#28jan2018

This is the medical term for brain damage caused by repeated head trauma. There’s plenty about it in the news today because of its association with professional football and the NFL. This is a devastating disease. The symptoms include memory loss, poor judgement, altered speech, depression, dementia, etc. Several high profile former NFL players have committed suicide apparently with it and because of it. The fact that we know about it and what it does and what it causes is troubling enough, but that is not why I began this blog. There is another aspect of this terrible ailment that is very troubling to me. The public consciousness was awakened by the players bringing lawsuits against the NFL and stipulating in their wills that when they died their brains would be donated to medical science. It is now clear that the NFL knew about this before the players recognized it and began to  take action. In 1994 the NFL created the Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee (MTBIC) to study the effects of concussions and the injury to NFL players. The data collected by the league from 1996 - 2001 seemed to minimize and obfuscate the danger of head trauma. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) did a study of retired NFL players and concluded that there is significant risk of neurological disorders in retired NFL players. The MTBIC contradicted this study and other investigations of this sort. In 2003 the MTBIC began to publish “study” results that stated there were no long term negative health consequences associated with head trauma sustained by NFL players. The league also asserted that returning to play after a concussion did not involve any risk. More and more studies were published that directly contradicted the NFL’s MTBIC “studies” and reports. However, the NFL did not waver in their efforts to discredit and discourage investigations of this nature. In 2002 the SHTF. Dr. Bennet Omalu examined the brain of former Pittsburg Steeler Mike Webster. Mike died of a heart attack at age 50 following unusual and unexplained behavior after retirement. In Mike’s brain, Dr. Omalu discovered a new disease which he called Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). He published in Neurosurgery in July 2005. The NFL’s reaction was to demand that the article be retracted. Dr. Omalu responded with a second paper on the subject. Dr. Ira Casson, co-chair of MTBIC, denied in a televised interview that there was any link between head injuries sustained playing in the NFL and long-term brain damage. Dr. Omalu and colleagues founded the Brain Injury Research Institute (BIRI). In 2012 they began an autopsy of Junior Seau, former NFL linebacker. Seau committed suicide, shooting himself in the chest to preserve his brain which he donated to the BIRI. However, Seau’s son revoked permission after he was contacted by the NFL denouncing Omalu’s qualifications, motivation and ethics. The NFL commissioner appeared before Congress and was much less than forthcoming. Does this sound familiar? How about the path the tobacco industry took, even appearing before Congress and denying any connection between their product and the death of 7 million people worldwide every year? Would it surprise you that the legal representation of the NFL has ties to the tobacco industry legal defense? Finally in November 2009, an NFL spokesperson, Greg Aiello, publicly said “it’s quite obvious from the medical research that’s been done that concussions can lead to long term problems.” Does it  take hundreds of scientific studies and papers to convince people that getting hit in the head is unhealthy? Apparently so when the product is a $14 billion to $25 billion business. We can’t have anything affecting our bottom line, even the misery and death of people, can we? The NFL employs thousands of people and is expected to net $14 billion this year. The real economic impact comes in the thousands of ancillary business that surround the NFL. All the way down to the cost of the pizza you order to eat while watching the game on TV while wearing the jersey of your favorite player and team. Yes, this is big business. Huge business. It’s not going anywhere. We have seen many significant changes, all improvements in my mind, but much more has to be done to make the game safer. How about when a player is removed from the game after suffering a concussion, the player who caused the concussion also has to leave the game and lose his pay for that game? A lot of attention has been given to protecting pass receivers which is good, but we need some protection for the running backs also. Now a runner is not protected. Even Iron Head Heyward did not have an iron head. He died at 39 from a brain tumor. I saw an interview of Tony Dorsett, former running back of the Dallas Cowboys. He is suffering with CTE. He said that some days he cannot remember the names of his children. At the end of the interview he was asked if, knowing what he knows now, would he do it the same way again? After some thought, he said “Yes, I’d still do it the same way.” Bo Jackson, another former NFL running back, said that if he knew about CTE as a young man he would not have played football and that there was no way that he would let his children play the game. Of course, he was a pro baseball player, too. We are going to have football. There is no question about that. So how do we protect those who are most vulnerable? Football in this country starts at six years old. Do they need to be protected from head trauma? Yes, even more so than the NFL players. How about flag football until high school? They could still learn the fundamentals of the game but in a safer environment.  