Concussed

The following is my long and rambling opinion on concussions in the NFL (you know, since everyone else is doing it). Read if you have nothing else to do or just really enjoy reading.


Concussions and BountyGate.

While the two are separate issues surrounding the NFL right now, they are seemingly linked for the call to change the game of football as we know it.

BountyGate, what the media unoriginally dubbed the scandal that escaped the Saints locker room and made the national news involving payment for violently attempting to take opposing players out of games, is now the centerpiece for how the game of football is too violent and how the league needs to take further measures to protect the players from, well, themselves.

BountyGate by itself wouldn't change the game of football though. Although it established new precedents for punishment of discovered bounty programs (which didn't always exist) that included full season suspensions for ring-leaders, it would have faded into the memories of the 2012 season. One event, however, helped link the violent discoveries of BountyGate to the need of a culture change in the game of football itself: the death of a legend.

On May 2nd, future Hall of Fame linebacker, Junior Seau, took his own life. And with a shotgun to the chest, might have changed the course of the NFL.

In the aftermath of the suicide, it seemed as though people started realizing something for the very first time: football is, and always has been, an unabashedly violent sport.

People began to look at BountyGate as an example that violence had gotten out of hand in the game, that football was the new smoking - that playing the game needs to come with a warning label of imminent and unavoidable harm to your body and, more specifically, your brain.

After all, why would Seau kill himself, especially by doing so with a bullet to the chest instead of his head? He had to have had his suspicions, much like Dave Duerson did. When Duerson, the former NFL player, killed himself last year by similar means as Seau, he left a note that related his intentions. Among the farewells, was one final request: PLEASE, SEE THAT MY BRAIN IS GIVEN TO THE N.F.L.’S BRAIN BANK.

Viewed almost as a martyr for retired players everywhere, Duerson's ex-wife said "In his time, he put the future in front of him — future generations of football players in front of him. I’m just so proud of him at this moment.”

For what?

For proving that his brain was damaged by football? I don't think anyone was doubting that. In 2009, it had already been revealed that all six brains of former football players donated posthumously to Boston University's School of Medicine, where the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy is located, showed damage due to concussions. This damage is called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

The research also hypothesized that since CTE occurs in the part of the brain that controls emotion and rage, that depression is a permanent result, and suicide a sad side effect.

So was Duerson making a statement? Trying to prove that his suicide was a result of all of his years delivering and absorbing hits for a living? Was this the same reason Seau took his own life? Is football an inevitable death sentence for its players? What can be done to make sure ex-athletes of the future don't take the same steps in ending their lives?

Or did everyone just jump to conclusions?

You would believe that was the case when hearing the following statistics:

According to a new (or newly discovered) CDC study and the resulting articles that compared the death rates for almost 3,500 of the league's retirees to those for age- and race-matched non-athletes over the same years, former players lived much longer. 

"Former players were 42 percent less likely to die of cancer, 86 percent less likely to die of tuberculosis, and 73 percent less likely to die from digestive problems. And among the athletes who regularly played professional football between 1959 and 1988, a total of nine perished as a result of "intentional self-harm," compared with an expected number of about 22. The sample size was small, but the effect is large: Ex-NFLers were 59 percent less likely to commit suicide."

The NFL has always maintained that there wasn't enough information available to know the long-term effects of concussions. In a statement they released in 2009, they said "Hundreds of thousands of people have played football and other sports without experiencing any problem of this type and there continues to be considerable debate within the medical community on the precise long-term effects of concussions and how they relate to other risk factors."

What am I getting at with all this?

The game of football is much safer now than it was 10 or 20 years ago. New penalties made in the last couple of years have made protecting players heads a priority; the NFL is trying to make the game as safe as it can without changing the fabric of the game. That fabric, however, could soon be changing.

Seau's suicide is going to ignite a firestorm of reformation talk to the game of football. Former players are going to insist they know the truth about concussions and what the NFL has been keeping from them. Lawsuits have already began against the league for lack of information on concussions, and they are only going to get more numerous. 

The NFL is going to change, and fans and players alike are going to applaud it. This is what I believe. And it conflicts me.

I do believe that concussions cause brain damage - scientific findings usually has a way of convincing people. I also believe that suicide should not be considered a side effect of football, but rather a side effect of all the other reasons people have to commit suicide (if you can believe there are reasons for a person to end his or her life).  

I also can't think of concussions without thinking of former Chiefs quarterback Trent Green. Green took one of the worst hits I've ever seen to the head in a football game. The former Pro Bowl quarterback was never the same once coming back from the multiple concussion hit, and eventually became a Dolphin, where he took another hit to the head and eventually retired in 2009. 

Even though Green was near the end of his career anyway when the first hit took place, he came back to play more with the team and then one more. That's the thing with concussions, players aren't counting the number of concussions they have, just the number of days until they can come back from a concussion. So lying about symptoms happen; playing through pain happens; never reporting concussions in the first place happens. 

Green admittedly retired because of the concussions, and said in an interview with Sports Illustrated: "until more research can be done about long-term brain damage associated with multiple head injuries, the NFL needs to step up and set some minimum guidelines [such as number of games a player must sit out following a concussion] for teams to follow."

But at the end of the day, it's up to the players. If they think they've suffered a concussion, they need to take themselves out of the game. If they think that the risk of more concussions isn't worth their long term health, then they need to retire. The players control their own destiny, they make the choices, and it's ultimately up to them. Especially with all the information available to today's players, they are even more responsible for their health than ever before.

The NFL shouldn't concede to overreaction, but it also needs to continue to protect its players. Much like this post, the concussion issue is one of inconsistency, I can't even determine where I necessarily stand on the issue, but I do know that very few good decisions are rash ones. 

So be smart NFL on what you do in the eminent aftermath of Seau's death. There's a reason that players keep playing after sustaining concussions: they love the game. So keep the game as intact as you can while making your decisions, because the players aren't the only ones that love the game. The fans are pretty fond as well.