The Daily - A Small Town’s Fight Over America’s Biggest Sport

Episode Date: January 27, 2020

Across the United States, parents and school districts have been wrestling with the question of whether the country’s most popular and profitable sport is too dangerous for children. Today, we explore how that dispute is playing out in one Texas town. Guests: Ken Belson, who covers the N.F.L. for The New York Times, spoke with Jim Harris and Spencer Taylor in Marshall, Texas. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading: Repeated blows to the head while playing football have been linked to a degenerative brain disease called C.T.E.Football is a powerful, cultural force in Marshall, a city of about 24,000 people in East Texas. But residents, coaches and educators have questioned the safety of a sport they cannot imagine living without.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, across the U.S., parents and school districts are wrestling with whether the country's most popular and profitable sport is too dangerous for kids. Ken Belson, on how that debate is playing out in one Texas town. It's Monday, January 27th. We're in the eastern, extreme eastern part of the state, kind of central east Texas. It's 50 inches of rain a year, pine trees, used to be cattle everywhere. Now mostly people like me have pine trees and the cows are gone.

It was a nice way of life. I like cows. They're cheaper than a psychiatrist. Do you want me to introduce myself? Yeah, I'm Dr. James Harold Harris, Jr. I was born in 1942. I've lived most of my life in Marshall, Texas. Ken, tell me about Jim Harris. Well, Jim's a retired small-town doctor. I live on a ranch and used to have cattle, but I've sold everything now. I've been in Texas most of my life.

So you're never leaving, huh? now. I've been in Texas most of my life. So you're never leaving, huh? Oh, maybe if the wind blows my ashes away after I'm dead, that'll be about it. And Jim had taken up an interest in football, which he had played as a kid. It was a rite of passage. I didn't have any friends who didn't play football. I loved it. When I was big and fast, midway through the seventh grade, everybody else started growing and had hair under their arms, and I was still singing in the choir. Jim starts emailing me, and he's asking me about the stories I'm writing,

and he doesn't go away. I write him back. He writes again, and it goes on for months like this. And he's very earnest and curious, so I finally just decide to call him. And I learn he's from Marshall, Texas, a town of about 25,000, about three hours north of Houston. High school football is a big deal. What is it about football?

We have several middle-sized towns in East Texas, and their identities were partially formed by their prowess at football. I mean, I can name you all the football heroes from about 1940 on, you know, in Marshall High School. And Jim was reading a lot of the stories I was writing about a disease called CTE. It was frightening to anybody who's ever seen a slice of brain. I mean, that was an awakening for me. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy is a degenerative brain disease.

And then really around 2010, 2011 is when it kind of exploded into the public domain, if you will. The football world has been rocked this week by the sad death of a former star. With the suicide of a player named Dave Durson, who was a famous player on the Chicago Bears. Teammates say Dave Durson was also exceptionally smart and kind, which is why they were shocked when last week, the 50-year-old killed himself with a gunshot to the chest. And he left a note that said explicitly, I want my brain saved.

And so he shot himself in the chest so his brain could be preserved. And now to the death of former NFL superstar Junior Seau. And then the following year, even bigger case involving a linebacker named Junior Seau, who's a very famous player and was in the Hall of Fame. Pro football legend Junior Seau was found dead Wednesday morning by his girlfriend after police say he shot himself in the chest at his Oceanside, California home. And because it can only be found when players die, the researchers have been interviewing the families of those players and finding out what things they were exhibiting, what kind of symptoms. It's become a who's who of former NFL stars, enough to line a wing of the Hall of Fame, who've complained about or were diagnosed with ailments connected to repeated blows to the head. And Jim Harris is reading about a lot of these cases involving these football players. I trusted the NFL, and once or twice a year, they would have one of their doctors, you know, publish an article about how safe everything was, and

I didn't really scrutinize it on the internet or anywhere else. And he discovers that the NFL is actually trying to tell a contrary story, that in fact this isn't that dangerous and trying to play down the result of the other research. And so I think he starts to feel a bit betrayed that the NFL, like the tobacco industry, has tried to produce medical research to play down the dangers that are emerging by nonpartisan researchers.

So for him, this is just a question of pure medicine and research. That's how it started out. But then Jim started to think about his own life. His son played football quite actively through high school. Well, all my boys were fast, but Rush was muscular to start with. And I mean, even when he was three or four years old, he could throw a football further than the older brothers could.

