Along with the opening of training camp by many NFL teams last 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 last 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?
This isn’t a new concern. Medical experts like Dr. Bennet Omalu, the Nigerian-born neuropathologist who discovered CTE in the brain of Hallof-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, while slow to recognize the ramifications of this research, has made efforts in recent years to address the issue, with some modest rule changes, more elaborate concussion screenings and equipment upgrades, donations for research—and a promised $1 billion settlement to former players with brain injury. But given the mounting evidence about the severity and extent of the problem, it’s fair to question whether enough has been done.
It isn’t just professional players who face danger. Helmet-to-helmet collisions and the concussions that result from such violent contact are also a problem in the lower ranks. The same CTE study published last week also found evidence of the disease in former college players (48 out of 53 tested) and in former high school players (three of 14 involved in the study), although the disease was most severe in pro players and 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 helmet-to-helmet contact between linemen) are among the major changes. Other youth sports organizations are encouraging “flag” football in which getting “tackled” means simply that a velcroattached flag has been removed from a player’s belt. 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.