Long article in today's WSJ about CTE and what that means for the future of football.
It seems crazy to imagine the end of football. The game is so beloved, so profitable, and, frankly, such a cultural mirror that it feels like a permanent feature of American life. Without football, what the heck happens to Sunday? (Or Saturday, or Monday night, or an ever-expanding number of weekday nights.)
There are a lot of institutions and franchises and schools with a deep interest in football’s continued prosperity. The game is a godsend for the entertainment industry, which is why it commands billions.
That’s why if football ever vanishes, it will likely vanish from within.
From the players. And parents.
Consider the conversation of the past week. A disturbing medical study was released showing brain damage in the brains of 110 of 111 deceased NFL players.
Shortly afterward, a PhD-candidate offensive lineman in Baltimore abruptly retired at age 26. In Pittsburgh, a two-time Super Bowl champion quarterback wondered out loud if the 2017 football season should be his last.
As NFL teams begin their preseason preparations, players were confronted with an ominous query:
How worried are you about continuing to play this game?
Let’s be clear: football, an overtly physical game of speed and collision, has always carried bodily risk. Busted knees. Degraded hips, shoulders, ankles, fingers. Careers at the pro level tend to be mercilessly short, and players often leave with chronic pain, which can continue long after leaving the sport.
But it’s the grimmer, previously-unknown risks which are finally catching up to football. After years of denial and obfuscation, there is widening agreement that football carries long-term risk from head injuries. A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found signs of the progressive neurological disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in 87% of 202 brains donated from deceased high school, college, semi pro and pro football players.
The report’s stunner was that 110 out of 111 figure—of 111 brains donated by late NFL players, all but one showed signs of CTE.
Sure, we could go around and around about the study’s limited and self-selecting sample—the late players’ families who donated brains suspected a problem—and how it can’t be seen as representative of the full football-playing population. The authors don’t deny its biases.
But is that enough comfort to players still receiving hits, or their families? Take a look at the recent comments of 35-year-old Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who has suffered concussions in the past.
“This [JAMA study] shows there’s nothing to mess with,” Roethlisberger told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review last week. “If you want to mess with your brain, you can’t put a new one in. You can’t have a brain transplant. If you want to mess with your brain, go ahead. I’m not going to. I love my family and kids.”
“I want to play catch with my kids. I want to know my kids’ names. As much as I want my kids to remember what I did and watch me play the game, I also want to remember them when I’m 70 years old.”
The study was reportedly a factor in the sudden decision last week of Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman John Urschel—currently pursuing a doctorate in mathematics at MIT—to retire early from game. Urschel did not mention the JAMA report publicly, but the Baltimore Sun cited team sources as saying the study was involved in Urschel’s choice to walk away.
He’s not the first premature exit. A year ago, there was the Buffalo linebacker A.J. Tarpley, leaving at 23 after a pair of concussions. “I am walking away from the game I love to preserve my future health,” Tarpley said at the time. In 2015 there was San Francisco rookie standout Chris Borland, relinquishing millions after a single year in the NFL. “If there was no possibility of brain damage, I’d still be playing,” Borland told ESPN.
On and on the quiet drumbeat of early exits goes, attracting far less media attention than, say, a quarterback controversy or locker room dust-up. Widows and children of dead players give heartbreaking interviews, and after a somber wave of respect, they fade from the conversation. Same with the NFL’s nearly billion-dollar settlement with former players. It’s a lot easier to argue about Colin Kaepernick’s job odyssey, or Rob Gronkowski’s latest goof, than it is to confront an existential threat to the game.
At this point playing football—even watching football—requires a sharp dissonance between one’s enjoyment of it and the growing evidence. Make no mistake: I’m right there with the shameless compartmentalizers. I love football, write about it, often celebrate it in print like a face-painted fan in the parking lot. Come September, I’ll be back with my pom-poms. Count on it.
But even the devoted have to feel twinges of conflict now. Consider this recent editorial in the Dallas Morning News sounding the alarm about football in Texas, where the sport is basically religion.
“We’re as crazy about football as anyone in Texas, but this new data gives a sense of urgency to our push for more study on concussions in all sports,” the Morning News editorial said. (That “all sports” is a nod to games like soccer, hockey and others, where concussions are also a hazard. Still, football’s the game where the head has been routinely weaponized.)
Football has always been a trade-off. There are many, many former players among us who feel every second was worth it. And there will always be players willing to take a chance with their health for a shot at their dream. They’re not the only American laborers making such a choice, and in football, there’s potentially millions to be made.
In the meantime, current players trade in their own rationalizations:
Those players in that CTE study were from a different era.
The game is smarter now about handling head injuries.
My equipment’s better.
I haven’t had a bad concussion.
You can get hurt doing anything.
“We’re not hitting head-to-head all the time,” New York Jets linebacker Jordan Jenkins told the Journal’s Jim Chairusmi on Saturday. “CTE is something we have to be worried about, but that specific sample isn’t completely accurate. People who played pre-2000s, that’s a different story. There’s not nearly as much contact [now]. We aren’t hitting in the first days of camp—[years ago,] it was like that. I feel this generation of football is safer, not softer.”
It’s possible science will catch up and offer a clearer view. My colleague Matthew Futterman has written about a blood test in development that will give a fast and conclusive diagnosis of concussions. But such a test “may reveal more vividly how dangerous the game really is,” Futterman wrote. Dr. Ann McKee, a neuropathologist and the director of Boston University’s CTE Center, told him it isn’t the big hits, but a career of lesser blows, that appears to be the underlying problem. “It’s looking like that—not the concussions, but the duration, the years of playing—is the most significant factor,” McKee told the Journal last fall. McKee was one of the co-authors of the recent JAMA study.
Will anything ever alleviate the worry? A few months ago, there was a brief stir when Gisele Bündchen, the fashion mogul and spouse of Patriots superstar Tom Brady, aired her anxieties about her husband’s long-term health, and appeared to suggest he’s played with head injuries that were not disclosed. Brady’s father, Tom Sr., has said publicly would be hesitant to let his son play football were he a kid growing up today.
Brady has five Super Bowl rings, and has gotten as much out of football as anyone who’s ever played it. And he loves the game too much to leave it. On the verge of turning 40, he’s back out on the field for the New England Patriots.
It’s hard to know what to say, other than: Good luck.
It seems crazy to imagine the end of football. The game is so beloved, so profitable, and, frankly, such a cultural mirror that it feels like a permanent feature of American life. Without football, what the heck happens to Sunday? (Or Saturday, or Monday night, or an ever-expanding number of weekday nights.)
There are a lot of institutions and franchises and schools with a deep interest in football’s continued prosperity. The game is a godsend for the entertainment industry, which is why it commands billions.
That’s why if football ever vanishes, it will likely vanish from within.
From the players. And parents.
Consider the conversation of the past week. A disturbing medical study was released showing brain damage in the brains of 110 of 111 deceased NFL players.
Shortly afterward, a PhD-candidate offensive lineman in Baltimore abruptly retired at age 26. In Pittsburgh, a two-time Super Bowl champion quarterback wondered out loud if the 2017 football season should be his last.
As NFL teams begin their preseason preparations, players were confronted with an ominous query:
How worried are you about continuing to play this game?
Let’s be clear: football, an overtly physical game of speed and collision, has always carried bodily risk. Busted knees. Degraded hips, shoulders, ankles, fingers. Careers at the pro level tend to be mercilessly short, and players often leave with chronic pain, which can continue long after leaving the sport.
But it’s the grimmer, previously-unknown risks which are finally catching up to football. After years of denial and obfuscation, there is widening agreement that football carries long-term risk from head injuries. A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found signs of the progressive neurological disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in 87% of 202 brains donated from deceased high school, college, semi pro and pro football players.
The report’s stunner was that 110 out of 111 figure—of 111 brains donated by late NFL players, all but one showed signs of CTE.
Sure, we could go around and around about the study’s limited and self-selecting sample—the late players’ families who donated brains suspected a problem—and how it can’t be seen as representative of the full football-playing population. The authors don’t deny its biases.
But is that enough comfort to players still receiving hits, or their families? Take a look at the recent comments of 35-year-old Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who has suffered concussions in the past.
“This [JAMA study] shows there’s nothing to mess with,” Roethlisberger told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review last week. “If you want to mess with your brain, you can’t put a new one in. You can’t have a brain transplant. If you want to mess with your brain, go ahead. I’m not going to. I love my family and kids.”
“I want to play catch with my kids. I want to know my kids’ names. As much as I want my kids to remember what I did and watch me play the game, I also want to remember them when I’m 70 years old.”
The study was reportedly a factor in the sudden decision last week of Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman John Urschel—currently pursuing a doctorate in mathematics at MIT—to retire early from game. Urschel did not mention the JAMA report publicly, but the Baltimore Sun cited team sources as saying the study was involved in Urschel’s choice to walk away.
He’s not the first premature exit. A year ago, there was the Buffalo linebacker A.J. Tarpley, leaving at 23 after a pair of concussions. “I am walking away from the game I love to preserve my future health,” Tarpley said at the time. In 2015 there was San Francisco rookie standout Chris Borland, relinquishing millions after a single year in the NFL. “If there was no possibility of brain damage, I’d still be playing,” Borland told ESPN.
On and on the quiet drumbeat of early exits goes, attracting far less media attention than, say, a quarterback controversy or locker room dust-up. Widows and children of dead players give heartbreaking interviews, and after a somber wave of respect, they fade from the conversation. Same with the NFL’s nearly billion-dollar settlement with former players. It’s a lot easier to argue about Colin Kaepernick’s job odyssey, or Rob Gronkowski’s latest goof, than it is to confront an existential threat to the game.
At this point playing football—even watching football—requires a sharp dissonance between one’s enjoyment of it and the growing evidence. Make no mistake: I’m right there with the shameless compartmentalizers. I love football, write about it, often celebrate it in print like a face-painted fan in the parking lot. Come September, I’ll be back with my pom-poms. Count on it.
But even the devoted have to feel twinges of conflict now. Consider this recent editorial in the Dallas Morning News sounding the alarm about football in Texas, where the sport is basically religion.
“We’re as crazy about football as anyone in Texas, but this new data gives a sense of urgency to our push for more study on concussions in all sports,” the Morning News editorial said. (That “all sports” is a nod to games like soccer, hockey and others, where concussions are also a hazard. Still, football’s the game where the head has been routinely weaponized.)
Football has always been a trade-off. There are many, many former players among us who feel every second was worth it. And there will always be players willing to take a chance with their health for a shot at their dream. They’re not the only American laborers making such a choice, and in football, there’s potentially millions to be made.
In the meantime, current players trade in their own rationalizations:
Those players in that CTE study were from a different era.
The game is smarter now about handling head injuries.
My equipment’s better.
I haven’t had a bad concussion.
You can get hurt doing anything.
“We’re not hitting head-to-head all the time,” New York Jets linebacker Jordan Jenkins told the Journal’s Jim Chairusmi on Saturday. “CTE is something we have to be worried about, but that specific sample isn’t completely accurate. People who played pre-2000s, that’s a different story. There’s not nearly as much contact [now]. We aren’t hitting in the first days of camp—[years ago,] it was like that. I feel this generation of football is safer, not softer.”
It’s possible science will catch up and offer a clearer view. My colleague Matthew Futterman has written about a blood test in development that will give a fast and conclusive diagnosis of concussions. But such a test “may reveal more vividly how dangerous the game really is,” Futterman wrote. Dr. Ann McKee, a neuropathologist and the director of Boston University’s CTE Center, told him it isn’t the big hits, but a career of lesser blows, that appears to be the underlying problem. “It’s looking like that—not the concussions, but the duration, the years of playing—is the most significant factor,” McKee told the Journal last fall. McKee was one of the co-authors of the recent JAMA study.
Will anything ever alleviate the worry? A few months ago, there was a brief stir when Gisele Bündchen, the fashion mogul and spouse of Patriots superstar Tom Brady, aired her anxieties about her husband’s long-term health, and appeared to suggest he’s played with head injuries that were not disclosed. Brady’s father, Tom Sr., has said publicly would be hesitant to let his son play football were he a kid growing up today.
Brady has five Super Bowl rings, and has gotten as much out of football as anyone who’s ever played it. And he loves the game too much to leave it. On the verge of turning 40, he’s back out on the field for the New England Patriots.
It’s hard to know what to say, other than: Good luck.
