By Joseph Baroud, Contributing Reporter
The recent release of NFL Hall-of-Famer Frank Gifford’s autopsy and the timely premiere of the movie Concussion has many people taking a second look at the game that millions love.
The results of post-mortem brain studies of former football players have blindsided many, yielding frightening facts about contact sports, specifically NFL football. The sport has replaced 23 Sundays of the year for many throughout the world.
Football players didn’t just begin getting concussions during the past decade. Concussions have always been a consequence of contact sports. Recent advances in medicine have yielded the discovery of a condition called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.
CTE is a degenerative disease found in people who have sustained numerous concussions and blows to the head. People diagnosed with CTE often end up dealing with dementia, memory loss, aggression, confusion and depression. Sometimes, it even ends with a person with CTE taking his or her own life. CTE, for the time being, can only be diagnosed in patients post-mortem. It has been found in 87 former NFL players during in the past 10 years. Players are now dealing with serious effects of the game they played their whole life.
The National Football League has promised to fight to make the game safer.
But there is evidence that the NFL has known more—and done less—about CTE and other mentally or physically debilitation conditions than it has let on. The league feared it would be in danger once players began finding out about the permanent, adverse reactions that years of blows to the head caused. In 2013, the league settled with several former players for damages they sustained during their playing days. The settlement was not only for injuries sustained, but the information the league withheld from these players.
Players or their survivors were paid a combined total of $765 million. 18,000 players are eligible for this settlement. Former athletes representing the most severe cases of Parkinson’s disease, Lou Gehrig’s disease and CTE will receive between $1 and $5 million. Those with moderate cases such as Alzheimer’s disease and dementia would receive $190,000.
The NFL Players Association has advocated heavily on the side of their own, especially those whose conditions have left them incapable of doing so.
“Football, in general, would have us believe that we could make the game safe,” said Dr. Lawrence Genen, a psychiatrist with The Genen Group. “But the reality is that evidence shows that repetitive blows to the head will ultimately lead to chronic traumatic encephalopathy.”
The NFL will have a tough time making its game safe, and regardless, the likelihood of developing something like CTE can’t even be slimmed down, Genen said.
“It’s very difficult to imagine a way in which you’re truly going to significantly decrease the risk of developing CTE,” Genen said. “I appreciate that they’re making attempts to make the game safer by making an effort to eliminate helmet-to-helmet hits, but the feedback is that those hits still do occur and even good tackles often result in blows to the head.”
Not only are the professionals susceptible to diseases caused from repetitive head trauma, Pop Warner, high school and collegiate level players are also susceptible. “I’ve talked to some trainers, particularly with the YMCA, and they feel the younger athletes are at a higher risk,” said Dr. Harley Deere, a neurologist with Dignity Health at St. Mary’s Medical Center in Long Beach. “‘[They] should play flag football until they get into high school.”
Younger players are at risk because they’re still learning how to tackle and specialists believe that adolescent players are more vulnerable to developing CTE from multiple head blows over a period of time.
A smart mouth-guard, which transmits real-time information via bluetooth in order to pinpoint the exact location and direction of a head injury, is one of many precautionary tools being developed. Functional magnetic resonance imaging, known as fMRI, also helps by showing how the affected area is functioning, as opposed to a regular MRI, which only reveals the structure. But a helmet can only help guard the exterior of the head.
“[That] the helmet doesn’t stop the direct blow to the brain is the problem,” Deere said. “The brain is inside your skull and the helmet is good, it protects your skull, but it doesn’t protect the blow to the brain, because the brain moves inside the skull.
“I think it comes down to the people who are administering the program, whether it be the schools, the people pushing these programs, they [should be] held responsible to make sure the kids are protected.”
Genen cited a New York Times article regarding helmetless practices. The article suggested that not using a helmet forces players to tackle using their arms and bodies, placing an emphasis on proper technique.
The article referred to a study featuring the University of New Hampshire football team. Half of the team practiced twice a week without wearing helmets. During the regular season, players wore helmets equipped with sensors that kept track of the number of impacts and the force of those impacts to the head. By season’s end, the half of the team that participated in those helmetless practices were hitting their head about 30 percent less than the half that didn’t.
Putting specialists on the sidelines to help evaluate injuries was also recommended.
The National Institute of Health is working with the NFL to find the closest thing to a resolution. The NFL promised to donate $30 million to the NIH for traumatic head injury research. The NFL would hold on to the money and allocate the necessary amount for each project the NIH presents and is approved. Even though the NFL said the money would come with no strings attached, it vetoed an NIH proposal.
NIH announced a 7-year, $16 million research initiative that it wanted the NFL to fund with the money the league promised. However, when the NIH selected the leader of their research team, the NFL reneged on this specific project, forcing the NIH to fund it itself.
The future of football might be not in the hands of those who catch it, but with the doctors and researchers involved with the NIH and this situation.
Dr. Robert Stern, a prominent researcher from Boston University, was selected by the NIH to head the research group in charge of the 7-year study. Stern has been critical of the league in the past, saying commissioner Roger Goodell inherited a cover-up from his predecessor Paul Taglibue. He also wrote a critical 61-page report opposing the league’s settlement with the players, claiming many players who were affected would not be eligible to receive any award from it.
The study, which the NIH will fund, will consist of 50 researchers at 17 different institutions. Hundreds of former NFL and collegiate players also volunteered to participate as studies.
The aim is to detect, define and measure the progression of CTE.