Certainly something needs to be done in this aspect of the game. Thankfully this knowledge and emphasis on safety in the NFL has  trickled down to the college level. It was here that I became active regarding football and head trauma. I had been living in Europe and had been away from football, both college and pro for many years. When I relocated to the US and began to watch football again, I was astonished at how violent the game had become. Or was it always that way and I had just accepted it as it was without question? Then my memory began to click in. I recalled the play of the defensive backs of the Oakland Raiders. There was Jack Tatum and several other defensive backs the Raiders had between 1970 - 80 who would knock a defenseless receiver unconscious and laugh and high five when they got to the sidelines. There is the infamous Tatum hit on Darryl Stingley of New England in a preseason game where the pass was too high and incomplete but Tatum drilled him anyway, causing a spinal injury paralyzing Stingley from the chest down. Is that football? Well, it was then. There was no flag on the play and no consequences for Tatum. Thankfully there is a penalty and a fine for that kind of play today. But we still see it. We have to eliminate that vicious play that borders on criminality. The college players tried to emulate what they saw the pros doing. Time and time again I saw defensive backs spearing defenseless receivers, usually with a head to head blow, to dislodge the ball. I’m sure the defensive backs thought ‘that’s the way the pros do it. That’s the way to do it.’ And the thing that really angered me was a broadcaster saying “that’s just football. There should be no penalty on that play.” Kirk Herbstreit was the announcer I heard most often with that comment. Finally I had had enough. I fired off a letter to Herbstreit saying something like “Kirk, when you see the player being carried off the field on a stretcher, run down on the field and tell him ‘that’s just football, son.’ And then run into the stands and tell his parents ‘that’s just football.’” And I asked him ‘is that the way you teach your kids to play football?’ I never got a reply from Herbstreit, even though I sent several letters with a similar message each time. Perhaps it was because I called him a hoodlum broadcaster because of his comments. He could have been part of the solution to the problem, but no, he was as big a part of the problem as the vicious hitters on the field. He could have condemned that kind of play rather than glorifying it. It pains me to see him still broadcasting and every time I see him I think ‘Herbstreit, hoodlum boadcaster.’ I didn’t limit myself to letters to Herbstreit. I also sent letters to coaches whose teams I saw playing like that. The coaches may be teaching it, maybe not, I don’t know that. But if they allow it, they condone it and it reflects negatively on them and on the school. I also sent letters to those college presidents telling them that that type of play reflects on them, on the school and on the students at the school. On the field those players represent the coach, the school president, the students, the school itself. I also called the coaches and the school presidents hoodlums for not stopping that type of play. A couple of schools I singled out were Auburn and Oklahoma. Coach Gene Chizik and defensive coordinator Ted Roof and President Jay Gogue. Chizik was fired at Auburn but I think his record had more to do with that than his allowing or coaching this style of play. Chizik had two players on his 2010 - 11 team that were known as the two dirtiest players in the SEC. They were not only vicious but in the scrum would bite, hit, kick, spit, twist the helmet of the other player - just real hooliganism. Chizik’s Ted Roof was asked about the play of these two guys and he sheepishly lowered his chin and said meekly ‘well, it is a contact sport.’ Yes, it is a contact sport. But it is blocking and tackling. Not intimidating and maiming. Yes, I also wrote to Oklahoma and called Coach Bob Stoops and President David Boren hoodlums. No, I didn’t receive a reply from anyone. Not that I was expecting one. It pains me to see Chizik on TV as a commentator on the SEC network. Hoodlum Herbstreit, hoodlum Chizik. Incidentally early in his coaching career, Chizik had a player die of a brain aneurysm from a hit to the head in practice. And he still allowed that type of play at Auburn. Researchers at Boston University announced in July 2017 that they had detected evidence of CTE in 110 of 111 donated brains of former NFL players. Do we need any more evidence? Something has to be done about this now. NOW! Changes to the rules can help. We can write to the rules committees saying that we support changes to the rules to make the game safer. Maybe even offer your suggested rule change. Ray Anderson, the AD at Arizona State is president of the NCAA Football Competition Committee. Rich McKay, the president of the Atlanta Falcons is the Chairman of the NFL Competition Committee. 

Image Source - Getty Images, Debbi Smirnoff.

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