PBS: League of Denial: The NFL's Concussion Crisis

[Jpan85]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/league-of-denial/

 

Did anyone else watch?

 

The NFL did not come across very well in this documentary. Decades of the denial of concussion based head disorders and the attack on scientist that are better trying to understand what years of head blows are doing to these guys made them look really bad. See what the game did to the bodies of guys like Mike Webster and Junior Seau really makes you questions yourself. Questions like does knowing about the extent, and seriousness of football injuries change how you feel about watching the game? Does it make you less interested? Come into your head.

 

[iso_55]

No, it doesn't change my feelings towards the game but what it does do is make me hope that concussion protocols & advancement in medicine help make concussions less of a problem for players in their later years. What it also does is make me want to weed out coaches like Kavis Reed who is putting Mike Reilly at risk. What is disturbing is how quiet the CFL is in what is going on in Edmonton right now.

[17to85]

I don't think Reed is the only one to blame in Edmonton, ultimately the players have to take ownership of their own bodies too and I have no doubts that Reilly is so competitive that he wants to be out there regardless. That's the biggest thing, it's not a physical thing that prevents them from playing, they figure they can just suck it up and fight through it but that can make things worse. It's a hell of a lot better these days now that things are better understood. 

[iso_55]

Have to start somewhere & coaches & managers have to be the ones to go first if they put winning ahead of player safety. Matt Dunigan said that even he would still play even knowing what he knows now about concussions  which is pretty shocking. People do stupid things but if Reed said Reilly wouldn't play then he wouldn't as he is tyhe HC with the last say on personnel. So, I blame Reed for the majority of this situation.

[Atomic]

Who cares?  Playing football is a choice.  People die in car accidents every day, should we limit cars to 20 km/h?  No, because that's ridiculous.  The knowledge is out there now, people should know the risks that come with football.  If you don't want to take the risks, don't play the game.  End of story.

[Jpan85]

Who cares?  Playing football is a choice.  People die in car accidents every day, should we limit cars to 20 km/h?  No, because that's ridiculous.  The knowledge is out there now, people should know the risks that come with football.  If you don't want to take the risks, don't play the game.  End of story.

Its more that the players were told by the league that their studies said that concussions had no impact on the brain. Plus the fact that the league would not take of the medical bills of former players who had could not take care of them selves based on injuries incurred playing in the NFL.

[iso_55]

Who cares? That's kind of cold.

[blueandgoldguy]

Who cares? That's kind of cold.

No kidding and it misses the point entirely.  In the documentary, the players were given a info. packet at the beginning of one of the recent seasons saying there no evidence that concussions would lead to any negative long-term effects nor would one concussion lead to a greater likelihood of subsequent concussions - both proven false.  Yet, the NFL committee with that prick Kaval (I think that is his name) in charge of investigating NFL injuries arrived at this conclusion.  I sure this committee, who for the most part consisted of no one in the field of neurology and not at the level of expertise as those outside the committee featured in the documentary, had a pre-determined conclusion prior to any "research" taking place - that being, there are little, if any, negative consequences experienced by those who sustain concussions during the course of their NFL career.

 

I'm sure players knew the long-term consequences of playing football in terms of the what it did to their various body parts like the knees, hips and feet.  What was less clear to the players up until the 90s was the damage that was done to their brains after sustaining several concussive and sub-concussive hits over the course of their careers.  The league obfuscated, denied and discredited those whose research shed light on the debilitating effects of head injuries in the NFL.  For that, the NFL should be taken to task.

 

Even to this very day, Goodell continues to refer to those hired by the NFL to research concussions when asked by the media if there are negative consequences of head injuries..just like he did back in 2009 when he was asked to appear before a committee. We continue to do research, blah, blah, blah...Sorry, but the research has been done and it's pretty clear that a football player who sustains several shots to the head over the course of his career is much more likely to have memory problems, develop alzheimers or dimensia or some other disease of the brain than someone in the general population.  The only thing that doesn't seem to be clear is why some people don't seem to develop long-term memeory problems after leaving football - is it luck? Less shots to the head? Or is it genetics?  That's one issue that has yet to be determined so hopefully in the next several years as more deceased football players' brains are studied we will have a better understanding.

 

NFL also needs to do a better job with long-term disability for players and counselling for life outside of football.  It's the least the owners could do considering how much they make and how little they put in (most pay a tiny fraction of those Billion dollar stadiums).

 

What seemed truly scary towards the end of the investigatve report were the studies on the brains of those two kids, one 21 and the other 18, with the formation of that tao or tal or whatever they called it - similar to NFL players two to 3 times their age.  With such research coming to light, I wonder if we will see a shift in the number of parents allowing their kids to participate in football instead choosing a safer sport like basketball, baseball, soccer, or more individual sports like swimming and tennis.  I doubt it will mean the end of the NFL, but it could lead to a future where the quality of on-field play declines as athletically-inclined teens choose other sports.

[iso_55]

Compared to Paul Tagliabue & especially Pete Rozelle, Roger Goodell just comes across a Commissioner motivated by power & money not caring about the welfare of the players. He's certainly Corporate America. The chairman of a multi billion dollar business machine. I don't believe he cares about the issue & if concussions wweren't in the news he'd ignore any findings.