Shame on Goodell’s stance on concussions
Roger Goodell’s annual exercise in performative transparency has always been part news conference, part joke. The NFL commissioner has taken it to a new low this year, however, moving the event up to Monday afternoon and making it invite only, alterations that show just how much he wants to avoid facing difficult questions.
Not that Goodell is prone to answering them anyway, during the hour or so he and his handlers have traditionally set aside somewhere during Super Bowl week in front of a room of reporters, a select few of whom would be called upon to ask questions, with much of that predetermined and none of it allowing for follow-up questions. Goodell would bloviate his way around substantive answers, filling the air with the platitudes about how the game has never been in a better place.
But for all of his bluster about protecting the shield, a particular favorite phrase since taking over as commish from Paul Tagliabue in 2006, Goodell continues to prove how little he believes in protecting the players. Two recent news stories show the depth of his dissonance.
The first is revealed in a newly unsealed deposition from the 2016 settlement of the concussion class-action suit against the NFL, some of which was obtained and published by reporter Daniel Kaplan of Front Office Sports. It was unsealed because of an ongoing case involving the issue of whether the NFL is entitled to insurance coverage to help cover the cost of that settlement. Even as the league needed to show the connection between the game and concussions to trigger payment, Goodell
continued to downplay what is obvious to anyone who has ever watched the game: Head injuries happen as part of football, and sadly, for some players, they trigger lifelong complications.
Here’s the excerpt that you have to believe Goodell would be forced to answer for if Monday’s presser were, in fact, about getting answers, as transcribed by Kaplan involving the insurer’s attorney and Goodell:
Q. “As you sit here today, sir, do you know whether there is any medical consensus regarding whether concussions result in long-term damage to NFL players who sustain concussions while playing in the NFL?”
A. “I think there’s still a great deal of uncertainty about the causation issue, if that’s what you’re referring to.”
As Kaplan pointed out, Goodell seemed to be contradicted by his own general counsel Jeff Pash, whose answer to the same question was: “I think we’ve said that there can be long-term effects.”
As common sense and countless scientific studies (so many of which emanate from right here in Boston, with Boston University’s CTE Center a leading research institution) also tell us, causation from repeated concussions to longterm damage is, in no uncertain terms, uncertain.
Goodell looked just as bad in another exchange:
Q: “Did you find it an issue of concern for the NFL that multiple NFL players committed suicide and left notes indicating that they wanted their brains studied, to determine whether their injuries resulted from their play in the NFL?”
A: “I’m not sure I would agree with that entire statement. I think players who want to participate in the research necessary to advance science is a positive thing for us. Obviously, the circumstances are incredibly unfortunate.”
Seemingly surprised, the insurer’s lawyer followed up: “So, you think that the players who left notes and said, ‘I want my brain studied’ was a positive development towards science?”
Said Goodell: “When you have research and brains can be studied . . . hopefully something good comes from that and in discovery. That’s how science advances. Obviously, as I stated, the unfortunate circumstances of anybody committing suicide are horrific in and of themselves. But there are a lot of factors that probably go into that.”
He’s either willfully ignorant or profoundly uninformed.
Either notion is further supported by another news report showing how Goodell heads a league that continues to be cruelly obstinate in settling the promises of the concussion case. A league, that mind you, continues to approach the $25 billion annual revenue figure Goodell has openly targeted. But in a scathing investigative report just published by the Washington Post, the NFL is unmasked for its ongoing obfuscation toward players and their families who are attempting to collect.
From using a dementia definition that requires more impairment than the standard one used in American medicine, to denying initially approved claims at a startlingly higher rate than it reviews challenges of approval, from a baseline mind-set of suspicion that impaired players are trying to bilk the system to systematic administrative breakdowns in fulfilling approved claims, the report is at times heartbreaking, maddening, and, sadly, all too believable.
To quote the Post, “in total, court records show, the settlement has approved about 900 dementia claims since it opened in 2017. It has denied nearly 1,100, including almost 300 involving players who were diagnosed by the settlement’s own doctors. The collective value of denied dementia claims, based on the average cost of approvals, could exceed $700 million.”
The NFL’s crown jewel is up for grabs next Sunday, and the Super Bowl between the Chiefs and 49ers will once again be the most watched event of the year.
Super Bowl week starts Monday, though, and one of the first events is a Goodell news conference that continues to devolve into nothing more than a PR stunt.
Shame on him.