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.
This is HIGHLY untrue. A lot of these kids get pushed into football by culture, by economics. They get thrown in by HS coaches who tell them it’s the only way they’ll afford college. NFL has also done a FANTASTIC job of walling up research on CTE and TBI as a result of regular play - it’s literally only been in the last decade or so that shit’s started to come out, and even then, nobody focuses on it because it doesn’t print papers.
A lot of these players see it as the only way to escape the poverty trap, and comments like this are disgusting. Sure “they think they’re better”, why not, when LITERALLY THE ENTIRE BUBBLE AROUND THEM TELLS THEM TO. They do it for “fame and fortune”, yeah, because if you were young and usually poor to middle class at best and saw a way into the upper echelons of society by playing a game you’re good at, YOU WOULD DO IT TOO.
Fuck off with this victim blaming nonsense.