And, you know, I couldn't believe it. He was starting in the, you know, seventh and eighth grade. You know, I used to go to practice if I happened to be off. I encouraged him to play. And he discovers that his son had several concussions that he did not realize. You know, I really feel like an idiot now. And I feel guilty as hell. Does he have to worry on down the line?

You're damn right he has to worry on down the line. And don't think he's not worrying because he's talked to me enough about CTE and knows enough about it that he knows he's got a risk of early dementia. about it that he knows he's got a risk of early dementia. That's, you know, that's a burden. So what is Jim Harris, now armed with all this information, feeling guilty about his son and his role in encouraging him to play football, what does he do? Jim starts by making a giant slideshow. I made a few talks around town and that sort of thing. And taking it to various community centers and trying to get on lecture circuits, if you will. If I had known how easy it was to do a really good PowerPoint presentation,

I would have been a dangerous son of a gun for the last few years. And telling people about this disease, CTE, and how it's been associated with football. And ultimately what he wants to convince people of is to get people to stop playing football. It was obvious that if you were going to do something about the dangers of football, you needed to start at an early age. The things that Jim is talking about reflect the concerns of a lot of the parents who are starting to pull their kids out of football. And around this time, another youth league shuts down, and the school board votes unanimously 7-0 to shut down 7th grade tackle football.

And Jim also gets involved in the Boys and Girls Club, which has the largest youth program in town as well. I had a friend that ran that Boys and Girls Club, and I had been a donor, but I wanted to make sure that none of my donations were going for tackle football, and they... And he starts banging the drum there to shut down the tackle football program.

And I made a talk to their board. And ultimately, he succeeds. They voted to quit playing tackle. Wow, big deal. Big deal. So these are three of the biggest youth tackle football programs in Marshall, and the fact that they shut down very quickly amounted to a big sea change. So it sounds like football as Marshall, Texas, knew it for young people is very quickly over. Well, you would think so, but something interesting happens. Parents in town still love football, and so they start taking matters into their own hands,

and they start two new youth football leagues for kids as young as five years old. So these kind of grassroots teams start cropping up despite the fact that the community seems to have rendered a pretty firm judgment on the sport. Yeah, these are very much grassroots efforts, just basically dads raising money in the community to buy pads, helmets, old equipment, and joining leagues to try and keep football alive. Who's your favorite team in football? Um, Titans! That's right. And one of those dads is a fella named Spencer Taylor. Go, what?

Go, Titans! And who is Spencer Taylor? Spencer's a huge football fan. You better... Tighten up. You better tighten up. That's right. He's in his 40s, grew up in Houston, moved to Marshall.

I'm number four this game. He records on videotape his son's games. Where are you? Is that you up top? I think so. Around the 45. Go show. And then rewatches those recordings with his son to critique how his son was playing. Football, you gonna get hit hard. Both his son, Spencer Jr., and Rajon play.

Score six again, we want to win math. Score six. Daughter's a cheerleader. We the Marshalls of math, we never know. We're going to be the best team ever. We'll take your cookies. He's watching on the weekends. He's in a fantasy football league.

He's your kind of quintessential football dad. You dad is baby? Yeah. You going is baby? Yeah. You gonna play football? Uh, not today. I'm gonna do it later. Later? Yeah.

So as these established football programs are shutting down and these new youth football programs are starting up, Spencer decides he's going to become a coach. So he joins along with a bunch of other dads to start up two new teams. And Ken, who is signing up for these new teams? Mostly black kids, somewhere in the order of 90%. I'd say majority black, a little bit Hispanic, and barely any white.

Which is interesting because the demographic of the town now is about one-third black, one-third white, and one-third Hispanic. What do you make of the fact that some of the white kids are pulling out of the sport? And, you know, the dynamic of the town has changed too, but I mean, what do you make of the fact that a greater percentage of African-Americans are now filling the team than in the past? Yeah, I don't know. I guess I spend more time around black parents, so it's kind of, I don't know. I haven't really talked to any Caucasian friends that have kids playing in high school sports now. I guess I have never really had that conversation to ask them, you know, how come you didn't let your kid play in Little League? Probably be a good question to ask just to find out.

