Malcolm Gladwell thinks American football is a “moral abomination,” and it’s hard to argue, though I wonder about his self-termed “intuition” telling him that European football (or soccer) “can’t possibly compare” in terms of brain injuries. Anyone repeatedly heading a soccer ball that’s been kicked from 50 yards away would seem to me to be at great risk, and that’s not even considering the repetitive heading that all pro soccer players practice from when their small children. Perhaps Jeff Astle was, in Gladwellian terms, an outlier, but probably not. Worthing thinking about, at any rate. From a new Gladwell interview conducted by Bloomberg’s Emily Chang:

“In a wide-ranging interview with Emily Chang, best-selling author and New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell continued his long-standing crusade against football with a harsh indictment. ‘Football is a moral abomination,’ he said and predicted that the sport — currently far and away the most popular and lucrative in America — would eventually ‘wither on the vine.’

The NFL recently revealed that nearly a third of retired players develop long-term cognitive issues much earlier than the general population. ‘We’re not just talking about people limping at the age of 50. We’re talking about brain injuries that are causing horrible, protracted, premature death,’ Gladwell told Chang, picking up a theme he first explored in a 2009 article for The New Yorker which likened football to dogfighting. ‘This…is appalling. Can you point to another industry in America which, in the course of doing business, maims a third of its employees?'”