ESPN college football analyst Ed Cunningham has "resigned from one of the top jobs in sports broadcasting because of his growing discomfort with the damage being inflicted on the players he was watching each week," according to John Branch of the N.Y. TIMES. Cunningham said that he "could not, in good conscience, continue his supporting role in football’s multibillion-dollar apparatus." Cunningham: "I take full ownership of my alignment with the sport. I can just no longer be in that cheerleader’s spot." He added, "I just don’t think the game is safe for the brain. To me, it’s unacceptable." Branch notes during his career, Cunningham built a reputation for his "pointed criticism toward what he thought were reckless hits and irresponsible coaching decisions that endangered the health of athletes." ESPN play-by-play announcer Mike Patrick, who partnered with Cunningham, said, "I could hardly disagree with anything he said. The sport is at a crossroads. I love football -- college football, pro football, any kind of football. It’s a wonderful sport. But now that I realize what it can do to people ... how do you stay silent? Ed was in the vanguard of this. I give him all the credit in the world. And I’m going to be outspoken on it, in part because he led me to that drinking hole" (N.Y. TIMES, 8/31). ESPN’s Mike Greenberg responded to Cunningham's move by saying, "If you do want to be a part of the solution of trying to help make it better, you would think that being inside of it rather than outside of it would give you a better opportunity to do that. Second, if you feel the game is so dangerous at this point that you no longer want to be a part of it, then I'm not sure how well that jibes with saying, ‘I don't think the game should go away.’ The game is either too dangerous to be played or it isn't” (“Mike & Mike,” ESPN Radio, 8/31).
