Tag Archives: CTE

Sports news

NFL has enough on its plate

As if the National Football League didn’t have enough on its plate with which to contend.

The NFL has just issued an edict ordering its players to stand for the national anthem when it’s played prior to football games.

There is another issue on the NFL’s plate. It’s called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.

I got to write about it while working part time for Panhandle PBS. My task in those days was to write blogs pertaining to public service programming. “Frontline” did a landmark special on CTE in 2015 and I was privileged to offer some perspective on it.

Here is what I wrote in September 2015 for Panhandle PBS.

I mention this now because the NFL is back in the news. The topic this time — players who “take a knee” to protest police brutality against African-Americans — is unpleasant. It’s not nearly as grim and grievous as the “other big issue” that plagues the NFL to this day.

CTE is taking lives. The league is trying to do better at protecting these highly paid athletes/entertainers. It’s a full-time job for the NFL. I am wondering how in the world the league is going to focus on players who launch their protests by “taking a knee.”

Sports news

Yes, they should ‘fear’ CTE

Terrell Davis used to be a great football player.

The newly inducted Hall of Fame running back for the Denver Broncos now says he lives in fear — along with other former football players — of a disease he might get later on in life. It’s called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.

Davis has reason to be very afraid.

The young man took a battering while carrying a football for the Broncos. He took many hits to the head, as did so many other professional football players. Indeed, studies have revealed recently that more than 80 percent of former NFL players are — or will be — afflicted by CTE, which ultimately diminishes cognitive ability.

“We’re concerned because we don’t know what the future holds. When I’m at home and I do something, if I forget something I have to stop to think, ‘Is this because I’m getting older or I’m just not using my brain, or is this an effect of playing football? I don’t know that.”

Read more about Davis’s comments here.

What does the NFL do about this? It already has taken steps to penalize players who hit other athletes on what they call “helmet-to-helmet contact.” The league has been forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to players afflicted by CTE.

The NFL is now dealing almost daily with reports of athletes becoming afflicted with CTE at various stages of its progression.

The term CTE only recently has become part of every-day language, sort of like HIV/AIDS and ALS have become over the years.

Do these grown men stop doing what they do? Do we make football an illegal activity? Must the NFL resort to retooling the game into a two-hand touch football game? No, no and no.

But I surely can understand the fear that Terrell Davis and other former football players are expressing as they advance in years toward elderly status.

I suppose it would be imperative that the NFL do all it can to (a) protect the players on the field with improvements in the equipment they wear and (b) spend whatever it takes to care for those who are permanently damaged by the sport they choose to play.

medical news, Sports news

‘Dr.’ Jerry Jones issues his diagnosis on CTE

jones

Jerry Jones engenders fairly strong emotions among those who follow professional football in the United States of America.

He bought a team in 1989 and then fired the only coach the team ever had, the iconic Tom Landry. Then he decided to forgo hiring a general manager and he took over the job himself. He made some comment at the time about getting involved in “everything, including washing jock straps.” (I know it’s not a precise quote, but it’s close enough.)

How have the Dallas Cowboys done since then? Well, they’ve won some and lost some. Yes, they have won three Super Bowls since Jones took over as owner. Still, the team, it’s safe to say, has fallen far short of the expectations its brash new owner set for it.

The word on Jones ever since he bought the team, though, is that he’s not necessarily a good “football guy.” Brilliant businessman, sure.

Now he’s popping off about the effect of the sport in which he participates on a brain disorder called chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

The good “doctor” says there’s no connection between gigantic men colliding full-force into other men, knocking them senseless and then being afflicted with CTE. He calls assertions linking football to CTE “absurd.”

Jerry Jones needs to have his own head examined.

He said the National Football League lacks sufficient data to suggest the existence between CTE and the collisions that occur on the football field.

I do believe Jones is seriously — and tragically — mistaken.

Thus, I should recommend that Jones watch a brilliant PBS documentary that got the nation’s attention a couple of years ago. “Frontline” broadcast “League of Denial” that chronicles a gripping series of cases involving men whose lives were shattered by CTE.

What did these men have in common? Every one of them played competitive American football.

“Frontline” peeled the skin off a disorder that has shattered many lives. Insufficient data? It’s out there, Jerry. Really.

The NFL acknowledges it. So should the owner of the Dallas Cowboys.

 

medical news, Sports news

NFL’s dirty little secret out in the open

concussions-in-football-390-x-310

What once was professional football’s dirty little secret has been exposed yet again by revelations surrounding the death of a sports icon.

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy afflicts an alarming number of former football players. The National Football League for years denied that it was a problem among its athletes.

Now the word is out that Frank Gifford, a Hall of Fame wide receiver for the New York Giants, suffered from CTE when he died recently of “natural causes.”

CTE has returned to the head of the line of issues that Americans are discussing. I wrote about it for Panhandle PBS.

http://www.panhandlepbs.org/blogs/public-view-john-kanelis/cte-returns-to-the-headlines/

It saddens me to no end to hear former great players such as, say quarterback Brett Favre, say that he won’t allow his children to play football. Indeed, Favre had his bell rung more than once during his great career with the Green Bay Packers, New York Jets and Minnesota Vikings. I pray that CTE won’t claim him, but he is concerned about whether his own children would be safe playing a game that brought their father so much fame and financial reward.

PBS’s acclaimed documentary series “Frontline” blew the lid off this issue with its “League of Denial” special broadcast more than two year ago.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/league-of-denial/

The NFL has to come to grips with this situation. It’s already settled a huge claim made by its players association to compensate players and their families for the damage caused by these head injuries.

However, much more needs to be done to make the game as safe as possible for the athletes who take the field.

Are you listening, NFL executives?