New NFL CTE Study Has Trickle Down Effect For ADs

By Laurie N. Gallagher, Esq

The news surrounding the NFL’s concussion controversy has permeated not just the sports media, but mainstream national news publications such as Newsweek.  While a settlement of the class action lawsuit filed on behalf of players has been proposed to compensate those who have been or may be diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), some players are opting out to start their own lawsuits because of their dissatisfaction with the NFL’s settlement offer. Just last week, a Los Angeles Times story reported on arecent study at Boston College which concluded that 87 of the 91 brains of former NFL players that were examined had some evidence of CTE. Ninety-six percent is a pretty staggering – and convincing – number.

Of course, unlike the NBA, NFL players don’t just show up in the league out of high school. They have likely been playing some form of football since they could strap on a helmet: “pee-wee”, junior high, high school and college. Almost all NFL players have taken this route. Unfortunately, that means that these young men have sustained numerous impacts to their heads from day one.

The media has covered cases of stars in the league like Junior Seau, who was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame this year – posthumously because he committed suicide in 2012. Reports said that he shot himself in the chest rather than in the head so his brain would be intact for study of brain injuries in football players. Dave Duerson, who won the League’s Man of the Year award (now named after Walter Payton) in 1987 for his volunteer and charity work, as well as his excellence on the field, also shot himself in the chest a year before Seau, purportedly to preserve his brain for research. Apparently, these men suspected that their demons were coming from cognitive issues and felt the need to help other players before they too ran out of options.



Another noteworthy case is that of Tony Dorsett, who is the first known living person to have been diagnosed with degenerative CTE. Doctors used a new medical technique which measures tau, a specific protein in the brain. Previously the test could only be done on the brain of a diseased person.

So how does this affect college ADs? As noted, before these players are pros, they are playing in colleges across the country. Some are in premier programs such as defending national champion Ohio State and other perennial top finishers like Alabama. Others are in programs that aren’t televised every week and don’t provide as much exposure and glory for those players, but those players are just as susceptible to brain injury, if not more so.

The reason that they may be in more danger than players in the premier programs is what some say is the root of all evil: money. Athletes who aren’t recruited by the major programs may feel more pressure to excel to draw attention from NFL scouts. With that motivation, they may be more inclined to play hurt, especially with an injury that isn’t readily apparent like a broken bone.

Cullen Finnerty, a quarterback who led Grand Valley State to three NCAA Division II championships, died at the age of 30. His body was found in the woods and his autopsy found that, although pneumonia was the primary cause of death, it was exacerbated by CTE.

Regardless of their success as a player, college athletes don’t have the protections that professional athletes have. If a college player is injured so badly that he has to leave the team, he may still be eligible for his scholarship. But, in general, there is no program to follow his progress with concussion symptoms after he leaves the team or after he leaves school and no offer of ongoing assistance with medical bills.

An alumnus of the University of North Carolina wrote a story about a young man who played there while the writer was in school. The player had been a left tackle whose task was to sacrifice himself to protect the blind side of the quarterback. The Tar Heels went 11-1 that year and the young man who had contributed to the uncharacteristic success of the team had high hopes of being drafted. But he wasn’t, and his life went downhill after that.

Due to cognitive problems, the former football hero couldn’t hold down a job and was homeless. While there could not be a specific diagnosis of CTE at the time because the only method of testing could not be done on someone who is alive, anecdotal evidence from his family pointed strongly to the possibility.

The good news in this situation is that his alma mater came forward to help him but they were likely highly motivated by the New York Times’ coverage of the story. Before they could, however, that had have the NCAA’s agreement that the college’s AD could provide the player with basic necessities.

In 2014, in an effort to secure these types of protections, football players from Northwestern University filed a request to unionize their athletic department to provide the type of ongoing benefits that other businesses have.

The petition to the National Labor Relations Board asked for a ruling that Northwestern football players on scholarship are employees under federal labor laws. A ruling in the players’ favor would provide with some of the same benefits of employment in unionized corporate America such as salaries, health care benefits, pensions, overtime pay, as well as workplace safety and workers’ compensation assurances. The only obvious drawback for the players would be that their status as employees would put them in danger of being cut, i.e., fired, more easily without these benefits when they didn’t perform to expectations or violated team rules.

Ultimately, the NLRB recently ruled against the players, primarily, according to the Board, because of the disparity it would cause in the NCAA between private institutions, like Northwestern, and public state-supported colleges. But the Board left the door open for a different outcome under other circumstances.

While some still doubt the reliability of the current testing methods to determine CTE, especially the recently developed method of measuring tau, there is enough evidence to at least rate the attention of college ADs. The concussion problem applies across the board to health, technology, sports, money and politics. The health of the players should be the number one concern. But in the big business of college sports, money is often the primary motivator. Coaches and ADs keep their jobs based upon the success of their programs, not just on the field but financially. The politics of the competitive environment, not just on the field, but in the executive offices is daunting. Companies that provide the technology for the safety of the players are also in the mix. Riddell is part of another lawsuit alleging that the design of their helmets did not protect players from concussions.

At this point, ADs and others responsible for the well-being of these young men should follow the advice of the medical professionals who are responsible for the aftermath of decisions made during the collegiate years: prevention by making their programs as safe as possible; recognition of the symptoms to address the condition immediately; and treatment in the proper manner and as soon as possible by always having a trainer or other sports medicine professional on the field at practices as well as at the games.  

 

Laurie Newman Gallagher has been a sports journalist for five decades. Her first nationally published article covered Title IX shortly after its passage. She also had the privilege of covering Alabama Crimson Tide games during the Bear Bryant era. When she isn’t cheering on her beloved Tide, she is a legal consultant to several media outlets. When she isn’t covering sports, she and her husband are at their teenagers’ football, baseball and volleyball games. And, when she gets a break, she’s on the white sands of Pensacola Beach.