NFL's Request for Brains Must Yield Honest Effort to Sack Trauma

The old adage applies here: Help me to help you.

As we sit down to enjoy our Sunday rituals of barbecues, halftime naps, or whatever yours may be while you indulge in a day of football, one thing will always remain constant.

Helmet-to-helmet collisions; foreheads hitting knees; the back of skulls exchanging low-fives with the turf; all of these vicious realities that generate immediate cringing will never fade. 

They waltz hand-in-hand with the guacamole and the Miller Lite at our football gatherings. In that sense, the news coming from Boston is uplifting.

According to an Associated Press report, the NFL is joining Boston University brain researchers in the quest to accurately define the long-term effects concussions and other football-induced head trauma has on the lives of players.

The researchers at BU want to determine whether or not there are recurring signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in a significant proportion of the players they test. CTE is a condition in the brain resulting from repetitive head trauma and can cause dementia as early as 40.

As part of this effort, NFL spokesman Greg Aiello confirmed the league is encouraging current and former players to donate their brains to the Boston University Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy.

I’m in favor of any measures that increase head trauma awareness and work toward the ultimate goal of providing a safer game for the players that we regularly support with tickets and jersey sales, but I hope the NFL is ready to actively lead the movement it is helping launch.

Sounds fair, right? Well, I’m not entirely convinced.

As the NFL has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry, it has become common practice to turn our backs on the single innate impulse that feeds football’s massive audience: violence.

We are all guilty. We love violence. We love the result of a 250-pound linebacker turning a 180-pound receiver into a laundry basket of grass stains and welts. The gasps and cheers that seep from the stands when a quarterback meets Jared Allen are real. They are often times worth the price of admission.

For years, the NFL has reaped the benefits of its players with disregard to the future that lies before them. There were never concerns for quality of life after 30 as long as the box suites remained filled and the cable networks kept calling. Why would there be? Isn’t this a business?

The league has, at times, cowardly hidden behind its enamoring product when it could have made greater strides to take care of ex-players suffering from a plethora of frailties that come with banging bodies for a living. Pension plans, health care benefits, and disability checks were kept to a minimum.

Now that the NFL is asking its employees to donate their brains and spinal tissue for the greater good, they no longer have the shadow of America’s favorite form of entertainment to hide behind. The NFL wants players to become the ultimate donors, and therefore the league must now do the same.

As a fan, I want to see the league foster an avenue of independent study to determine the exact side effects of a life in the NFL. Give credit to the league, as that is what it is now doing with the folks at BU.

The level of desperation, however, remains repulsive. The procedures must be immediate. They must be at the top of Commissioner Roger Goodell’s Christmas shopping list. The fuzz that every player experiences after a big hit cannot be met with blank stares and two palms facing the sky as if to say, “What do you want us to do about it?”

In Sunday’s edition of The New York Times, Alan Schwarz reported the NFL is suspending “its study of the long-term effects of concussions in retired players.”

Schwarz, who has been the de-facto leader in spotlighting the NFL’s attempt to answer the questions regarding head trauma in football, wrote that the league halted the study due to apparent flaws in its procedures.

Thanks to reporters like Schwarz, the NFL tried to pull a fast one and failed.

The most significant problem with the testing was Dr. Ira Casson’s obvious bias toward the results. Casson, a co-chairman of the NFL’s committee on concussions, conducted every examination while consciously rebuking evidence that linked football to dementia in former players.

This is hardly breaking news. Casson works for the NFL, and he knows precisely the hand that feeds him. Casson stated that those cases were “too flawed” to draw any real conclusion. The only thing too flawed is the effort the NFL has put forth while hoping to persuade the general public that they are doing all they can to help players battle the stark truth.

We don’t need to sugarcoat the issue. Brain trauma is a part of any activity where the head absorbs an abnormal amount of contact.

But, for the sake of its brand and future prosperity, the NFL hasn’t wanted to be part of the solution as much as it has wanted to bask in the revenues and hope the bright lights continue to seduce us. The NFL’s handpicked examiners of such tests, like Casson, don’t have the stones to call it like it is.

While the league wants to say that there is currently zero conclusive evidence to suggest football is in any way related to dementia and cognitive decline, the facts suggest otherwise.

Researchers at BU have already studied the brains of six former NFL players, and all six showed signs of CTE. Because this condition is so rare—boxers are the only ones really comparable—in society, the link between CTE and football is undeniable.

We aren’t here to pile onto the NFL and Commissioner Goodell but rather to create a sense of ubiquitous urgency in the research. The NFL can no longer act like a creaky faucet proceeding one drip at a time.

The sport has improved in other areas such as pension plans and disability payments. After some concern, Goodell ensured pension and disability benefits for retired players would not be reduced in 2010 (an uncapped year). Annual payments to former players have increased by approximately $9 million since Goodell became the face of the NFL.

But if Goodell wants to convince critics that the NFL will be proactive from here forward in the fight against dementia and CTE, he needs to do two things: a) completely hand over the studies to independent researchers (such as those at BU), and b) make sure a healthy slice of the league’s billions helps to fund the research.

“We are in the process of interviewing candidates [to head the research], all of whom come from leading medical facilities and none of whom is currently affiliated with the N.F.L. or an N.F.L. team,” said Aiello.

That’s a solid start fellas, but Baltimore’s Matt Birk, Seattle’s Lofa Tatupu, and Arizona’s Sean Morey have all agreed to donate their brains to research once they die. Dozens of former players have done so, as well.

Is the NFL and its cronies as committed to the movement as the players are?

We’ll soon find out, but after calling for the brains of those who drive the business, they better be.

You can reach Teddy Mitrosilis at [e-mail].