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NFL Hall-of-Fame quarterback Brett Favre built his reputation by throwing bombs down the field, but on Tuesday he made headlines for dropping a bomb during a Congressional hearing. Called upon to testify about misusing welfare funds in his native Mississippi, Favre casually announced that he has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, the incurable nervous condition that sometimes afflicts athletes of hard-contact sports like football and boxing.
Former New York Daily News NFL columnist Gary Myers appeared on 710 WOR’s Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning program to put Favre’s stunning announcement in context. The author of six books on football, including “Once a Giant: A Story of Victory, Tragedy and Life After Football” about the 1986 Super Bowl champions, says the athletes who play football pay a far greater price than we realize in the pursuit of glory.
“It’s a rare player who escapes playing football,” Myers told Berman and Larry Mendte, sitting in for Riedel, “that goes on to lead a life where there’s no noticeable impact from those years, whether it’s financially because of a lot of the medical bills they have to pay, or physically or emotionally. There always are some ramifications to playing football, and concussions obviously are at the top of the list of the things that are most damaging to players.”
While concussion protocols and prevention have improved in recent years, Myers says the nature of football makes it almost impossible for the risks to be eliminated completely. “A guy like [former New York Jet] Wayne Chrebet suffered so many concussions during his career. I know of at least one instance where he suffered two in one game, so they’re trying to prevent that from happening. The rules are so much stricter now about allowing a player to go back in a game or how long he has to sit out, where in the past there was nothing like that… [But] it’s not a contact sport- it’s a collision sport. There’s a train wreck on every play.”
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