Should football be banned? I'm serious.

Football is part of my life. It always has been.

Some of my fondest childhood memories are of sitting on a footstool in the kitchen of our apartment on West 24th Place in Chicago while my dad and I listened to Jack Brickhouse and Irv Kupcinet broadcast the Bears games on the radio. These were the days before regular season NFL games were widely televised. As Protestants (or at least non-Roman Catholics), we differed from our neighbors in having no rooting interest in Notre Dame. In principle, we supported the Fighting Illini and the Northwestern Wildcats- though both (and especially Northwestern) were consistently terrible in those days. In consequence we didn't pay much attention to college football, even though Dad had been a season ticket holder for the University of Chicago Maroons during their Big Ten days. The exception was the Rose Bowl, in which- as a matter of principle- we always rooted for the Big Ten team against the representative of the Pac Ten.

The Bears were right up there with the Cubs and the Blackhawks. I grew up idolizing Willie Gallimore and Ed Brown and Rick Casares and Doug Atkins and Bill George- and Mike Ditka. I well remember the Sunday when we had some day-long activity at church, and the pastor's daughter- who grew up in Nebraska- "dissed" Gale Sayers. It was the day Sayers scored six touchdowns in the Wrigley Field mud against the 49ers; she soon stopped scoffing.

The 1963 NFL championship and the 1985 Super Bowl victory, along with the two Blackhawks Stanley Cups in my lifetime, were my greatest thrills in sports. So I'm no casual fan. I ask the question posed by this posts's title reluctantly, but it's hard for me to avoid.

When I got to high school, naturally I went out for football. I quickly discovered that I was not an athlete. I couldn't move the day after the first practice my freshman year. When I went out for the varsity as a junior, the coach couldn't bring himself to cut me, and carried me, as he put it, as "Luther South's one man taxi squad." I learned my lesson, and didn't go out my senior year.

My maternal grandfather was a major boxing fan. While I occasionally followed heavyweight championship bouts, I never really got into the sport. Frankly, I always had ethical as well as aesthetic problems with a sport whose aim was to physically injure another human being. And the frightening percentage of professional boxers who suffered some sort of brain damage only confirmed my distaste for the ring.

A week ago today I wrote about the then-unexplained death of Bears great Dave Duerson, one of the finest safeties in NFL history. It is no longer unexplained. Duerson committed suicide out of fear that he was suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a brain disorder characterized by personality changes, Alheimer's-like dementia,  and depression. Every known sufferer of CTE has been either a boxer or a football player. These include thirteen former NFL players. Duerson is not the first of them (assuming that he had CTE) to commit suicide.

Add to this a rate of Alzheimer's disease (perhaps undiagnosed CTE) among former professional football players astronomically higher than that of the general population, and I begin to have ethical concerns about football not dissimilar to those I have about boxing.

Duerson was an intelligent, likeable, generous, and thoroughly admirable man who built a successful business after retiring from football.  But that business failed in 2006. He pled guilty to misdemeanor domestic battery year later after pushing his wife during an argument, an incident which led to his resignation from the Notre Dame Board of Trustees. His marriage failed That same year the mortgage on his house went into foreclosure, and last September he was forced to file for personal bankruptcy.

His ex-wife says that he was suffering from short-term memory loss, blurred vision and pain on "the left side of his brain." Duerson, who served on the NFL Players Association committee which dealt with disability claims by retired players, knew all about CTE. Where did his deterriorating personal life leave off, and symptoms of the syndrome begin? His suicide note, in any case, left little doubt about his motivation. Its wording seems strange: "Please," he wrote, "see that my brain is given to the NFL's brain bank." The request becomes understandable when one realizes that CTE can only be diagnosed post-mortem. And one particular institution- Boston University's Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy- has undetaken a systematic study of CTE and former NFL players. And as Duerson requested, it will get his brain.

"I saw him at a 25th anniversary party for our Super Bowl team in October, and he was terrific," said Mike Ditka, the coach of the Super Bowl XX champion Bears. "I don't understand." At least one commentator- TIME's Sean Gregory- suggests that Duerson is football's first martyr, a man who gave his life in order to save those of his fellow players. By studying his brain, Duerson appears to have hoped, insight could be gained into a shockingly prevalent problem.

Kyle Turley, a former offensive tackle for the Saints, Rams and Chiefs who suffered multiple concussions during his career, is taking drugs for presumptive CTE. They help. "We all see it," Turley says. "Just being down there at this year's Super Bowl and looking those former players in the eyes, it was a very sobering experience. They all had that same look. It says, 'Only we know what is happening to us.' It's a scary thing."

Chris Nowinski, a former Harvard tackle, is co-director of Boston University's brain research center. He  asks, "Would you let your 12-year-old go to boxing class and let him get punched 1,000 times in the head each fall?" He answers his own question: "You wouldn't. But we let that happen with our football players." He's talking here not only about pro and college players, but high school and Pop Warner players as well.

One thing seems certain: the suicide of Dave Duerson will force football to confront something close to its very nature. Either football will change, and change dramatically, or I won't be the only dedicated fan who begins to wonder whether football is a game civilized people should follow.

Duerson's funeral will be today, in Chicago.