Fuzzy line between football and CTE

Rin Ottawa andy Ambrosie could only punt on the concussion questions for so long.

When he was installed as CFL commissioner in July, the former lineman said that he was no doctor and no scientist, so he didn’t want to wade into the debate about the risks associated with football and brain disease.

But he’s been in the job for five months now, and he’s talked to some of those doctors and scientists, and so now Ambrosie is willing to offer some thoughts on the matter. It turns out the new guy, on this particular issue, is a lot like the old guy.

Speaking at the commissioner’s Grey Cup week news conference on Friday morning, Ambrosie said he wanted to take a minute to address the “elephant in the room.” He said the CFL understands that concussions are traumatic brain injuries, and that serious harm can develop if they are not properly treated.

But on the questions of whether such repeated brain trauma leads to conditions like dementia and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), Ambrosie made a point of saying “the cause and effect is unclear.” He said “we are going to rely on the science” and added that “the science is not conclusive.”

“All that tells us is that we have to keep working,” Ambrosie said. “There is so much more that we don’t know than we know.”

For all of his attempts to couch this issue in cautious language, and for all Ambrosie did to emphasize that he takes the subject of football and brain health seriously, there is a simple takeaway from all that talk: CFL commissioner denies link between football and CTE, the headlines will say.

And that will be a fair assessment of the situation. And Ambrosie will still be technically correct.

Even though NFL officials conceded under Senate questioning last year that a link between football and brain disease exists, and many high-profile advocates for former players insist that the link is undeniable given the repeated studies that show evidence of CTE in an overwhelming number of brains donated by former football players, Ambrosie can fall back on saying the science is inconclusive.

The reader will note that there is nothing equivocal about those statements. Ambrosie, in refusing to confirm that the link exists, is only echoing what the scientists themselves are currently saying, even if their motivations for saying so are entirely different. The doctors are being scientifically cautious, noting the limitations on the current research that are due to CTE only being detected post-mortem.