NFL needs to make the game safer
Posted: Tuesday, January 27, 2009 3:25 PM
Back in the days when people cared about boxing, reformers would from time to time look at Muhammad Ali as his motor skills declined and conclude that the sport should be banned.
I always argued that Ali was fully at peace with his condition, which affected his motor skills but not his mind. In any event, I said that if you were going to ban boxing, you should ban football first.
When it comes to raw violence, football is the leader in the clubhouse.
Understand, I’m not for banning either sport. I am for making them safer.
For years, the evidence of the long-term effects of playing football were in deteriorating joints. Former football players get knee, hip and shoulder replacements at an alarming rate. Last year, the NFL and its players union announced a program to provide joint replacements for retired players.
But, according to researchers at Boston University School of Medicine, what may be a far bigger problem is what the researchers call an unusually high incidence of progressive brain damage in a small sample of former players who died before the age of 50.
The researchers autopsied the brains of six such former football players. Every one was afflicted with a condition called chronic traumatic encephalopathy. It’s not nice – sections of the brain die – and it’s not reversible. The cause would seem to be the concussions that players suffer and accept as the price of playing in the NFL.
The league was not pleased to have the medical school call a press conference in Tampa during Super Bowl Week to shine a negative light at America’s most popular sport. That’s understandable. No matter what the research shows, the game will go on, the players will hit each other with reckless abandon, and brains will be jarred.
Just like they are in every week and every game.
The NFL knows that concussions are a problem. It has adopted stricter medical rules with the purpose of keeping players whose bells have been euphemistically rung from going back into games. But the league also isn’t ready to accept the Boston University report as a sign that there is a very serious problem – not until more research is done.
The league’s position is understandable. If there were some limit placed on the number of concussions a player could endure, the league would quickly start to run out of players. It’s something that really happens all the time; it goes with the territory. And the players aren’t complaining – the real damage usually doesn’t start to show up until after they’re retired.
But it’s clear more has to be done to protect the players. When I was a lad, coaches taught us to lead with our heads when we tackled. I did that exactly once, driving my helmet into the knee of a ball carrier with a full head of steam in the open field. I was just 15 years old and I saw great bursts of green light. But I got up and when I went to the sideline, the coach was beside himself with excitement.
“Great hit!” he shouted, pounding me on the back.
I didn’t say anything, but what I thought was, “I hope you got it on film, because you ain’t never gonna see me do that again.”
And he didn’t. From then on, I kept my head up to block and tackle. My brain, which, as Woody Allen first said, is my second favorite organ, approved the new style.
That was in high school and I was an offensive lineman. It’s not that easy in the NFL. You can keep your head up all you want and you’re still going to get whacked. It’s the nature of the game.
I don’t know what the solution is. Some people are adamant that a return to leather helmets would discourage players from leading with their heads and make the game safer. Others feel that players have to be more carefully examined before being sent back into action. Some would ban all helmet-to-helmet hits, whether intentional or not.
Banning such collisions, even when they are accidental, is a good start. Let players figure out how to do their jobs without putting their heads into the equation. More independent medical research and oversight is also needed.
Football is a great game, beloved by tens of millions of ardent fans. It’s incumbent on the NFL to keep safe the men who make it great.