In some ways, Jim Harris's message is sinking in in the white part of town. Parents are moving their kids into baseball and soccer, among other sports. And Hispanic families are more likely to put their kids into soccer programs. In the black community in Marshall, most parents that I spoke to seem to think

that the risk to football, although they acknowledge them, are far outweighed by the benefits. What do you mean? Well, Spencer tells a story about one of his sons, Spencer Jr. Spencer's first year playing, he was real, real small. Spencer told me he was worried about getting hit, but he wasn't really scared. And how he was nervous about getting hit.

And at practice one day... And so they lined back, we lined them back up. Spencer was running the ball. And this time, they hit each other hard. It was hard. It made a loud thud. They hit each other. They both fell on the ground.

Spencer kind of rolled over a little bit. The other kid rolled over a little bit. Spencer, the dad, is worried that his son's unconscious. First I got scared. I thought maybe he was hurt. I thought he was out. Felt like he was on the ground forever. So he runs up to him to take a look at him.

I hope he's not seriously hurt. That's what was going through my mind. His kid eventually bounces up, and Spencer starts talking to him. He rolled over and got back up. I could see he was a little bit dazed i told him go get something to drink and he said he said i'm fine dad it kind of goes in slow motion the first time you see your kid get hit and i looked in his eyes i could tell he was okay and i said man how did that hurt and he said no sir i said that's about as hard as you're ever going to get hit out here that's one

of the biggest kids out here nobody's going to hit you harder than that from that point on it's kind of when he started really developing his game that was one of the things that was holding him back from giving a little more effort because he was scared of the contact because everyone always makes it seem like a big hit is such a painful thing. If you've never done that before, it looks painful. But when you have all those pads on, it's really not. And I think that's when he finally figured that out. I've been trying to tell him that, but it's one of those things you can't make somebody understand.

They've got to experience it themselves. And at that point, his son realizes that this is the game of football and I can conquer it. And what is the point of that story to Spencer? I think Spencer's trying to instill a sense of discipline and also confidence in his son. He starts feeling tougher and I guess what they call it now, you get a hell of a swagger about him then. Your confidence knowing that I can play this game now fully, it's more than just want to go catch balls as a receiver or throw a pass. Now I can handle the contact piece of it too.

Spencer thinks that the discipline and confidence that you get from football comes from getting knocked down and getting up again. Those are the benefits of the sport that he sees as a dad. It has a sense of family. The kids form relationships with the coaches. There's a handful of kids that I'd say I have affected positively, I hope more than negative. Once they come to my house and they're here a lot, I treat them just like my kids. And so punishment's the same. I get on them the same. I reward them the same.

And so this is their chance to show what they can do and might find out that they're real good at this. So clearly these kids are benefiting personally and socially from playing football, but wouldn't they get the same benefits from any team sport, from soccer, from basketball, from baseball? In many ways, that's true. And for a lot of dads, too, and parents, they think that football offers yet more lessons, and that primarily is because it's a contact sport. It's a sport where you get hit, you have to learn to get up, dust yourself off, and do it all over again. And for a lot of these parents in Marshall, football's a way to get their kid to college.

Some of these parents, that's what they push on their kids. They need their kids to succeed in a sport, to hopefully get a scholarship to college one day. To win a scholarship, get a better education, maybe get a better job. And of course, perhaps, make it to the big leagues. Perhaps. A handful have, including from Marshall. Really? Yes. Odell Beckham's father came from Marshall,

and Y.A. Tittle, a Hall of Fame quarterback, is from Marshall. In fact, the high school athletic facility is named after him. So, Ken, did you get around to asking Spencer what he thinks of the kind of reporting that you're doing about football and about brain injury and the risks of what he's encouraging these kids to do? Oh, sure. I asked him point blank.

I mean, you've probably read some of the reports or stories about the relationship between head hits and the risk of brain injury later in life and so forth. But you love the sport. You let your kids play it. You coach it. What do you make of the two parts of it the sport and the potential dangers i think a lot of those reports i think they're accurate but i think they were also done on older people they were all done on nfl players and college

players who these guys when they came up that that's how they hit they hit head first the game is just so much safer now and i these kids today aren't hitting that hard at this age and so i think that makes it a little safer i tell you what if i was not a coach and on the field with the kids every day then i would probably be a lot more scared than i you know overly cautious it it's not as bad when you're out there because you feel like you can control the situation a lot more. So for someone like Spencer, and it sounds like for all these coaches, the fact that someone like Jim Harris has assembled this information about risks,

it just doesn't seem like those risks at all outweigh the kind of social, parental, and even financial benefits of this game. For Spencer, the risks of football are pretty remote. I mean, the idea of brain damage is 30, 40 years in the future, if at all. So the tension between the Spencers of the world and the Jim Harris's of the world are the kind of battle that's playing out, not just in Marshall, but across the country, between the people who think the benefits outweigh the risks and those who think the risks are no longer worth it. These people are taking action.

