Another case for football's abolition...

The truth is beginning to come out more rapidly now.

Today, all over the Net, we're getting the news on another blood sacrifice to football.

He's alive -- for now -- but the story is so incredible and is a testament to how blood-struck the culture of football has become.

One of my friends who commonly contributes material sent me the Sports Illustrated article on Russell Allen, formerly of the Jacksonville Jaguars.

They were playing Buffalo in a late-season game that basically no one was watching.

What occurred during the game was not only frightening, but something that doctors themselves said they had never really seen before.

As a result of this injury, Allen is done in the NFL, released outright by the Jaguars last Thursday.

The fact that he actually had a stroke during the game and now has a dead spot in his brain about the size of a dime (a significant portion of the brain, when you get right down to it) is almost-completely ignored until you hear Allen's side of the story in the article linked above.

It's on his cerebellum, the area below the cerebrum responsible for motor control.

This probably means Allen, at some point, will be almost-certainly disabled and rank-unemployable in general society (even though his current aim, incredibly, is to coach high school football) -- another casualty of the game and of the nature of how helmet hits (the hit/block which created the "flash" which started all this was face to face) have raised the demand for the abolition of the sport and society of football.

Third quarter, routine block, routine (helmet) hit, flash, no biggie to Allen.  He actually finished the drive with a quarterback sack to force a Buffalo punt.

It was on the sideline that things began to go crazy inside Allen's now-damaged brain.  He was seeing double, and asking around to see if he was OK.

Allen finished the game, went home, watched the Sunday-nighter that week -- all with a headache that was an indication that he had a stroke.

It was during the week, when he told team doctors that he was seeing double on the sideline during the game, that they blew the whistle and sent Allen in for an MRI.  The results of that sent Allen to the hospital -- Allen had had a stroke, during the game...

... and no one really cared.  As manhood and power-over was the norm and the expectation, he soldiered on, in a late-season game for two teams for which it meant nothing, and any further damage could've been an on-field fatality.

For doctors later told Allen he had suffered, according to the article:

"a carotid artery dissection, a tear in the layers of the artery wall that supplies oxygen to the brain—an injury that occurs in a small percentage of high-speed motor vehicle accidents."

Think of that a second.  Football players are getting so huge and so fast and powerful that the force that some of these players are taking helmet hits is akin to that of a high-speed car or motorcycle accident!

The article goes on to say:

"None of the doctors Allen consulted could find a precedent for a pro football player suffering this kind of stroke."

Well, that's an easy one.  Steroids, HGH, PEDs, and other manners to make the players bigger, faster, stronger, less human...

It's Newton's second law:  Force = mass X acceleration.  The bigger and faster you make these football machines, the more force they apply -- often, too much force for the body to take.

Football players today are now expected to be too big, too fast, too durable (one problem:  Allen had never missed a game since he started football at age 14!), too manly...

And, for all this, he's very fortunate he's alive.

Especially because he played an entire NFL half with a dead spot on his brain.