Antwaan Randle-El Regrets Playing Football

If former Steelers WR Antwaan Randle-El had a chance to do it all over again, he would have stayed away from football.

In a heart-breaking interview Randle-El gave the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, he stated “If I could go back, I wouldn’t.” when asked if he regrets playing football. Instead, he says, he would have opted for a career in baseball (he was drafted by the Cubs before opting to play QB for Indiana University)

Randle-El is only 40 years old and can barely walk down the stairs of his own home. Worse, he’s already suffering from memory loss; an early symptom of CTE.

This is the life of an NFL player. They are products; commodities that are bought, sold, traded until their value expires. They are idols for the moment and quickly replaced of once a new model is brought in. To hell with what happens behind the scenes, as long as the product performs when we need it to.

At some point the NFL, the players, the fans all need to confront this as an epidemic.

Ex-players are losing their lives and we don’t have an answer as to how to fix it.

On the future of football, Randle-El painted a pretty bleak picture:

“The kids are getting bigger and faster, so the concussions, the severe spinal cord injuries, are only going to get worse,” he said. “It’s a tough pill to swallow because I love the game of football. But I tell parents, you can have the right helmet, the perfect pads on, and still end up with a paraplegic kid.

“There’s no correcting it. There’s no helmet that’s going to correct it. There’s no teaching that’s going to correct it. It just comes down to it’s a physically violent game. Football players are in a car wreck every week.”