They're pulling their kids out of football. So much so that this is starting to worry some of the most powerful people in the football establishment who look at these declines and see the future of the football game fading. We'll be right back. Football is seeing participation decline in high schools across the country. Across Oregon, high school football participation is declining. It's dropped from 14.5% of high schoolers in Texas to just under 11%. Fear of injury and fear of concussions and greater awareness of the consequences of concussions.

Let me ask you, how does one make the game safer? How do you make the game safer? You don't play. So despite the fact that two new youth leagues popped up in Marshall, nationally, the trend has gone the other way. Leagues are consolidating, parents are not putting them into football at all. So against all this, the NFL and the NCAA and other people who are powerful in the football establishment were worried. They have essentially a big problem on their hands. Participation is falling. And there's been research that shows that

kids who play football or any sport, frankly, are likely to follow it as a consumer later in life. So they're nervous that the pipeline that is the future of football is slowly being turned off. Absolutely. Because fewer players means fewer fans, which means ultimately fewer dollars. Imagine life without football. No Friday night lights, no pep rallies, no band. So they came up with a plan, basically, to start a marketing campaign

to remind people that football has some positive aspects. All that time invested to teach young men and women commitment and team spirit, gone. Football, where young men and women compete to be the best. Whether it's camaraderie or teamwork or discipline or even fighting childhood obesity by getting kids out and running around several hours a day. Celebrate the passion that only happens every fall.

Join the game. Another part of the campaign is to remind parents that the game has actually gotten safer. And has it actually gotten safer? On the margins, yes. There's been a number of rule changes where collegiate and professional and even high school football

have taken out some of the most dangerous plays. There's also been a lot of investment in better equipment, development of new helmets and so forth. And perhaps most importantly, there's more medical protocols for both identifying concussions and removing players from the game if they do have a concussion, not just putting them back in the game the way it used to be done. So while all this is going on at the NFL and the collegiate level, some of the same changes and new equipment

and medical protocols are also happening in towns like Marshall. At the high school level, they've spent money on new equipment. They're now trainers on the sidelines at games. And the coaches have all taken programs on how to identify and treat concussions as well. So, Ken, does all of this work, this marketing campaign from the highest levels of football,

these new rules, this new equipment, this new training, are people responding well to this? Well, at least in Marshall, it seems to be working. The two youth leagues that popped up, they're seeing participation start to rise. The head coach of the high school team, he sees kids moving to other towns because they still want to play, and that's hurting Marshall's team. So the team was losing some of its best players. So he starts bringing this issue up to the school board, And the school board decides, let's put this on the agenda for a vote. Should we bring back seventh grade tackle football? I was unhappy with it. I was disgusted. And how does Jim Harris, the family doctor who changed how so many people in Marshall

think about football, especially youth football, how does he feel about this development? I thought we were returning to a more primitive approach to football, and I was disappointed in our school board. He's shocked. He had put his heart into this issue, raising awareness. Frankly, he stuck his neck out on a very unpopular topic and tried to tell parents that keeping their kids in the game is not a smart thing to do. But he's persistent, so he decides to go to the school board meeting

and make a last-ditch attempt at convincing them not to bring back seventh-grade football. I just decided I needed to be more graphic, and I hadn't made an appearance in a year or two, and I thought I better let them know that nothing had changed. To prepare for the meeting, Jim goes into his kitchen. I think my wife was out of town, so she couldn't stop me, and I made some Jell-O. I had to read the directions. I'd never made Jell-O before.

And he starts making a batch of red Jell-O. Jell-O. Yep, Jell-O. You got to refrigerate it so it'll congeal or gel. The reason it's red is that's the school colors for Marshall High School. I had it in a big clear bottle, a big pickle jar. And he pours it into a big pickle jar. And I just took it down there.

