Greg Ransom did not see the hit that led to his son’s death, but since that night two Septembers ago, he has imagined over and over the circumstances that led to the moment when everything fell apart.
The next November, James committed suicide. He was 13. There were no answers to be found, no explanations to be had, nothing to hold onto but the cruelty of it all. It took just one hit for their son to suffer a traumatic brain injury playing football. And now, a little over a year later, he was gone.
As the picture of youth football’s long-term cognitive risk comes into clearer focus, questions about when, if ever, kids should be allowed to play the game grow ever louder. A recent study from Boston University surveyed 214 former high school, college, or pro players and found that those who played youth tackle football before the age of 12 were twice as likely to develop behavioral problems and three times more likely to develop depression. Another Boston University study, published in January, detailed the strongest link yet between repetitive, subconcussive hits and the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
“There’s no explaining it,” Courtney says now, but in the immediate fog of grief, she tried anyway, scouring the internet for stories of children lost to suicide. She was struck by a troubling trend: “In almost every story, somewhere, there was a concussion in that kid’s life.”
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