Throwing a flag on concussions
Earlier this month, sportscasting legend Bob Costas revealed NBC pulled him from Super Bowl coverage a week before the big game last year for comments about concussions and player safety. This revelation demonstrates, once again, the disregard for player safety.
The NFL is happy to talk about recent reports that concussions have decreased by 23.8 percent within the past year, but questions, nevertheless, loom about the league’s sincerity to stand up for players’ safety. The media need to bring more attention to how serious the concussion issue is for players, what’s being done and the advancements in science that will address the problem.
The Costas firing is but one more sign of blatant disrespect toward NFL players. It was a year ago December that then-Texans quarterback Tom Savage was sent back into the Texans-49ers game even though a replay showed he had obvious concussion symptoms. When asked my opinion on the NFL’s concussion protocol, I replied that it was an “absolute joke” and something “done only for public opinion.” The safety of my teammates and competitors is a topic I am passionate about. And the statistics about head injuries in football are downright frightening. The NFL’s latest announcement shows improvement, but we have a lot further to go. Let’s not get complacent with this statistical blip.
Boston University researchers recently found chronic traumatic encephalopathy in 99 percent of brains from NFL players, 91 percent of college football players and 21 percent of high school players. CTE is a progressive and degenerative brain disease that is found in those that have had a history of repeated head trauma. It’s because of this condition that we are seeing players in multiple sports forced into early retirement. My concern is real and not just trash talk to put down league leadership.
As far back as 1933, the NCAA’s medical handbook advised that players who suffered concussions need to rest and be under constant supervision, but only relatively recently have concussions and player safety begun to get the attention they deserve.
Lawsuits, research and stories about athletes of all ages have resulted in measures being put in place to reduce the numbers of and prevent concussions at all levels of sports. The NFL instituted the helmet rule, banning the lowering of helmets to initiate contact, to try to reduce the league record of 291 diagnosed concussions in the 2017-2018 season. New kickoff rules were instituted, and 10 models of helmets were banned based on poor performance during testing (six have already been banned and four more will be banned this year).
Whether these steps will have the desired result in a game that is inherently violent remains to be seen, but we must keep trying. Undoubtedly, advances will continue to be made in prevention, but concussions won’t be eliminated. Concussions will continue to be an issue for sports, as they are for service members, seniors, car accident victims and others.
So where else can we look to eliminate, if not concussions, the serious risks associated with them? Despite the prevalence of concussions and knowledge of the risks associated with them, we haven’t seen significant progress in treatment.
Concussion treatment is still primitive compared to therapies for other medical issues and is focused on the symptoms rather than a cure. The standard of care today is largely the same as it was decades ago — rest and progressive return to activity depending upon the symptoms and signs.
This may be changing, however, as a result of advances in molecular biology and our increased understanding of what happens in the brain during and after a concussion.
There are companies developing concussion medicines to treat symptoms and the underlying damage of concussions. I am excited about the possibilities these wonder drugs could bring us and look forward to seeing what the frontier of biopharmaceuticals has in store for NFL players and so many others. Because of my interest, I joined the board of one of these companies, Oxeia Biopharmaceuticals, which has a medicine in development that may treat both the immediate symptoms and the underlying damage.
We (which includes the NFL) need to be aggressively and vigilantly working to ensure better player safety that can prevent concussions, as well as to find treatments that will eliminate both the short- and long-term cognitive and emotional damage that can result from concussions.