The End Zone
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 28 January 2018
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Concussion is taking much of the sheen off America’s behemoth national sport and leading to many parents forbidding their children from taking it up. Bill Littlefield asks whether this multi-billion dollar business can survive if so many players turn their backs on the sport. Where will the next generation of players needed come from?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello from the BBC World Service and welcome to the latest edition of the documentary |
| 0:05.5 | podcast. Every week we bring you a range of stories from our presenters and reporters |
| 0:11.0 | across the world. If you have the time, please rate the documentary |
| 0:15.1 | on your podcast app and leave us a comment. Let us know what you think. |
| 0:20.1 | It's a cold autumn Thursday evening in the United States and it's time for high school football. |
| 0:27.0 | Time out for first-you-tens. |
| 0:31.0 | The band plays. The cheerleaders leap and chant and hundreds, and in some cases |
| 0:36.4 | thousands of fans huddle together to watch their town's teenage gladiators. |
| 0:41.6 | Next weekend millions of people around the world will watch the Super Bowl, |
| 0:46.1 | American football's glitzy conclusion, and perhaps very few among those millions will |
| 0:51.6 | be thinking about a shadow that's hung over the sport for decades. |
| 0:57.0 | Collisions have been a celebrated part of the game, part of what makes it such a spectacle. |
| 1:06.0 | And knocks to the head have been long regarded as something to be shaken off, if not ignored, |
| 1:12.0 | even though those knocks can lead to brain damage, |
| 1:15.1 | dementia and even suicide. |
| 1:17.3 | Riley, the roadside intercepts, touchdown dares. |
| 1:21.8 | It's not just the massive hits in the pro game that caused the damage. |
| 1:25.0 | There's growing evidence that boys as young as five or six who play |
| 1:29.0 | tackle football are susceptible to chronic brain damage and now parents are deciding that they don't want to put their children at risk. |
| 1:37.0 | I'm Bill Littlefield and I've been reporting on the link between playing football and severe brain injury for over a decade. |
| 1:45.0 | For the documentary on the BBC World Service, |
| 1:48.0 | I'll be asking whether the domination of this sport is now coming to an end. |
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