America's shaky love affair with the NFL

America's love affair with her dangerous boyfriend begins again soon.

The NFL season starts Thursday.

For decades, our relationship with the nation's most popular sport (listed as the favorite sport by twice as many people as any other sport in 2015) was simple. The NFL was a weekly battle of wholesome, all-American athletes. It was the perfect television sport: framed in a tight space, with enough time for replays and commercials. We gambled on games, played fantasy football and held tailgate parties even when we weren't at the game.

The Super Bowl is an American holiday and we turned Monday Night Football (then Sunday Night Football, then Thursday Night Football) into a weekly ritual. If you didn't love the NFL, you kept quiet about it.

And then . . .

NFL players kept getting into legal trouble. You couldn't go a week without hearing about an NFL player being arrested. Drunken driving. Domestic abuse. Assault. Was it an epidemic or just that we were finally hearing the truth? The league needed to do something.

The tide turned. A little. But we kept watching.

And then . . .

Retired players started coming forward with tales of brain problems. They couldn't remember their phone numbers. They couldn't endure light. Headaches. Premature deaths. And some of the men were in their 40s and 50s.

Soon it became a stampede. Brain injury after brain injury. A movie starring Will Smith. Studies about the prevalence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) among NFL players.

The love affair with the NFL got a little shakier.

The news got worse. Just last month, a study showed that of 111 brains of former NFL players that were studied, 110 showed signs of CTE. Sure, they were men whose families suspected something was wrong. Sure, that's not a representative sample. But as observers pointed out, even if the next 1,200 brains of former NFL players tested negative – which is next to impossible – NFL players would be vastly above the normal expected level of CTE.

A fact: Playing football, particularly at its highest level, significantly increases your chances at brain injuries.

We keep watching, but we're less comfortable.

It's still the NFL. It's still America's Sunday celebration. It's still the Cowboys and Patriots. It's still Tom Brady and Ben Roethlisberger.

The NFL has survived challenges from four other professional football leagues. It overcame the embarrassment of ignoring a culture of off-field violence. It survived – even thrived – while franchises moved, ticket prices skyrocketed and entertainment competition increased.

But . . .

This is a league that causes brain injuries.

Many of the players we're cheering for on Sundays will suffer brain trauma that will make their retirement years a nightmare.

Maybe the NFL is the new cigarettes.

For years, Americans suspected they were bad for our health but ignored the warnings. Then the surgeon general declared that cigarettes cause cancer and the tide slowly turned. Tobacco products kept selling, but decreased. Smoking became less acceptable. It was banned in some, then most places.

Smoking hasn't gone away, but it's not what it was. Society recognizes that it's dangerous and spurns it, even though some people still smoke.

Will the NFL follow suit? In a few decades, will children be amazed that we celebrated a game that inflicted brain damage on its participants?

Former Atlanta Falcons coach Jerry Glanville was once caught on film, arguing with an official. "This is the NFL," Glanville said. "That means not for long when you make them (bleeping) calls."

A reasonable question: Does the cascade of medical evidence about the adverse health effects of playing pro football mean the NFL's future as the No. 1 sport is not for long?

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.