Fire North Carolina's Larry Fedora if he can't acknowledge dangers of CTE

Dan Wolken | USA TODAY

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North Carolina coach Larry Fedora suggested Wednesdaythat the game of football is “under attack” due to the focus on head trauma in recent years, claimed that “our country will go down too” if football is fundamentally changed and, in a coup de grace of stupidity, said repeatedly that he didn’t believe the links between CTE and football have been proven.

No need to dance around this. If Fedora actually believes what he said, he’s too dumb to coach college football and should be fired immediately.

It’s one thing to be a know-nothing rube with no sense of perspective or understanding of American history. It’s another to be a rube who is in charge of the well-being of 85 college students on scholarship and denies the mountain of science that has linked head trauma in football to significant health problems later in life.

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The former means Fedora is simply an embarrassment to the University of North Carolina. The latter means he’s a danger to the players he’s coaching.

What Fedora said Wednesday — and doubled-down on repeatedly in front of dozens of reporters at the ACC's preseason media event — isn’t just wrong, it’s toxic. And the fact he was arrogant enough to say it publicly in defense of some ridiculous machismo ethic that permeates the sport of football means he has crossed the line from responsibility into non-reality and is no longer fit for the job he now has.

“I fear that the game will get pushed so far to one extreme you won’t recognize the game 10 years from now,” Fedora said. “That’s what I worry about, and I do believe if it gets to that point that our country goes down, too.”

Apparently, American Patriot Fedora has it all figured out. Forget Russian interference in our political process. Forget the specter of global nuclear war, the concentration of wealth or the threat posed by climate change. Nah, what we really need to worry about is whether dudes are going to still play a sport.

Without the freedom to give each other concussions, what kind of country are we anyway, right Larry?

“There will be decline of our country, there’s no doubt,” Fedora said. “There’s no doubt in my mind. I think because the lessons you learn in the game of football relate to everything that’s going to happen in the rest of your life, and if we stop learning those lessons we’re going to struggle and I think in some ways we’re struggling more now than we ever have. Are we ever going to be a perfect country? No, not by any means but I do think the game of football has had a major impact on who we are as a country.”

Indeed, can you imagine what America might look like if we didn’t have George Washington’s breakout performance in the Rose Bowl to fall back on?

Look, there’s no doubt football is an important part of American culture and identity. It’s the one sport that is uniquely ours, and there’s a reason why Fedora can make more than $2 million annually coaching unpaid amateurs. People like it.

On the flip side, football has undoubtedly provided a platform for untold thousands of people to change their lives via a college education or making millions of dollars in the NFL. That's worth celebrating and preserving.

But it’s simply beyond debate that football is a violent game that was played for most of its history without many safeguards to mitigate head trauma and that advances in research and science are giving us a window into how much damage that has caused.

CTE is real, the links between repeated concussions and long-term brain damage are real, and those who are advocating ways to make the game safer are doing so to preserve it. To deny any of that, as Fedora did, means he’s either a propagandist or a buffoon, and it's hard to say which is worse.

In fairness to Fedora, he’s not the only one who believes that “football is under attack.” Some college coaches have been saying this for awhile because it's a line that's been fed to them in meetings as a way to push back on the nationwide decline in football participation.

Of course, it’s utter nonsense, and Fedora wrapping it in misguided, hyperbolic patriotism takes this narrative to a new level of eye-rolling paranoia.

I get the impulse to defend football beyond all else. It’s how Fedora makes his living, and he truly believes the virtues learned through the game are valuable in how his players will live their lives. Nobody will argue that.

But the inability to be honest about what’s happening in this sport and how it science will guide football’s evolution means Fedora is embracing a fiction that serves nobody but himself. If he doesn’t understand that, he should find another line of work.