Police in California say former NFL running back Doug Martin died after struggling with officers who were taking him into custody.

Martin felt overwhelmed and disoriented, fled his home and entered a neighbor’s home two doors down where police took him into custody, Murphy said. “Ultimately, mental illness proved to be the one opponent from which Doug could not run,” Murphy said.

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
      6·
      8 hours ago

      John Oliver did a piece on that, years ago.

      As I recall, you’re really close to the conclusions he was pushing

      • college football is horrible on players, some of whom get to play NFL; the rest get no pay, no fame, just knee and brain injuries and no education.
      • NFL football is increased hell on the melon; and many retire out, broken, after only a few years, and often with huge debt, more joint and brain damage
      • colleges and NFL get lots of money, players usually get forgotten. Finkle is Einhorn.
      • yeah, you know black people are massively victimized by this gamble and the damage
      • a black dude stumbling a bit and with cognitive and speech problems the encephalitis provokes? That’s a taserin’… If they’re ‘lucky’.

      It’s a short life, and not happy, but the lottery effect is so strong that more and more kids willingly jump into the meat grinder for that one chance to move their family up economically.

      • Doubleohdonut@lemmy.ca
        1·
        1 hour ago

        Adam Conover and many others have also talked about it. It truly breaks my heart to think of these young men who want to prove themselves physically being destroyed because of that dream. Thanks for the summary; this is exactly what I was getting at.

        It’s actually the story of Chris Benoit specifically that gets me. And he probably knew better than some what he was getting into, from what I’ve read. His poor wife and child, and him too. It must have been awful to go through that first hand, and who can say what his state of mind was exactly at the end. He was one of the biggest stars they had, but they treated him like garbage: driving himself to venues, no health insurance, and still feeling he had to prove himself.

        I hope that with people talking about the deadly impacts of these sports more openly, there will be real drive to change these standards for the betterment of the next generations.