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NFL and Concussions Research Paper for Multimedia Writing and Rhetoric.
Citation preview
Kohl
Chris Kohl
Dr. Erin Dietel-McLaughlin
WR13300 - Multimedia Writing and Rhetoric
9 November 2012
It’s Football or the Brain
As a nation that lauds the act of competition, the United States has become especially
crazed with sports. This very crazed nature has allowed professional sports leagues to grow to
the point of generating billions of dollars of revenue each year. One sport which may illustrate
this fact better than any other is football, which stands at the very peak of the American sporting
world today. With revenue that even surpasses that of “America’s Pastime,” baseball, football
has enjoyed standing as the most profitable sport at both the professional, and collegiate level for
quite some time. Perhaps, one of the greatest reasons the sport has been able to succeed so
vibrantly stems from the sport’s violent nature, which attracts many fans looking for big hits. As
USA Today columnist and sports writer Robert Lipsyte notes, “The violence of the game,
especially on the college and pro level, has always been one of its main attractions.”
Nonetheless, it is now becoming apparent that it is that very violent nature that threatens the
sport’s popularity today.
The development of sophisticated technologies has allowed science to make much
progress in understanding the intricacies of the human brain over the past few decades.
Although much is still to be learned, science has also made many strides in understanding the
dangerous repercussions of head trauma, and specifically those of concussions. It has come to
light that concussions are much more severe than once originally thought, and that repeated, even
minor concussions can result in major consequences in one’s the future. As a result, football
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leagues like the NFL, which has taught players to continue playing “a little dinged up,” have
received a great amount of criticism from the general media. This criticism surely has reflected
upon many peoples’ image of the sport, and has put the NFL under a great deal of pressure. The
only way the NFL can respond to this pressure and expect to succeed in the future is to lessen the
number and severity of concussions in the sport. To do so, it must promote safer game play and
finally find a helmet that truly protects the players’ brains from injury.
In order to show why the NFL must make these changes, this essay will first evidence the
latest scientific research uncovering the real hidden dangers stemming from repeated head blows.
Through this, it will become apparent that repeated concussions can and do, in fact, result in life
long, sometimes debilitating, repercussions. Moving on, the paper will display how football’s
culture, coupled with the uselessness of today’s concussion policies in the NFL have put all
players at risk of developing these debilitating mental diseases. The essay will then evidence
how the media has put pressure on the NFL for failing to protect its players from developing
severe brain damage in their futures. The paper will finally conclude that Americans will
generate less favorable impressions of the sport as the media informs an increasing number of
people about the dangers of playing football. If the NFL fails to respond to this threat, the
supremacy the league enjoys in American sports today will surely be challenged.
To understand how football will be threatened by increased awareness of concussions, it
is first necessary to understand that concussions do indeed pose a threat to the life long mental
health to the sport’s players. This is first evidenced by a multitude of statistics linking higher
rates of chronic mental disease to NFL retirees. For example, after conducting a sample of 1,063
NFL retirees in 2009, the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan found that
the rate of mental disease in NFL retirees was multiple times greater than the average American
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man (32). Specifically, the rate of Alzheimer’s Disease, dementia, or other memory related
diseases in an NFL retiree between the ages of thirty to forty nine was found to be about 1.9%
(32). Comparatively, the rate of this age group in the average American man it is a mere 0.1%
(32). Furthermore NFL retirees over 50 have 6.1% chance of displaying symptoms of these
diseases while only 1.9% of other American men over 50 exhibit signs of these mental handicaps
(32). Michigan is not alone in expressing these beliefs. Their findings are supported by the
findings of Dr. Alan Schwartz who, in a New York Times article noted “that retired N.F.L.
players are five to nineteen times as likely as the general population to have received a dementia-
related diagnosis.” Moreover, physician, USA Today columnist, and football fan Katherine
Chretien admits that there is indeed “mounting medical evidence of repetitive head trauma
causing chronic brain injury and an early form of Alzheimer-like dementia”. It’s important to
understand that claims like these are not at all unsubstantiated by scientific research. Each of
these claims can be explained by recent advances in neuroscience. In their book, The
Concussion Crisis: Anatomy of a Silent Epidemic, Linda Carroll and David Rosner evidence a
study by Douglass Smith, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania. In a scientific
study, Smith made a link between head trauma and onset of Alzheimer’s Disease. In an
interview discussing his recent study Smith noted that characteristics similar with those of
Alzheimer’s disease appear in the human brain after just one severe blow to the head.
