Danny Kanell is half of the hosting duo for ESPN Radio’s afternoon show “Russillo & Kanell.” A college quarterback at Florida State, Kanell’s NFL career lasted from 1996-2000 and then 2003-04 before he called it quits. It is his outspokenness, though, that has earned him attention recently, whether on air or through his Twitter handle, @dannykanell. He revels in needling the SEC and taking on controversial issues, and no issue has garnered as much publicity as what he described recently as a “war on football” in regard to player health and safety.
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We need to have the conversation, we need to start to figure out exactly what it means: What does it mean if you have CTE? My biggest fear is the game might be extinct because there are parents that are terrified to let their kids play the game because of the unknown.”
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On the NFL acknowledging before Congress a link between chronic traumatic encephalopathy and football: There is obviously a correlation when you have, what is it, 90 out of [94] former NFL player brains, they find CTE; there is definitely a correlation. There is a connection between the disease and playing the game of football. But I think what is frustrating to me is we’ve made so many changes to the sport that we don’t know what this generation of players will look like, because we’ve come so far along with the equipment, with the way that they play the game, with the way they practice and prepare, and taking a lot of those unnecessary hits to the head out of the equation that we just don’t know. … I want more studies so we can figure out what exactly the disease is, what the consequences are, what are the cures, what way can we treat it.
On efforts to take tackling out of youth football: I don’t think it should be mandated. I don’t think there should be a law where you can’t play football before you are 18. If that happens, it would be a matter of time before you see the game fade away. … It is a decision the parents have to make. You are seeing again there is progress being made with the way kids are taught the game.
On personal responses he has received: People have strong feeling about it, and that’s a fact. I have people who are still angry with me that would say that I take concussions and brain health lightly, which I don’t think is the case at all. I want to make sure we take this seriously, but [I] also have a ton of people who are very supportive saying we realize what the game of football [has] meant.
On the financial considerations of the debate: There is a lot of money at stake, and that is what makes me nervous when I read certain articles and read different peoples’ opinions; there is a lot of money at stake. Whether it is the lawsuit that is going on between the players and the NFL, whether it is between parents and Pop Warner, which are being settled now, whether it’s grants that are being given, there is a lot of money at stake, and that is why the NFL is extremely, extremely cautious in every single word that is spoken about the topic.
