Take risk of CTE seriously
Along with the opening of training camp by many NFL teams this week came an updated study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association that found the degenerative brain disease CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) in the brains of 110 of 111 deceased former National Football League players who donated their brains to research.
As the researchers acknowledge, this was a skewed sample; one presumes former players without symptoms were less likely to have participated. But even skeptics of the link between CTE and football must be alarmed at the sheer number of cases among former pro football players who have died in just the past three years.
That outcome should concern not just professional football players or parents contemplating whether their children should play the sport but run-of-the-mill fans of the game as well. Just how dangerous is football, and are we dooming generations of men to debilitating brain injury simply for our own amusement?
Medical experts like Dr. Bennet Omalu, the Nigerianborn neuropathologist who discovered CTE in the brain of Hall-of-Fame center Mike Webster and whose experience was detailed in the movie “Concussion,” has been warning for years that most NFL players have brain disease. And the NFL has made some modest rule changes, more-elaborate concussion screenings, equipment upgrades, donations for research — and a promised $1 billion settlement to former players with brain injury.
But it’s fair to question whether enough has been done. It’s still not uncommon for those involved in the NFL to dismiss heightened concerns about concussions. Last fall, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones — whose Arkansas Razorbacks teammate Ronnie Caveness was among those diagnosed with CTE in the study — compared the danger to evolving medical concerns over red meat and milk. “I don’t become unduly alarmed,” he told reporters.
The same CTE study also found evidence of the disease in former college players (48 out of 53 tested) and in former high-school players (3 of 14 involved in the study). The disease was most severe in pro players, particularly those who played on the line, as running backs or in the defensive backfield.
Nor have mounting concerns over football-related head injuries escaped the attention of families nationwide who are becoming increasingly reluctant to enroll their children in youth football leagues.
Organizations like U.S.A. Football are changing rules for the sport so that school-aged children are playing a less-violent game. Eliminating kickoffs and punts, reducing the number of players and banning the three-point stance (which tends to promote helmetto-helmet contact between linemen) are among the major changes.
Given that researchers are most concerned about the repeated nature of football’s blows to the head, it’s not unfair to worry that the injuries that caused CTE in former pro football players started not on the fields of Big Ten or the SEC but in sandlots and rec programs when they first donned a Riddell or Schutt helmet.
The NFL’s actions seem underwhelming compared to the threat, and it will take more than a few preseason no-shows to convince owners in this highly profitable form of entertainment that fans demand something more than what’s been offered to date.