Specifically, Smith is quoted as saying “with a single brain injury you can get both pathologies…
[Patients] have hallmark pathologies of Alzheimer’s even though they are young” (177). In
other words, Smith evidences how trauma, or even one hit, to the brain can helps lead to the
earlier onset of Alzheimer’s in ones life. Findings like these certainly illustrate why NFL
retirees are at such greater risk of contracting mental diseases, for football players routinely take
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hits to the head. These findings also display how football players gamble their futures with each
time they suit up to play.
In addition to general statistics and scientific studies, the lives of specific NFL retirees
also demonstrate the crippling impacts football can have on one’s life. One such man is Kevin
Turner a retired NFL fullback who attained the nickname “The Collision Expert.” He gained this
name as result of scratches he accumulated on his helmet at the end of each football game. Since
retiring from the league in 1999 Turner has developed a disease very similar to ALS. As a result,
Turner, at the age of just 42, has lost a great deal of motor function and relies heavily on his
family for support. Scientific American writer Jeffery Bartholet notes that, Turner could be
suffering from a disease with nearly identical symptoms to ALS. However, Bartholet believes
the disease may be result from something completely different than most ALS patients. He along
with many researchers conceive that Tuner’s ALS-like symptoms are a direct result of repeated
blows to the head Turner sustained while playing football. In other words, it is very likely that
Turner’s crippling disease is a direct result of brain trauma he received throughout his career.
Stories like Turner’s are not at all uncommon among NFL retirees. As the statistics point out, a
great deal of retirees face the same hardships as Turner. The fact this is true speaks to the real
danger football players have face while playing the sport they love. As a result, one can
conclude thay brain injuries and specifically concussions in the NFL should no longer be taken
as lightly as they once were.
Ever since the true dangers of head blows have been uncovered, one might suspect that
leagues like the NFL have acknowledged the dangers of concussions, and since done everything
in their ability to protect players from these dangerous head blows. Nonetheless, this is not true.
As late as 2007 the NFL had denied the strong correlation of higher rates of brain disease with
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the league’s retirees. In an HBO interview in 2007 the chairman of the NFL’s Mild Traumatic
Brain Injury Committee, Dr. Ira Casson, flat out denied the higher rate of brain disease among
NFL veterans. In their book, Carroll and Rosner sum up the entire interview with one relatively
short quote. In this quote, Casson is being asked a series of questions by an HBO interviewer. At
one point the interview goes as follows:
[Interviewer asks] ‘Is there any evidence, as far as you’re concerned, that links
multiple head injuries among pro football players with depression?’ ‘[Casson
responds] No.’ ‘…with dementia?’ ‘No’ ‘…with early onset of Alzheimer’s’
‘No’ ‘Is their any evidence… that links multiple head injuries with any long-
term problem like that?’ ‘No.’ (247)
As one can see, as late as 2007, the NFL was ignorant, perhaps by choice, to the research being
done warning the league of the risks its players faced. It’s especially important to note that,
without even acknowledging the problem, the league certainly could not begin to find its
solution. Only after being brought to congress in the 2010 off season did the league pass any
real safety rules in response to concussion research. Nonetheless, none of the rule changes did
much to prevent the prevalence of concussions in the following 2010 season.
