Boxing was once the champion of American sports, but when growing knowledge turned “punchy” into “brain damaged,” the talent pool dried up and the pastime became marginalized. Malcolm Gladwell has been predicting for a couple of years that the same downturn will befall football, a sport in which no amount of padding can stop concussions. He repeats those sentiments in the new documentary, The United States of Football. From Fox Sports:

“Author Malcolm Gladwell has been a voice in the concussion fray before, calling schools to ban college football and saying he wouldn’t be surprised if football at all levels fades from existence once people realize how damaging it can be long-term for players with head injuries.

But in a new documentary, Gladwell offers a less extreme — and possibly more likely — scenario for what will happen to the game. Gladwell says football will be a game that capitalizes on those poor or desperate enough to take the risk.

‘We will go to a middle position where we will disclose the risks and essentially dare people to play,’ Gladwell said in the film, which comes out Friday, as reported by CBSSports.com. ‘… That’s what the Army does. So we leave the Army for kids who have no other options, for whom the risks are acceptable. That’s what football is going to become. It’s going to become the Army. That’s a very, very different situation.

‘That’s a ghettoized sport, not a mainstream American sport.'”

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