Can the NFL survive the mounting evidence of player injuries?

With fall comes football, and with football comes brain juries.

That's the simple truth of it, says Steve Almond, author of "Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto." Almond was a diehard football fan for 40 years, until he began to research the extent of the injuries involved.

Almond and Harry Carson, a former NFL linebacker and a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, joined MPR News' Tom Weber to discuss the future of the NFL, and of the sport itself.

Some have asked whether the growing evidence of players' brain injuries will turn people off from the sport. Just last week, a study showed that 87 of 91 deceased NFL players tested positive for chronic traumatic encephalopathy — the degenerative disease associated with repeated brain trauma. That news, however, doesn't seem to have put a damper on this season's football mania.

"Industrially, football is doing great," Almond said, explaining the paradox. "There's two things that are increasing at the same time: our desire for the game ... and the growing awareness that players are at risk."

"The most profound existential question is this: At what point will fans take seriously the moral idea that consuming this form of entertainment comes along with up to 30% of players suffering long-term cognitive ailments or brain damage?"

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"There is no other workplace in America in 2015 where anybody would find a 30 percent risk of brain damage among employees to be a safe workplace or an acceptable workplace."

The player's take

As a former player, Carson is conflicted about the sport. You can learn great lessons from the game, he said, but the mounting medical evidence can't be ignored.

"From a physical standpoint, we all knew that we could possibly get hurt," Carson said. "What we did not know is the neurological effect of the injuries that we sustained to our brains. Nobody told us that."

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"Knowing what I know now, I don't think I would have played the game."

Concussions aren't the only problem

Almond pointed out that the NFL has been quick to address issues of concussions. Teams perform concussion tests on the sidelines and can bench players that suffer from them. But they aren't the only problem: sub-concussive hits can be just as dangerous.

"College players have about 1,000 sub-concussive hits during a full season. Pro players probably have a greater number," Almond said.

"[Sub-concussive hits] are like little car accidents that happen inside your helmet. Those are invisible. We don't see them and a concussion test doesn't pick them up. To say that football has a concussion problem is inaccurate. It's imprecise. It doesn't even have a violence problem, it just has a physics and physiology problem. You cannot have guys that big and that fast running into one another over and over again in helmets, and not have their brains shaking around in their skulls."

Carson echoed the idea that helmets are insufficient protection for the sport.

"The helmet protects the skull, it does not protect the brain," Carson said. "When there is a violent collision, it's kind of like an egg yolk smashing against the shell. And when you injure the brain, it's going to manifest itself in some way down the road."

The financial side of football

Football is a multi-billion dollar industry, and questions of profit can shape decisions about players' well-being.

"We should make a distinction between the game of football and the industry, the football industrial complex," said Almond. "They really are a business and to expect them to behave morally is like expecting a cash register to have a soul. It's just never going to happen."

On whether NFL will continue

"Whether football will continue to be our national religion really resides within individual fans. The purpose of my book is to ask fans to make informed decisions about whether they get enough pleasure from the game, knowing that up to a third of the players will wind up with cognitive decline," said Almond. "That's the real question: When will the fans view it as a moral undertaking rather an entertaining game."