In the first week of the 2010 season, it became immediately apparent that the NFL did not
do enough to protect its players (Carrol and Rossner 264). That week, Philadelphia Eagles’
linebacker, Stewart Bradley, was jarred in the head by the hip of one of his own teammates. As
Carroll and Rosner note, after the hit, Bradley slowly got back to his feet, walked only a few
steps, and collapsed in front of over 60,000 fans in attendance. Although, it may have been
nearly impossible for the NFL to prevent this incident, it was the Eagles’ medical staff’s feeble
response to the situation that portrayed the need for further concussion reform in the NFL. Only
a few minutes after the hit, the team doctors had cleared the, “clearly concussed player” (264), to
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return to the field. While on the field, Bradley ran the risk of sustaining an even more potent
concussion that could have drastically altered his life or even resulted in an occurrence called
second impact syndrome. Although much is still not understood about second impact syndrome
it is understood that the syndrome results from sustaining one blow to the head and then
sustaining another before the brain can heal. Shockingly, about fifty percent of these cases result
in death (Tyler). By being put in shortly after receiving a concussion Bradley certainly ran the
risk of developing second impact syndrome. It was only at halftime that Bradley was finally
given a full test and diagnosed with a concussion (Carroll and Rosner 264). It is important to
note that Bradley’s concussion was severe enough to hold him out of the next four games that
season. The very fact Bradley was able to come in after receiving such a severe concussion
illustrates how unconcerned NFL remains even today regarding the prevalence of concussions in
the leagues games. Moreover, Bradley’s incident was certainly not the only occurrence of its
kind in the 2010 season. USA Today columnist Robert Lipsyte provides another example of the
dangers NFL players ran even after the new concussion rules were put in place. He evidences an
incident when Colt’s receiver Austin Collie was knocked unconscious after receiving a hit from
Eagles safety, Curt Coleman. After the hit, Collie remained motionless in the center of the field
in front of thousands of fans for several minutes. Most importantly, Lipstyle notes that the NFL
did virtually nothing to regulate the rules to prevent incidents like this one from happening in the
future. Rather, the leagues only response was to shield Coleman from criticism by stating that
his jarring hit on Collie was indeed, legal, under NFL rules. As a whole, like Bradley’s incident,
Austin Collie’s incident illustrates the NFL’s overall lack of protection of its players in the game
to this very day. Incidents like these along with a multitude of very similar occurrences since the
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2010 rule changes evidence the fact that the NFL has not yet done enough to protect its players
from jarring blows to the head.
Only recently has the NFL taken heat from the media about the risks it imposes on its
players. New Yorker columnist Ben Mcgrath notes that, as of 2007, very little had been written
about the neurological dangers NFL players faced with each game they played. As a result, the
United States’ population was generally oblivious of these risks. According to McGrath, this all
changed when columnist Alan Schwartz wrote the cover story, "Expert Ties Ex-Player's Suicide
to Brain Damage from Football,” in The New York Times. Over a period of several months
Schwartz continued to write articles about the dangers football players faced, and even wrote
articles from the viewpoint of NFL-retirees wives, whose husbands lives had been changed
forever. McGrath goes on to note that many of these articles captured the attention of a great
deal of Americans, and, in doing so, educated a great deal of people about the dangers of playing
football. Since, Scwatrz’s work was published, articles and documentaries outlining the
neurological dangers of football and the lives of crippled NFL retirees have become increasingly
popular. Since 2007, publications like Time Magazine, USA Today, and The New Yorker, have
continued what Schwartz started and have been writing and publishing stories much like his.
Many of these articles directly criticize the NFL for its lack of player care in regard to brain
trauma, and consequently the general population has become even more immersed in the conflict
between football and concussions. It is also important to note that these articles are not only
included in third party publications, but even included in sports centered media including Sports
Illustrated and ESPN which rely heavily on the NFL for profits (McGrath). This fact illustrates
just how mainstream articles like these are today. This mainstream media spotlight on the NFL
has certainly made America’s general population increasingly informed of the neurological
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hazards NFL players face with each game they play. It is this very fact which poses the threat to
the NFL’s dominance in the American sporting world.
Ever since the media spotlighted the dangers of concussions in football, peoples’
perceptions of the sport have certainly changed. Some have even expressed a new belief that
simply watching football games conflicts with one’s inner morality. As Lipstyle explains, “it
wasn't until recently, as the roster of damaged brains was revealed, that watching football began
to feel more like a guilty pleasure”. Lipstyle is certainly not the only person in the country to
express this oncoming belief about football. Carroll and Rosner give the example Whitey Baun,
who after exposure to the devastating consequences of concussions, noted that, “the hits that
once roused [him] out of his living room chair now made him wince” (39). It is important to
mention that Lipstyle and Baun are not completely alone in their beliefs. A recent ESPN poll
taken by columnist Paula Lavigne found that about eighteen percent of fans said that “the
concussion debate has made them less likely to follow football or watch it on television.” This
statistic is extremely important because the overall NFL fan base will almost certainly shrink as
fans lose their comfort with watching football. Instead, people may turn to watching different
sports where long term player health is not risked to the extent it is in football. As Lipstyle
notes, “Football is the only one of America's big four team sports predicated on brutal play”. As
fans turn to different sports the NFL will almost certainly feel a financial impact. Tickets to NFL
games will almost certainly bring in less money, television ratings will begin to fall, and
memorabilia sales will go down. Consequently, the NFL certainly could begin to lose its
financial dominance in the world of American sports, if NFL does not increase peoples’ comfort
with watching NFL games.
