Borland criticizes NFL for hiding CTE risks
Chris Borland shocked the sports world when he left the NFL after his rookie season, saying the long-term health risks of playing football were not worth it.
Now, Borland is going further, appearing in a public service announcement that denounces the NFL for hiding the risks of catastrophic brain damage.
In the announcement, Borland discusses his decision to leave the NFL, and how the league spent years trying to play down and discredit research on chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease known as CTE that is linked to repeated head trauma.
In the one-minute spot, which is now online and will be shown on television, Borland said that the league’s efforts to suppress the risks of the disease “is especially sad when you think about the fact that there are 5-year-old kids out there playing tackle football.”
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has said repeatedly that dozens of rules changes have made the game of football safer than ever before. The league has also committed to spending tens of millions of dollars to develop safer equipment and to pay for research into the effects of playing the game.
The NFL did not immediately return a call for comment.
Borland, who played one standout season as a linebacker with the San Francisco 49ers before abruptly leaving the league, is working with the Union of Concerned Scientists, an activist group of independent scientists who cite the NFL in its Disinformation Playbook, a new website exposing the ways that some companies and trade associations “sideline science.”
According to the group, the NFL attacked the facts about concussions and CTE similar to the ways the tobacco industry, fossil fuel companies and the makers of sugary sodas try to obscure health consequences of their products.
“The costs are high, and the NFL has made a lot of money while passing those costs on to the players, their families and their communities. We need to stop this from continuing — in football and in other industries — by standing up for science,” Borland said in the public service announcement.