The day after Boston University scientists announced that they found degenerative brain disease in 110 of the 111 deceased NFL players, we were reminded that the league reneged on a five year commitment it made to fund the research.
Brain injuries have never exactly been an NFL priority. wholesale discount jerseys The league spent decades suppressing and discrediting studies related to concussion, and it is still recoiling from the $1 billion settlement with wholesale mlb jerseys retirees who sued over decades of NFL denial though these 20,000 damaged men have yet to see a penny.
So now Roger Goodell’s league has also short changed the research of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopothy (CTE), a mind ravaging disease associated with repetitive head trauma something to think about the next time the NFL tells you about its safety initiatives.
The NFL pledged $30 million to the National Institutes of Health in 2012 to help fund CTE research. Rep. Frank Pallone (D 6th Dist.) followed up on months of ESPN reports and agreed that the league reneged.
First the NFL tried to redirect the funds toward scientists more favorable to the league itself, then it closed the spigot, as a letter from Pallone to Goodell last week pointed out.
In the end, it short changed the NIH by $18 million, which suggests the Wholesale Football Jerseys NFL isn’t as committed to brain research as it claims to be.
Football in the age of CTE: a conflicting spectacle Editorial
“The NFL has been cooking the books on this research for years,” Pallone said Friday, just as ESPN reported that the NIH and NFL will end their six year agreement next month.
The NFL claims it supports other efforts in neuroscience, but the Boston University study, easily the most ambitious in the field, is the one that matters now. Even though it cannot tell us how prevalent the disease may be in football, Dr. Ann McKee’s findings are startling, and a reminder that no matter how much you mitigate the risk, “safe” tackle football is like a safe cigarette: It is a myth.
As Giants icon Harry Carson put it Friday, “There is no helmet technology that can prevent brain trauma period which is a fact that eludes too many parents.”
The NFL may deserve credit for taking legitimate safety measures in recent years, but this is the kind of backstep that reminds you that the league still has a half century of bad karma to cheap NFL Jerseys burn off.
This league didn’t take any proactive measure until 1994, when it established the Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee. Its first chairman was, actually, a rheumatologist.
It didn’t have a concussion protocol until 2013.
It did not acknowledge the link between football and CTE until March 2016, largely because it feared liability.
And its biggest star, Tom Brady, plays with concussions, his wife revealed last week a devastatingly stupid message to send to the 1.2 million high school kids who think they have hide their symptoms like the great ones do.
None of that will reduce the popularity of a sport that is part of our local identity and national culture. But whenever the NFL claims that player safety is a priority, we assert our right to be skeptical.