Dwight Clark’s tragic news an NFL turning point?

ANALYSIS/OPINION

So is this the fatal body blow that, years from now, history will look back upon and say was the turning point in the demise of football as we know it?

Will the news that a player who is part of one of the most iconic plays in NFL history — a player whose image we see still regularly more than 35 years after he made one of the most famous catches in league history — has a paralyzing disease he believes was caused by football be the moment when national passion became too sick to embrace any longer?

Will the news that Dwight Clark has Lou Gehrig’s disease and believes that it happened as a result of playing the game of football be the revelation that transforms our culture?

Too much hyperbole, you think? An overreaction?

Try to digest what we are talking about here.

Clark’s touchdown reception from San Francisco 49ers teammate Joe Montana in the 1981 NFC Championship Game against the Dallas Cowboys — a play remembered simply as “The Catch” — is one of the signature plays celebrating the best of the NFL, a staple in any presentation about the glory of the league.

That symbol of glory now believes he has a horrible disease because he played football.

It doesn’t matter if it is true or not, or if there is scientific evidence to back his belief. According to the Center for ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) Research and Therapy, “in more than nine out of every 10 cases diagnosed, no clear identifying cause of the disease is apparent, that is, patients lack an obvious genetic history, complete with affected family members. Also, nothing about the way patients live their lives gives scientists and clinicians clues as to what causes ALS. Nothing in patients’ diet, where they’ve lived, how they’ve lived or what they’ve done with their lives can easily explain why they’ve developed this late onset, fully developed and progressive disease.”

But now the narrative of football is now one of despair and death, so much so that Clark believes his debilitating disease was caused by the game.

“I’ve been asked if playing football caused this,” Clark said in his blog. “I don’t know for sure. But I certainly suspect it did.”

Clark, 60, wrote that symptoms began in September 2015. He’s lost significant strength in his left hand and also has weakness in his right hand, midsection, lower back and right leg.

“I can’t run, play golf or walk any distances,” he said. “Picking up anything over 30 pounds is a chore. The one piece of good news is that the disease seems to be progressing more slowly than in some patients.”

This is not some malcontent football player looking for attention and some sort of legal windfall. Clark has been part of the establishment of the NFL, having worked as the general manager for both the 49ers and the Cleveland Browns.

He’s looked at the life of football from both sides, and now is looking at a slow, painful death.

This raises the question of the risk of playing football to a new level — not just risking the chance of a slow mental deterioration into dementia, but now, according to the ALS Association, “a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to their death. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed.”

Will the mother of a young high school football player read about Dwight Clark, ALS, and wonder if it is worth risking her son’s chance for such pain? Will the wife of an NFL player read about Dwight Clark, ALS, and wonder if the paycheck they have come to rely on is worth even the smallest chance of this kind of suffering for her husband?

As young NFL players grow in numbers walking away from the game, will more join them, thankful for the steps they still have in their legs — steps that Dwight Clark will no longer have one day?

Thom Loverro hosts his weekly podcast “Cigars & Curveballs” Wednesdays available on iTunes and Google Play.