split cerebral membrane. Yvonne is convinced football affected him. She calls for players to be honest about being hurt. She remembers coaches crying at her son’s funeral service.
“Can’t get much more tragic than that,” Campanile says. “He was a sweetheart of a kid.”
Campanile — the father of two boys who both play football, the youngest, at 5, for a flag team — has coached Mike Teel and former Giants QB Phil Simms’ son Matt, both of whom made the NFL. He notes that he is out of the equation when it comes to evaluating players who display concussion symptoms. Trainers make that call now. A few seasons ago, Bergen Catholic encountered what Campanile calls “an inordinate amount” of concussions. He acknowledged that something needed to be done. The program purchased Guardian shells for each player. They are strapped onto helmets with Velcro and are designed to reduce the force of impact experienced during collisions.
“We said, ‘Man, we gotta do something,” Campanile says. “I think it has helped. Knock on wood. It seems to me it would be smart to do every possible thing you can to help.”
Campanile raps his knuckles on the wooden desk in his office. He has incorporated neck strengthening into offseason training to better protect players from the whiplash action that comes after hits. He listens to pitches about sensor pads in helmets that can detect how many G-forces a player absorbs, and he tries to separate the salesmen from the scientists. He believes players who are coached properly do not face the same risk as freewheeling teens. His approach in development is proven. Quarterback Johnny Langan is Boston College bound and his former quarterback Jarrett Guarantano starts in front of 100,000 fans at Tennessee. Langan is committed to the game as his generation adjusts to a changing landscape.
“It’s awesome to wake up early and play the game you love everyday,” says Langan, who has played since kindergarten. “It’s a lot of work, but it’s not a job. No one’s forcing me to be here. It’s something I’m going to miss down the road.”
The Crusaders are all in. The team travels nationally, having flown west to square with Mater Dei (Santa Ana, Calif.), the nation’s top-ranked program, earlier this season. Bergen just beat Bosco, 29-26, in a game broadcast on ESPN2, and athletes keep coming out for the team. Nationwide, 14,000 schools supported football programs in 2016. More than one million students participated.
“You’re never going to lose the really good kid playing football,” he says.
“There were kids who thought that way when I was growing up. They were called basketball players.”
In the football office at Bergen Catholic, there are 14 points listed under “Principles of Defense.” The Crusaders are instructed to play behind their pads, keep shoulders squared and knock ball carriers backward. They play with violent hands, screws and shoulders. They take the field in a football position, lowering their center of gravity and bending their knees. They stay in rush lanes and finish tackles by putting backs on the ground. There is no running around blocks. They are not to yield runs or passes of over 20 yards. The 14th and final maxim never changes.
“Create violent collisions,” it says.
* * *
The field at the intersection of Jamaica Ave. and Eldert Lane in Brooklyn is labeled “The Graveyard.” It is painted on the blue scoreboard by the 50-yard line. Jason Mollison, the coach for Franklin K. Lane Campus, admires his handiwork. He took over the program in 2011 and sat with the athletic director then. Together, they brainstormed ways to energize the program. Mollison considered the fact that the field was on the other side of a wall from Cypress Hills Cemetery.
“We weren’t sure how the principals would feel about it at the time but they gave us the go ahead,” he says.
The Knights bury opponents on a weekly basis. They won the opener, 48-0, and followed that up with a 44-0 victory. The East Harlem Pride managed eight points in Week 3, but Week 4 plays out in blowout fashion once more. Here are the Knights, outfitted in navy and white. They are mauling Alfred E. Smith’s quarterback in a misty rain while Lane’s quarterback leaps over a defensive back for a hurdle and big gain. There are splash hits. A safety is recorded. A kickoff is returned for a touchdown. The Knights chant and slap their pads in rhythm with their war cries.
Hey Knights, how ya’ll feel?
Fired up!
Lane defenders jump around. They declare the field set between the school and the J train’s elevated tracks to be a “No Fly Zone” for opposing passers. In between collisions, a trainer rushes to players who writhe on the field following big hits. One Knight is injured, wincing and wailing, after taking a shot to the ribs on the home sideline. Down goes the Smith quarterback in the backfield on another play. He is on his back and motionless as a teammate loosens his chinstrap. Larry Jones, a volunteer assistant for Lane, wears a headset and shakes his head at the injury rate.
“The doctor’s earning his money today,” Jones says.
Lane players drop to a knee each time a teammate or opponent does not get up. It is a ritual in a brutal game, a sign of respect in the throes of competition.
“That’s one of the things I hate the most, seeing a guy go down,” Mollison says. “As people get stronger and faster, evolution has the game getting more dangerous. We have to try our best to have the latest safety measures.”
The Knights win, 36-12. There are 26 players on the team. Thirty-three fans watch from the stands. Mollison addresses his team about growth as Smith players make their way past houses dressed for Halloween. Ghosts and jack-o-lanterns line the path from the field to yellow school buses. Lane players idle, helmets in hand. There is a victory to celebrate. Their T-shirts are drenched in sweat, but the white lettering on the back is clear. The words echo the aspirations of past performers:
One Team
One Dream
