Bob Costas said Tuesday that the future of football in the United States looks bleak in light of the brain research done on athletes who have played the game, saying he would not let his son play, USA Today reported.
Addressing a roundtable discussion at the annual Shirley Povich Symposium at the University of Maryland, Costas said the health concerns for football players are starting the outweigh the advantages of playing.
"The reality is that this game destroys people's brains," Costas said. "The cracks in the foundation are there. The day-to-day issues, as serious as they may be, they may come and go. But you cannot change the nature of the game. I certainly would not let, if I had an athletically gifted 12- or 13-year-old son, I would not let him play football."
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, is a neurodegenerative disease associated with repetitive brain trauma, whether or not concussions are diagnosed, Forbes magazine noted. The disease has been associated with athletes, many playing football.
Boston University Research announced this summer that a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that CTE was found in 99 percent of the brains it examined from NFL players and 91 percent of college players.
ESPN's Tony Kornheiser said during the symposium that football's trajectory is similar to that of boxing, where safety concerns could make the sports obsolete, USA Today reported.
"It's not going to happen this year, and it's not going to happen in five years or 10 years," Kornheiser told the symposium. "But Bob is right: At some point, the cultural wheel turns just a little bit, almost imperceptibly, and parents say, 'I don't want my kids to play.'
"And then it becomes only the province of the poor, who want it for economic reasons to get up and out. If they don't find a way to make it safe, and we don't see how they will ... the game's not going to be around. It's not," he added.
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