In my most recent post I wrote that the "future of advertising" was pretty much assured because of the deeply symbiotic relationship between advertising and football. As long as football continued to command such fanatical devotion in the USA, there will be need for agencies (like mine) to create the advertising that accompanies and supports it.

But, a growing issue is now clouding that future — of both football and its symbiotic (parasitic?) partner, advertising. It is an issue that has been out there for a few years now, but recently has taken on greater urgency in the culture.

It’s a problem that is still not on a lot of people’s radar screens (like swine flu was in the beginning). Others still are choosing to look the other way and hope it goes away. However, it is creeping up on us nonetheless.

The issue is the growing, scientifically supported evidence that football’s violence (a big part of the sport’s appeal) could be much more serious and have much greater long term negative health consequences than anyone every suspected — or wanted to suspect.

Who’d of thunk it? Football bad for your health?!

The mediasphere has been bubbling of late with the stories of how football related head injuries — principally concussions — have caused, and are causing, long term health effects in players. These health problems include accelerated dementia and a greater occurrence of Alzheimer’s.

Yep, banging your head around and getting knocked out sometime could actually be bad for you in the long run.

These stories have not just run in fringe media, or on some crackpot blogger site. The football concussion/Alzheimer’s story has become mainstream. Even so, as Ray Ratto, the lead sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote in his recent column on this subject, many people are choosing to look away from the football concussions problem and hope that it just melts away in the night.

Of course, it won’t. Malcolm Gladwell recently penned one of his signature "Tipping Point" articles on the football/dementia/Alzheimer’s connection in his home publication The New Yorker. It was a fascinating and compelling piece. In it, he asks the question: "Are football and dogfighting that much different?"

Has anyone asked Michael Vick that question? I would love to hear his answer.

Gladwell predicts (and Ratto concluded the same thing in his excellent column) that the minute middle class suburban moms (and dads) start to realize the true ramifications of this football/concussion issue (in other words, what it could really mean for their little Jordan’s and Jacob’s), then all hell will break loose.

The fear of their kids getting hurt in this violent sport could compel those middle class parents to pull their kids from pee wee football leagues everywhere. Gladwell and Ratto both posit that such a mass exodus from the youth end of the sport could ultimately relegate football to something approaching the status of boxing — a brutal, clearly dangerous sport only to be practiced by poor kids from disadvantaged communities.

Boxing? Not my kids. Football? No way, no how! Hey, it could happen.

Do you really think King Football — a basic part of popular American culture — couldn’t ever go the way of boxing? Think again. We’ve all read stories about how suburban parents these days are literally obsessed about children’s health problems such as allergies to nuts. If their kids have that particular allergy, many of those parents become militant about any other kid eating a peanut butter sandwich anywhere within a 5 mile radius.

I am not joking. This is an example of the hyper vigilance of modern middle class parents and their hyper protectiveness of their children and their health and well being. Do you really think those parents won’t pull their kids in droves from football leagues if the concussion story really goes mainstream?

We will see where this goes. Will NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell just sweep the concussion issue under the rug? And, will parents rise up and take notice of the incontrovertible evidence that is right in front of them? The NFL has a major long term study coming soon on the problem, which could (if it is not white washed) add more fuel to the issue’s growing fire.

It’s about time that people started to recognize the dangers of some sports, including football. Banging your head against another person’s helmet never was a good thing. But, we all just kind of looked the other way and said, that is what the game is all about. Being tough, being strong, being a guy/man.

Well, if the scientific evidence is really true that football induced concussions are creating an expanding group of terribly sick people (like the old "punch drunk" boxers), then America’s most popular sport could take a very different trajectory in the future.

And that could have a very big impact on the future of advertising. Wow. Everything really is connected in this world.

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