Sixty years ago when I was a kid growing up in western Pennsylvania practically every boy played football, tackle football mostly, if not in an organized way (which only started in those days in junior high school at about age 13, incidentally) protected by helmets and padding and overseen by coaches, then in an unorganized way in our side yards and on the far north end of St. Anthony’s cemetery, which was yet to be “occupied” and still pretty much free of graves and tombstones.

We’d play without the protection of “football gear” usually, i.e. the cleat shoes; the shoulder, hip, thigh, and knee pads, jock straps, and uniforms; and the helmets, such as they were in those days, that the “organized” teams’ players wore. All that we wore were an old pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, and our tennis shoes.

So there were injuries occasionally, some that may have been prevented by protective gear – things like skinned knees, thigh bruises, broken noses, black eyes and goose eggs on heads, for example – and some that would have happened (and still do) in spite of all the padding and protection we might have put on and all the supervised coaching we might have had – things like twisted knees, broken fingers and ankles, and the “concussions,” both recognized and unrecognized, that invariably occur when a head bangs violently into another head (or knee or elbow or foot…or the ground), and the brain bangs violently against the inside of the skull bone.

Even if we had had helmets on, our brains would have taken a beating, we now know. They would have because helmets, even the best, just can’t compensate (we also now are beginning to recognize) for the physical principle of inertia that causes the brain to smash into the skull when a head collides with something else.

And, in fact, I wonder if our brains might have taken an even worse beating if we had worn helmets. See, I have a hunch that when you play football, if you have a helmet on (which I never did until I got to high school) you also put on a false sense of security that now the helmet will protect you no matter what. You can now bang the guy across from you as hard as you can because it won’t hurt, not as much anyway, and he can’t hurt you…as much.

But now we know that’s wrong. Last night Alice and I watched the Frontline documentary League of Denial on PBS. My god! Notwithstanding the long and mean-spirited denial and opposition of the National Football League, neuroscientists at Boston University and elsewhere have documented that practically every professional football player in this country, except for place kickers and punters, perhaps, suffers or will suffer from CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy), a horrible degenerative disease resulting from multiple concussions or jars to the head over time.

One of the BU researchers who examined the brains of some 55 deceased former NFL players has found that in 54 of the cases CTE was present. In addition, its presence has now been documented in college and high school age players as well.

Maybe, then, it’s time for us Americans to give up on football, at least as we’ve come to know and love it courtesy of the NFL (and NCAA, by the way). We’ve done it with boxing. When I was that kid 60 years ago, my dad would go with a friend to prizefights in Youngstown and New Castle fairly often, as I remember. And boxing was on network primetime television on Wednesday and Friday nights, I think.

But we’ve gotten beyond boxing. Now, most people – most of those who are the viewers who produce the television revenues anyway – understand boxing to be a violent sport that is bad for the brain. And we don’t like it or watch it as much anymore, cage fighting and kick-boxing that some networks still find profit in notwithstanding.

Maybe it’s time to also deep-six American football. Maybe we could begin to have as much fascination for and find profit in things like soccer or even rugby. At least in soccer and rugby the players (I want to think), who are without the helmets that may be lulling football players into feeling like they’re invincible, are a bit more conscious of the need to be careful of their heads.

Maybe the NFL and NCAA could just go each sit on a tack and let themselves deflate. Don’t worry; the NFL owners will be OK. They’re bright folks. They’ll find other ways to make their millions and billions. And as for the NCAA, well, maybe then our colleges and universities could get back to what they’re really supposed to be about.

Also, we’d be OK, I’m pretty sure. We’d find other places to place our loyalties and passions, maybe even places that will be better for us as a society in the long run. Don’t you think?