Super Bowl LVI: Time to Rethink the Relationship Between Disability and the NFL
Just in time for the Super Bowl showdown this weekend, Boston University’s Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center released research that NFL athletes’ incidence and mortality from ALS nearly quadruples that of US men as a whole. Their study links the prevalence of ALS to head injury.
If the closer one gets to glory, the closer they get to disability, it is time to shift how we talk about disability and sport.
As evidenced by the reaction to the Donald Parham Jr.’s concussion after his interception on December 16, athletes and commenters discuss sports injuries by talking about rehabilitation, return to the game, or retirement. Each suggests an ‘overcoming’ narrative where one pushes past impairment to return to normal. Parham himself played into this narrative with his thumbs up and promise to come back better than before. Commentators also intensely scrutinize the player’s body until the player does what they could do prior to the injury. Yet, as any athlete knows, injuries forever change how you relate to your body and your sport.
What if athletes took a cue from the disabled?
People with disabilities have more in common with athletes than some might believe. Both groups are governed by how people understand their bodies. Both groups are beholden to systems and structures that control what they can do with their bodies. Most importantly, both groups are told to overcome their bodies’ limitations in service of other people’s entertainment or comfort.
Herein lies what disability studies experts describe as the difference between impairment and disability. Impairment is what happens to the body or mind. Disability is what happens when impairment meets social and physical structures. For instance, a person who uses a wheelchair has an impairment. They do not become disabled until they encounter stairs. The problem is that stairs and other barriers are everywhere.
We have already seen these realities play out in public space with other world-class athletes. Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka both stepped off the world’s stage to take care of their mental health. Biles and Osaka refused to prioritize an organization’s interests over their own. They chose to listen to their bodies and minds.
These two athletes take a cue from disabled communities who understand disability without the impetus to overcome. Instead, disability is understood as part of human variance, without internalized stigma. For instance, it is not the case that Simone Biles lacks mental toughness; rather, twisties are a part of the experience of being a gymnast. Disabled people understand better than the able bodied that twisties is an expected impairment and the public’s reaction transforms it into a disability. What’s more, disabled communities take an integrated approach to disability, drawing on their own histories and cultures of pride, protest, and pleasure.
The backlash to disability is real. Writers spill much ink judging or pitying athletes’ decisions to take care of their bodies and minds. Such reactions comprise the barriers described above: the social and cultural understanding of disability as always a problem, otherwise known as ableism. Examples include ostracizing disabled people from social locations and events, or insisting they ignore their disability to be normal. Unfortunately, internalized ableism becomes its own barrier; an athlete who parrots an overcoming narrative, regardless of their actual experience.
Disability justice advocates, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna Samarisinha and Stacey Milbern describe “the concept of ‘crip doulas’ — other disabled people who help bring you into a disability community or into a different kind of disability than you may have experienced before.” Athletes push their bodies to the point of injury and are at a higher risk for acquiring other health conditions, so they need an outlook that does not discard them once they are no longer capable of entertaining a crowd. People living with disabilities are well aware of the mixed feelings that accompany changes to the body and mind. ‘Crip doulas’ demystify and destigmatize the process and welcome you into a community where you can receive assistance and resources. What if injured athletes sought out disabled communities for their expertise in the same way they sought medical doctors and trainers?
Without such community, people are more susceptible to internalize all the negative messages about disability. They lose the ability to do or interest in self-advocacy. For athletes this is even more true: Loss of physical ability can lead to a loss of identity and precipitate feelings of worthlessness.
As we look forward to another football season, commentators and sports management can seek the expertise of people with disabilities to help shift their language about sport. Most players, in all sports, will push themselves mentally and physically for the sake of the game. Changing the narrative about their injuries, limitations, and impairments — in short, their bodies — is not merely semantics. It fundamentally respects their profession and their personhood.
