The Answer to Brain Damage from Football is Certainly, Yes

If WCHL listeners are starting to feel that my commentaries about football and concussions are like banging their heads against a wall, they likely feel the way football players feel on a regular basis.

In a recent Congressional round-table about football and concussions, a representative asked whether “there is a link between football and degenerative brain disorders like C.T.E.” The NFL’s senior vice president for health and safety policy, said, “The answer to that is certainly, yes.”  Not “we are studying that,” not “we are spending millions of dollars on research,” not “while there may be a statistical relationship we are not confident of a true effect,” not “we have serious concerns with the accuracy of League of Denial, a documentary about the NFL’s efforts to conceal the consequences of brain trauma” not even a qualified yes.  “The answer to that is certainly, yes.”

Choose your favorite metaphor. The jig is up, the other shoe has dropped, buzzer beater, hail Mary, or walk-off home run. Short of the randomized clinical trials to rigorously examine the risks–trials that at this point would be unethical knowing what we now know–tackle football should end at the sub-professional level.  If adult men are adequately informed of the risks that they are taking and decide to assume those risks in exchange for the huge salaries that they earn as gladiators, they should be permitted to do so.

Personally, however, I would raise concerns about how and where we are failing as a culture that encourages adult men to make such choices about their brains. All the more of a concern when we acknowledge that professional football players disproportionately come from the African-American community and low income communities, already unfairly at greater risk for poor health.

The leaders of universities and state and local boards of education should be protecting brains, not accepting the cultural practices that allow, not to mention encourage, boys and young men to damage their brains.

— Lew Margolis.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS