After years of denial by the National Football League, a ranking league official has conceded what brain dissections of nearly 100 deceased football players have revealed – a direct link between concussions on the field and degenerative brain disease.
When Jeff Miller, the league’s senior vice president for health and safety policy, was asked to confirm the direct link during a round table discussion at the House of Representatives last week, he said, “The answer to that is certainly, yes.”
As important as that admission may be for the future of professional football, it is no less critical for parents across the nation concerned about the potentially damaging effects on their children from the game, with its balletic hits and “bell ringer” tackles. Hundreds of thousands of teenagers and younger players will take to the field this year, amid growing evidence that concussions can eventually cause behavior disorders and leave scars on the brain that are evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.
This degenerative brain disease cannot be confirmed until after death. But the symptoms during life, including progressive dementia and suicidal depression, have afflicted many retired football players. Researchers like Dr. Ann McKee of the Boston University School of Medicine have been able to confirm CTE as a critical factor in post-mortem studies. More and more retired players have agreed to donate their brains for further research as the NFL deals with increasing litigation. A Mayo Clinic study last fall found CTE in the brains of 21 of 66 men who played contact sports – mostly football – but no traces of the disease in 198 others who did not play contact games.
Before Miller’s remarks this week, the NFL only acknowledged the general danger of concussions but not a direct link to CTE. The league reached a $765 million settlement with 4,500 past players in 2013, and has invested millions in research, ordered up better equipment and instructed referees and coaches to respond more quickly to potential on-field concussions, removing players for evaluation. But as the scope of the problem widens with fresh research, the question of whether the nature of the game has to change inevitably arises.