A man gets ready for game day. He puts on his helmet, his protective padding and laces up his shoes. He’s nervous, but prepared. He’s been through a brutal fitness program: extensive workouts and specialized diets. He’s received expert medical care. His whole life is spent training for days like this.
He walks out into the arena. He’s greeted by the noise of thousands of cheering spectators. They want to see him win, but they came to watch him fight. These games are characterized by violence. It’s the pain people like to see.
And so he fights. And he’s hit, repeatedly. The fans audibly react to each confrontation: the nastier the hit, the louder they cheer. Even though he’s wounded, he keeps fighting until it’s over. Someone wins, someone loses.
So, who is this? A gladiator or a football player?
It’s both. If you’ve ever watched a football game, and know even the bare minimum about Roman gladiators, you’ll notice stark similarities between the two.
It’s important – if a bit obvious – to note that modern day American society and the days of the gladiators are civilizations apart. It’s easy to compare the two on a superficial level. However, the public’s attraction to witnessing people pummel each other, to the death in many gladiatorial cases, goes a little deeper. Fans of these Roman battles knew the dangerous and tragic risks involved in being a gladiator: fans of NFL games aren’t as aware of the dangerous and tragic risks involved in being a football player.
To shed some light on the subject, PBS aired a Frontline documentary on Oct. 8, called “League of Denial: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis,” (based on the book “League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions and the Battle for Truth,” by brothers Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru) that exposes the NFL’s disturbing efforts to hide the connection between their sport and chronic brain trauma. The documentary focused more specifically on chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease found in people with a “history of repetitive brain trauma, including symptomatic concussions as well as asymptomatic subconcussive hits to the head,” according to Boston University’s Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy (CSTE). The disease can only be confirmed post mortem, but reported signs include “dementia-like symptoms, and changes in thinking, memory, behavior, mood, motor skills, or the ability to carry out daily living activities.”
The documentary put a spotlight on the deliberate attempts of NFL higher-ups to flat out deny any relationship between football and CTE, beginning with the condemnation of neuropathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu. His discovery of CTE in former Pittsburgh Steeler Mike Webster’s brain after his suicide in 2002 was the first instance of CTE ever found in a football player.
Following Dr. Omalu’s autopsy, the NFL’s Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (MBTI) committee started to publish papers in scientific journals attempting to downplay the league’s concussion issue. In 2004, the committee published a paper claiming an NFL study did not support the findings of Dr. Kevin Guskiewicz, a sports medicine researcher at the University of North Carolina, who published a paper positing that “repeat concussions may lead to slower recovery of neurological functioning.”
And in what might be the most laughable and controversial of MBTI’s studies, they claimed football players have “evolved to a state where their brains are less susceptible to injury.” It’s almost hard to believe then-MBTI Chair Dr. Elliot Pellman had any experience in brain science.
Oh wait, he didn’t.
This pattern of denial continued well into 2009. During this time, players retired, a few even committed suicide, and of these players, some complained about suffering depression and memory loss. In January 2009, CSTE’s Dr. Ann McKee and a group of scientists found more cases of CTE in brains of deceased football players. One shocking case in particular was found in the brain of an 18-year-old student who passed away 10 days after his fourth concussion. Finally, in what seemed to be an out-of-the-blue change of heart, an NFL spokesman acknowledged the connection between concussions and long term effects in an interview with a New York Times reporter in December 2009. Since then, the NFL has funded various research groups and studies in connection with brain trauma and has implemented changes in game rules and safety measures.
However, people still aren’t happy. And they shouldn’t be. The NFL’s “league of denial” put the health of their players at risk and cost some their lives. They fraudulently concealed and suppressed valid medical evidence in an attempt to convince people football isn’t a dangerous sport.
Why? One NFL doctor, in speaking to Dr. Omalu, sums it up best: “If 10 percent of mothers in this country would begin to perceive football as a dangerous sport, that is the end of football.”
So that’s it. The NFL cares about one thing: the business of football. The 1,000 to 1,500 hits a player takes on average each season are a small price for league executives to pay. The players are their money makers, but they’re also disposable. There are thousands of little boys, teenagers and grown men in this country who would do anything to become a professional football player. In the eyes of the NFL, anything that could jeopardize the sport’s popularity, even something as serious as CTE, needs to be masqueraded.
Realistically, football is not going anywhere, especially not anytime soon, even with the CTE revelations. It’s a staple of American culture. There are ways to make the sport safer, but some argue it won’t be enough. As long as football involves players running into each other at high speeds and being repeatedly hit, they are put at an extreme risk. The introduction of the supposedly safer “heads-up” tackling technique is nothing more than public relations.
So the most important thing we can do is to fully inform potential football players about the health risks involved in playing the sport. The decision is ultimately theirs, but it’s only fair to provide them with all of the details: good and bad. That’s why the NFL’s “league of denial” has been an almost decade of shame. Their modern day gladiators, and those who watch them, should at least be given the courtesy of knowing what this sport can truly do to the human body.
Jillian Correira is a Collegian columnist. She can be reached at [email protected].