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It’s also important to note that not only does the concussion debate affect the number of
fans the league has today, but that it also affects the leagues fan base of the future. Parents who
have already been exposed to the mounting evidence linking football to brain disease have
expressed their belief that they wish their son’s not play the sport. One example is columnist,
football fan, and mother Katherine Chretien who simply explains, “I don't want
my children playing tackle football at all.” Chretien is certainly not the only parent in the
country to share this opinion. Even football players themselves such as retired quarterback Kurt
Warner and present Jets linebacker Bart Scott have publicly stated they do not want their sons to
play the sport. Cases like these are certainly not isolated. Statistics show that a great deal of
parents are preventing their children from football as a result of the increased concussion
awareness they received from the media. For example, ESPN columnist Paula Lavigne took a
poll which found that about 57 percent of parents said they were less likely to allow their sons to
play football since the true dangers of concussions have been realized. Moreover, two-thirds of
the parents in this pool noted that they feel concussions in youth football are indeed a serious
issue. These statistics should be very frightening to the NFL. As parents disallow their sons to
play football, and, instead, have their children play less dangerous sports, the overall number of
youth football players in the US will certainly be on the decline. With less youth football players
there will certainly be less overall interest in football amongst the youth population. This
decreased number of youth fans will once again correlate to lower revenues for the NFL as youth
sales, like memorabilia drop.
Although these statistics may seem very concrete, some football fans today may assert
that the emphasis on concussions today will not affect the fan base of leagues like the NFL.
These people may pose the argument that the players themselves understand the risks they take
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and decide to play anyway. Therefore they may believe that people will feel no moral obligation
to stop watching football. Nonetheless, they are failing to notice that statistics show that people
already have begun to develop less favorable opinions about watching and supporting the sport.
Moreover, this argument does not account for the parents who withhold their children from
football. In this case, parents do not keep their children from playing football because of a
moral disparity with the NFL, rather these parents simply aim to protect their children. Hence,
even if people continue to watch and attend football games at the rate they do now, the overall
fan base of football will shrink as the number of youth football players shrink, even if people feel
football players understand the risks they are taking.
All the while, this very dire prediction of the NFL’s future can be avoided if the NFL
simply decides to revamp its rules and policies to protect its players. Although some fans may
assert that it is impossible to make the game safer without destroying the essence of the game,
this is simply not true. Over the last several years there have been numerous proposals of how to
make football safer than it is today. Robert Lipstyle gives an excellent summation of all the
possible in game rule changes that would likely dramatically reduce the number of head injuries
in football. One key rule change Lipstyle advocates for is prohibiting the use of the use of the
three point stance by lineman. He notes that this stance allows the lineman to propel themselves
at one another just as sprinters propel themselves when they leave the starting blocks in a race.
Banning this stance would result in much less forceful collisions on the line of scrimmage,
which, with luck, would limit the force of the blows linemen’s heads take with each play. In
addition to this ban, Lipstyle also pulls for other changes to game play including the
“enforcement of rules against spearing a ‘defenseless’ opponent, better helmets, head injury
courses for coaches at all levels, and a return to the old ‘wrap-around’ body tackle instead of the
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head-first hit.” With the exception of developing safer helmets, all of these rule changes provide
an immediate response the NFL could take to lessen the dangers on player’s brains.
Furthermore, all of these changes would make the game safer without drastically altering the
way football is played today. If the NFL hopes to successfully navigate the media’s spotlight
on the safety in the league it must make changes like these. These changes would finally to
prove to the general population that football has finally become a safer sport and, most
importantly, less harsh on players’ brains. As a result, the NFL would be able to avoid falling
from its elite position among American professional leagues.