So he takes this pickle jar filled with red Jell-O and gets in his car, and he drives off his ranch and down the highway to the school board meeting. Can you tell us about that evening a little bit? Oh, yeah. I had a hard time parking. And then I got in there, and there were people everywhere. And he's kind of excited, right? This is his big moment to take a stand. And he arrives. The room is crowded.

They were giving awards to teachers and to students who had done real well. And then he discovers that most of the people end up leaving because they were just there to receive some awards. And before I got my chance to speak, the room was virtually empty. So I didn't have much of an audience. So it was basically you and whatever, a dozen or so people in the room at that point. Yes. Went up to the microphone with my bottle and gave him three minutes of my spiel. And he's trying to demonstrate to the seven school board members in the most vivid way he can what it's like when the brain is sloshing around inside a skull, much as it does during football games.

So Jim goes to the podium, and with the three minutes that he's allowed, he takes the pickle jar filled with the red Jell-O he made, and he lifts it above his head, and he shakes it. Sloshed it around a little bit, twisted it and wobbled it and sloshed it. And the Jell-O hits up and down and sideways in every other side of the jar. That brain's going to wobble and twist and shake and bounce side to side. It's tethered to the bottom of the skull, which is rough. It's got bulges here and bulges there. And there's just no way it can be safe. That this is all sorts of mini traumas going on

at the same time. And when you do this over and over and over over many years, you increase your risk of brain disease. And what was the reaction? Tell me, did they ask you any questions? Was there any follow-up? No, they didn't say a word. They smiled and my time was up. And then they vote 7-0 to bring back seventh grade football. Ken, what does this vote in Marshall, this pretty amazing reversal, what does it tell us the way through to last year when they brought it back is really the story that's happened all across the country.

There was a lot of worries, very deep-seated ones. You know, the NFL, the NCAA, all these football establishment groups kind of rumbled into action and tried to address their problems head on, so to speak. But to guys like Jim Harris, it'll never be safe enough. To Jim and doctors who study the issue in depth, all of these small head traumas that kids absorb when they play a game of football raise the risk of brain damage down the road. And so the fact that there have been actual improvements in safety, that doesn't change how they view this game when it comes to young people. No. In fact, it's sort of beside the point. Concussions are visible. They're big hits.

But to people who are worried about the risk of brain disease in the future, it's all the little hits that kids absorb when they're playing the game that are cumulative. And so that's just football. It's a collision sport. You can't avoid it if you're going to play game. Just seeing the kids learn and then take some of the kids that were real scared in the beginning of the year and they start loving the game. Then they want to come back every year. And now that once they're more developed, they do want to be on a winning team. They want to just do better. I just enjoy that, just seeing the kids. And I think these little league days are some of the most memorable for them. You know, I like kids, and I worry about your son and my grandson and anybody who's playing. I wrote an article back, oh, I think in 2014, about Texas roulette, which is what I called football. I finally ended by saying I think that Texas roulette might be more dangerous than Russian roulette.

Ken, thank you very much. Thanks, Michael. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. They're asking you to tear up all of the ballots across this country on your own initiative. In their opening arguments of the impeachment trial on Saturday, lawyers for President Trump attacked his Democratic accusers as partisans trying to remove him from office because they could not defeat him at the ballot box. For all their talk about election interference,

that they're here to perpetrate the most massive interference in an election in American history. And we can't allow that to happen. But on Sunday night, a major new challenge to that defense emerged. The Times reported that in an unpublished book, Trump's former National Security Advisor, John Bolton, wrote that President Trump directly linked the freeze on Ukraine's security money to his demand that Ukraine investigate Joe Biden, bolstering the House impeachment charges against the president. Bolton has said that he is willing to testify in the Senate trial if senators ask him to,

and the account from his book suggests that that testimony could be explosive. And basketball legend Kobe Bryant died on Sunday in a helicopter crash that killed eight others, including one of his daughters. Bryant, a five-time NBA champion and a two-time Olympic gold medalist, retired from the game in 2016 after 20 seasons with the Los Angeles Lakers. For 20 years, he thrilled us. He made us scratch our head.

What did we just see? What did we just witness? And he gave us five NBA championships. Soon after, Bryant was honored during a ceremony, emceed by another former Lakers star, Magic Johnson. I hope that you recorded every game. I hope that you're doing the same thing tonight, because there will never, ever be another Kobe Bryant.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.