An ESPN commentator lashed out at the ‘liberal media’ on Tuesday for advancing an anti-football agenda, casting the ongoing public discussion over concussions in America’s national sport as a partisan issue.
“The war on football is real,” tweeted Danny Kanell, a former Florida State quarterback who played for three NFL teams between 1996 and 2004. “[C]oncussion alarmists are loving it. Liberal media loves it. Doesn’t matter. It’s real.”
Kanell, who joined ESPN in 2010, was responding to an op-ed piece in Monday’s New York Times written by Dr Bennet Omalu, the scientist who discovered chronic traumatic encephalopathy in the brains of deceased football players.
Omalu, whose groundbreaking research into CTE is the subject of the forthcoming film Concussion, wrote that children should not be allowed to play high-impact contact sports until they have reached the age of consent, typically 18 years old, and can decide about the risks for themselves.
“It is our moral duty as a society to protect the most vulnerable of us,” Omalu wrote. “The human brain becomes fully developed at about 18 to 25 years old. We should at least wait for our children to grow up, be provided with the information and education on the risk of play, and let them make their own decisions.
“No adult, not a parent or a coach, should be allowed to make this potentially life-altering decision for a child.”
A September report by PBS’s Frontline documentary series, conducted by conducted by Boston University and Department of Veterans Affairs researchers, said that 87 of 91 former NFL players examined tested positive for CTE.
Kanell dismissed such claims as “sensational reporting” based on insufficient scientific evidence during Tuesday’s impassioned defense.
The series of tweets prompted a flurry of response from his professional colleagues, which Kanell said only reinforced his original point.
@dannykanell Define liberal media for your context here, Danny? Is ESPN part of it? SI? Fox? All have reported on concussions.
— Richard Deitsch (@richarddeitsch) December 8, 2015
.@dannykanell you are starting to sound like “I didn’t get lung cancer from smoking” guy
— Doug Gottlieb (@GottliebShow) December 8, 2015
Basically, I think @dannykanell, with every Tweet, demonstrates what football can do to a brain. #condolences
— Jim Souhan (@SouhanStrib) December 8, 2015
The war on evidence and data is real, and its primary weapon is nonsense. Congrats on your role in the supply chain. https://t.co/Ou8vkSipia
— Doug Farrar (@SI_DougFarrar) December 8, 2015
I will say, between The War On Drugs, The War On Christmas, The War On Football, and The Actual Wars, America seems terrible at wars
— Bruce Arthur (@bruce_arthur) December 8, 2015
These are symptoms of CTE. https://t.co/SddbD2ZhYd
— Lindsey Adler (@Lahlahlindsey) December 8, 2015
.@dannykanell on @realDonaldTrump: “I’ll have what he’s having.”
— Jamie O'Grady (@JamieOGrady) December 8, 2015
Kanell, whose father has been the Miami Dolphins’ team physician since 1989, added that he wasn’t allowed to play football until he was 16.
“Not for concussions,” he tweeted. “But because it’s a dangerous sport.”