Another way the NFL could save itself from the repercussions of the violence of football
would be to develop safer helmets. Today, the system of developing safe helmets is obviously
failing, as concussion rates in football remain very high. Time columnist Jeffery Kluger gives a
reason for this when he evidences that, “The National Operating Committee on Standards for
Athletic Equipment,” the organization that certifies helmets today, is funded by the very
corporations which manufacturer the football helmets. In other words, football helmets today are
certified by the very people who make the helmets. As one can see, a conflict in interests is
obvious. A helmet manufacturer now has incentive to make helmets as inexpensively as
possible, since there really is no risk of a helmet failing to be certified. The problem is that these
manufacturers very well may be trading the overall safety of their product for higher profit
margins. If the NFL looks to provide football players with quality helmets it must end this
conflict of interests. Furthermore, Kluger also notes that this problem is compounded by the fact
that today football helmets are only designed to limit lacerations or fractures to the skull, not to
prevent concussions. He emphasizes his point that the helmets in the market today “do little or
nothing to prevent concussions.” It’s important to understand that Kluger’s claim is not merely
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subjective but rather backed by statistical evidence. As Katherine Chretien notes, a recent study
found that high school football players’ helmets are repeatedly subjected to 20 g to 100 g blows
over the course of a practice. All the while, 75 g’s are standard considered enough force to cause
a concussion. If the NFL, with the financial resources it has today, chooses to put a great deal of
resources into finding a method of producing safer helmets it will almost certainly be successful
in doing so. Safer helmets could drastically lower the concussion rate in football, without
changing the game in any shape or form. A lower concussion rate in the NFL would certainly
bode well for the league’s public image, and allow the league to maintain the fan bases it has
today. If the league is successful in doing so, it would certainly be able to carry on as the top
grossing league in the American sporting world.
All in all, the advent of concussion research has certainly put the NFL under a great deal
of pressure. Ever since third party scientists have begun studying the effects of concussions on
the brain it has become very apparent that concussions can and in many cases do lead to
permanent brain damage. This science has been backed by the life experiences of a number of
retired NFL players who, since retiring, have developed chronic brain diseases which both
depreciated the quality of and shortened their lives. Since the link of concussions to brain
damage has been made, the media has jumped on leagues like the NFL where concussions are
commonplace, and players are cleared to play while still concussed. This very spotlight has
already turned a great deal of people away from the NFL, and will continue to do so as the media
continues to educate people about the dangers of concussions. If the NFL fails to respond to the
image much of the media bestows upon it today, it will surely lose the peak position in the world
of American sports leagues it enjoys today. Luckily for the NFL, the league has the ability to
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avoid this desolate future if it chooses to employ new rules that decrease the frequency and vigor
of head impacts, and focuses on the production of new, safer helmets.
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Works Cited
Bartholet, Jeffrey. "The Collision Syndrome." Scientific American 306.2 (2012): 66-
71. Academic Search Premier. Web. 31 Oct. 2012.
Carroll, Linda, and David Rosner. The Concussion Crisis: Anatomy of a Silent Epidemic. New
York: Simon & Schuster, 2011. Print.
Katherine, Chretien. "Risk a child's brain for football?." USA Today n.d.: Academic Search
Premier. Web. 31 Oct. 2012.
Kluger, Jeffrey. "Headbanger Nation." Time 177.4 (2011): 42-51. Academic Search Premier.
Web. 31 Oct. 2012.
Paula Lavigne. "Concussion News Worries parents." ESPN. ESPN Internet Ventures, 26 Aug.
2012. Web. 10 Nov. 2012.
Robert, Lipsyte. "Only we can save the NFL from itself." USA Today n.d.: Academic Search
Premier. Web. 5 Nov. 2012.
Tyler, Jeffrey H., and Michael E. Nelson. "SECOND IMPACT SYNDROME: Sports Confront
Consequences Of Concussions." USA Today Magazine 128.2660 (2000): 72.Academic
Search Premier. Web. 10 Nov. 2012.
Wier, David R., James S. Jackson, and Amanda Sonnega. “National Football League Player Care
Foundation.” Institute for Social Research University of Michigan (n.d.): n. pag.
University of Michigan, 10 Sept. 2009. Web. 11 Oct. 2012.
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