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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