Football season is a good time to reconsider what we have been told about the game. When I interviewed Daniel J. Flynn in April 2023 about The War on Football: Saving America’s Game, I wanted to examine claims that had acquired authority through repetition. His book asks whether the evidence supports the familiar portrayal of football as a route to an early grave.
Flynn is an author and senior editor at The American Spectator; he subsequently became a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. He approached football through historical research, medical literature, and time spent with teams. The book appeared in 2013, but its historical reach makes it suitable for revisiting well beyond its publication year.
Theodore Roosevelt confronted football’s dangers more than a century ago. As Flynn recounts, the response included changes that helped preserve the game while altering how it was played. Football’s history contains repeated revisions to rules and equipment. Loving the sport has never required preserving every practice that once belonged to it.
Flynn began our conversation with mortality. Reports of famous players’ dying young had encouraged a broader conclusion about the men who played professionally. He asked what happened when researchers counted the entire study population, including the men whose long lives attracted little attention. “Not only did NFL players not die young,” he said, “but they were outliving the general population.”
The federal study found lower overall mortality among its cohort of former NFL players than in the general population. A separate study of suicide mortality also found a lower rate among veteran players. These are aggregate findings with defined populations and comparison groups. They challenge sweeping claims about early death without establishing that every player escapes injury, or that football itself causes longevity.
We also considered what happens when boys lose the opportunity to play. Flynn described the larger boy whose size disadvantages him in some activities but gives him a place on a football team. “I think football is an excellent way to get some of these bigger kids off the couch and into some cleats,” he said. That benefit belongs in an assessment of the sport.
My own son’s experience with football and wrestling gave me reason to recognize that argument. Training required discipline, and different positions rewarded different abilities. The offensive lineman has an assignment to learn; a defensive player must respond as a play develops. A team can make room for boys with different temperaments and physical gifts.
Equipment introduces another question. Could better helmets encourage players to hit harder because they feel protected? That is the possibility of risk compensation, which we explored without claiming to have established its size. Flynn acknowledged that he lacked data on the point and said he preferred modern helmets. Protection and behavior both belong in the inquiry.
Money also shapes the attention a sport receives. I raised the Willie Sutton comparison: the NFL is where the money is. Horseback riding, skiing, and ice hockey expose participants to injury, too, although comparisons depend on the injury and amount of exposure being measured. Football’s wealth creates opportunities for litigation and businesses selling protection.
The streetlight effect describes a related problem: concentrating scrutiny where the subject is most visible. Flynn questioned commercial interests behind concussion products and reporters’ accepting scientific authority without examining those interests. A medical credential does not settle whether a product works. A settlement does not, by itself, measure the population’s risk.
Flynn’s argument includes an ordinary experience that risk calculations can neglect. Boys practice, learn assignments, and return after being knocked down. “I don’t want to say that football is a completely safe game,” he told me. He also asked us to count what the game gives the boys who choose to play it.
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