Brain Chips and Whole Brain Emulation Could Ensure Football's Survival: Is It Worthwhile?

Marquette Sports Law Review Volume 32 Issue 1 Fall Article 4 2021 Brain Chips and Whole Brain Emulation Could Ensure Football's Survival: Is It Worthwhile? James T. Gray Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/sportslaw Part of the Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law Commons Repository Citation James T. Gray, Brain Chips and Whole Brain Emulation Could Ensure Football's Survival: Is It Worthwhile?, 32 Marq. Sports L. Rev. 49 (2022) Available at: https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/sportslaw/vol32/iss1/4 This Symposium is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Marquette Law Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact . GRAY 32.1 1/10/22 8:31 AM BRAIN CHIPS AND WHOLE BRAIN EMULATION COULD ENSURE FOOTBALL’S SURVIVAL: IS IT WORTHWHILE? JAMES T. GRAY* INTRODUCTION: FOOTBALL IS CAUSING PEOPLE TO LOSE THEIR BRAINS Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target nobody else can see. Arthur Schopenhauer, German Philosopher, 1788-1860. 1 Football is treasured in the United States amongst many of its citizens. This challenging competition can result in notoriety, fortune, ridicule, as well as glory for administrators, coaches, and players. It is considered one of the rites of passage where a boy can learn how to become, and be recognized as, a man. *James T. Gray is a 1986 graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and a 1990 graduate of Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Since 2008 he has served as the Sport and Recreation Management Program Director at Marian University and is presently a professor. Gray is co-author of the two-volume textbook entitled “Sports Law Practice, second edition” and he is sole author of the Third Edition of the same text. This publication is considered one of the seminal sports law practitioner’s books in the world. Similarly, he is the co-author of “The Stadium Game, first edition” which is a sports law practitioner’s guide to facility lease negotiations and drafting considerations. Gray complements his academic interests with legal practice. He was a partner at the Milwaukee law firm, Pierski & Gray, LLP, where he has worked either as a consultant or has represented professional sports leagues, professional and amateur athletes, and youth sports programs in issues ranging from drug testing, sport based risk management, labor contracts and negotiations, as well as sport television and sport facilities agreements. Previously clients included the International Cricket Council, Olympic athletes, and the outside legal counsel for the South African Rugby Union. © 2021, James T. Gray, All Rights Reserved. Thank you to my parents, James and Jean Gray, for believing in me and for always supporting my endeavors. Further, I am grateful to second year Marquette University Law School student, Sarah L’Hommedieu, relative to her research efforts in connection with this manuscript. 1. OXFORD REFERENCE, OXFORD ESSENTIAL QUOTATIONS (Susan Ratcliffe ed., 6th ed. 2018) (ebook), https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780191866692.001.0001/q-oro-ed600009189?rskey=33ftUp&result=1. GRAY 32.1 50 1/10/22 8:31 AM MARQUETTE SPORTS LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32:1 Oftentimes, football is presented to the sporting public as the “Hero’s Journey.”2 In this regard, there is the “death” of the boy which results in the “resurrection” of the man.3 Football’s prominence was firmly established during President Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency with the reinforcement of “Muscular Christianity.”4 To be physically effective and overcome adversity during football games was considered by many the essence of manhood.5 Further, football is an acceptable societal outlet for violent player conduct and aggressive spectator behavior.6 Across the United States, during the season, violence and aggression are vented each Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in thousands of stadia, (i.e., Cathedrals) which cost billions of dollars to construct and maintain.7 Football is one of the few opportunities within American society where ferocious player competition can be freely expressed before passionate fans who can witness an intense, collective, and competitive experience. Football is distinctive because it is a rare communal practice for the American people to share. For example, when a national tragedy occurs, the American people mutually rally around one another. Similarly, football is an additional opportunity where a loyal, diverse, and penetrating nationwide audience is captivated by the annual Super Bowl, along with the yearly college national championship game. On the local level, the weekly “Friday Night Lights” is a cherished, and ubiquitous, national high school sport phenomenon. Yet, football is now stymied due to the dangers related to repetitive brain trauma. Habitually, people think starkly of concussions in the context of the vivid, often sudden, demise of competitive playing careers.8 At other times, brain injuries are a dramatic genesis of death while competing at the youth level to the professional one.9 During the last twenty years, football culture has been condemned due to the substantial harm connected with player concussions, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (“CTE”), various forms of dementia, and 2. See generally JOSEPH CAMPBELL WITH BILL MOYERS, THE POWER OF MYTH, Ch. 4 (Betty Sue Flowers ed., 1st ed. 1988). 3. Id. 4. See generally Clifford Putney, Muscular Christianity, THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PEDAGOGY AND INFORMAL EDUCATION (2003), www.infed.org/christianeducation/muscular_christianity.htm. 5. Id. 6. See generally RENÉ GIRARD, VIOLENCE AND THE SACRED (Patrick Gregory trans., 1977), for a historical overview of the role of violence within human society. 7. See, e.g., Peter Geisendorfer-Lindgren, Stadiums, Cathedrals: Marks of Their Eras, STARTRIBUNE (Sept. 2, 2016, 6:21 PM), https://www.startribune.com/stadiums-cathedrals-marks-oftheir-eras/392207411/. 8. See Ingfei Chen, Exactly How Dangerous Is Football?, NEW YORKER (Feb. 1, 2020), https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/exactly-how-dangerous-is-football. 9. Id. GRAY 32.1 1/10/22 8:31 AM 2021] BRAIN CHIPS 51 brain related football player suicide.10 As a result, football is experiencing an existential crisis to preserve the current culture of its physical, often epic, competitions.11 Further, it remains desperate to preserve revenue maximization, along with protecting the health and safety of all competitors.12 For many Americans they are suddenly confronted with this profound question: Would you feel comfortable watching someone whom you love play football? As football attempts to become less violent in order to protect the health and safety of player brains, has the game, now publicly perceived, devolved from the “Hero’s Journey” to something where football’s vigor has been forfeited, and is now flat, or worse, “dead?” Currently, the collective American national responses to b (...truncated)