PD Editorial: NFL starts to come clean about brain injuries

The NFL appears to be having a “gee, now that you mention it” moment reminiscent of the tobacco industry’s late-developing acquaintance with the truth. After years of denying medical evidence linking the sport to a degenerative brain disorder, a top league official this month acknowledged that there just might be something to all that science stuff.

Asked at a recent House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing if a connection exists between football and chronic trauma encephalopathy, or CTE, Jeff Miller - the NFL’s vice president for health and safety policy - replied, “The answer to that is certainly yes.”

Unfortunately, league officials started to tap-dance in the backfield almost immediately, with a spokesman quickly pointing out that Miller also had said “a lot more questions need to be answered.”

In a court filing the next day, NFL officials challenged contentions that a recently settled lawsuit over CTE should be reopened to include players who aren’t yet exhibiting signs of the disease. Using language that would make tobacco industry flacks proud, the filing referred to symptoms “allegedly associated” with CTE and to research showing “potential association” with CTE.

Yet the association is clear. As Dr. Anne McKee, professor of neurology and pathology at Boston University, told the House committee this month, “We’ve seen it in 90 out of 94 NFL players whose brains we’ve examined, we’ve found it in 45 out of 55 college players and 26 out of 65 high school players.”

Not that football is alone in this danger. Research has shown that many contact sports also cause CTE. Football just happens to be particularly risky.

In some ways, it’s easier for fans and the public to look the other way with football than it was with smoking. Cancer was a real risk for anyone who inhaled. Football is only dangerous to the players. Fans are safe, at least physically. The harm to fans is a cancer of the soul. Everyone who tunes in on Sundays and fervently checks fantasy football statistics supports a system that predicates entertainment on ruining people’s lives.

Former Oakland Raiders star Kenny Stabler, who died last year of colon cancer, is among the most recently identified cases of CTE verified by researchers. A postmortem examination confirmed what his loved ones has long suspected: His headaches, confusion and signs of dementia were caused by injuries suffered on the field.

The evidence is now so compelling that some players are rethinking their commitment to the game. Chris Borland, a promising linebacker for the San Francisco 49ers, quit last year after only one season because “there have been too many tragedies for me to be comfortable playing.”

Parents especially should think twice about the sport. As much as they might and their sons might love the game, is it worth setting boys onto a path that ends in brain damage, memory loss and dementia?

Living in denial often makes good business and political sense, at least until the truth catches up. Just ask big tobacco, big coal and Republican climate change deniers. Is that really the company that the NFL wants to keep?