The main threat: college football

Many people have been debating the topic of banning college football. It has come to people's attention that college football is a major medical and educational threat for the players. College football fans get their entertainment and excitement, but on the other hand, the players don't get anything other than a scholarship. One thing they don't realize they are receiving each and everyday as an outcome of taking brutal hits from practice and games are the long term effects it brings.

Malcolm Gladwell, bestselling New Yorker writer said on May 8th during the Intelligence Squared debate on banning college football at the New York University's Skirball Center, "It's not the hard hits that each player takes, but it's the thousand of tiny hits that they take." A hard hit once in a while may lead to a concussion, but the thousand of tiny hits that Gladwell is referring to can lead to Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy or CTE. CTE is a condition that is found in athletes and recently in football players. CTE leads to memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, impulse control problems, aggression, depression, and eventually, progressive dementia. There are college football players of 18 years out there with CTE.

Education is one of the biggest factors in a person's life. It contributes to everything you accomplish in the future. This doesn't seem to be true for college football players. Football seems to be more important and something more valuable than education. Buzz Bissinger, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of Friday Night Lights said during the debate, "Players get the option to go to class, if they want to, I bet most wouldn't". The number of hours a college student uses for studying had decreased from 40 to 13 as a result of college football. Football is a distraction. Bissinger said, "Football. It sucks all the air out of the room."

College football has to be banned. It is time to realize that it is cheating on us for the lives of many young adults. Their lives are being threatened by their own inspiration. Something have to be done and banning college football is the perfect solution. We can save the lives and education of college students before it's too late. We can live without football, but we can't survive without an education. Football won't kill you, it'll just destroy and corrupt your brain. Football is an enemy, not a friend.