On Monday, the National Football League (NFL) publicly acknowledged for the first time the link between professional American football and degenerative brain disorders such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy. The league had long since admitted concussions were dangerous, but this is the first time long-term damage has been acknowledged. As recently as last month, long term damage had been denied. A 2012 study of the brains of deceased football players found that 34 out of 35 showed signs of damage.
The condition does not only affect football players, as athletes in rugby, boxing, ice hockey, association football (soccer), and wrestling are also at risk. CTE has been cited as a factor in the murder-suicides committed by football player Jovan Belcher and former WWE Champion Chris Benoit.
Will this admission impact our popular love of sports? Prior bad news had not impacted business:
"The news issues away from the field have had absolutely no impact. ... None," said John Wildhack, ESPN executive vice president for programming and production. "The NFL continues to have just an incredible grip on the American sports culture."
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Former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, who committed suicide a week after being acquitted of double homicide, has been found to have had severe signs (original AP text) of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Hernandez's brain had been released to Boston University by his family for study. In 2015, Hernandez was found guilty for the murder of Odin Lloyd and automatically sentenced to life in prison without a possibility of parole:
Tests conducted on the brain of former football star Aaron Hernandez showed severe signs of the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and his attorney said Thursday that the player's daughter is suing the NFL and the New England Patriots for leading Hernandez to believe the sport was safe.
In a news conference at his offices, Hernandez's attorney, Jose Baez, said the testing showed one of the most severe cases ever diagnosed. "We're told it was the most severe case they had ever seen for someone of Aaron's age," Baez said. Hernandez was 27 when he killed himself in April. Dr. Ann McKee, the director of the CTE Center at Boston University, concluded that the New England Patriots tight end had stage 3 of 4 of the disease and also had early brain atrophy and large perforations in a central membrane.
[...] A week before his suicide, Hernandez was acquitted in the 2012 drive-by shootings of two men in Boston. Prosecutors had argued that Hernandez gunned the two men down after one accidentally spilled a drink on him in a nightclub, and then got a tattoo of a handgun and the words "God Forgives" to commemorate the crime.
Baez said he deeply regretted not raising the issue of Hernandez's having CTE during his murder trials. He said the defense team did not blame CTE for the murders because Hernandez's defense was actual innocence.
Previously: NFL Acknowledges Link Between American Football and CTE
What if PTSD is More Physical Than Psychological?
Ailing NFL Players' Brains Show Signs of Neurodegenerative Disease
Aaron Hernandez's brain shows signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) with a severity beyond anything experts have ever seen in an athlete his age:
The Boston researcher who examined the brain of former football star Aaron Hernandez says it showed the most damage her team had seen in an athlete so young.
Hernandez, whose on-field performance for the New England Patriots earned him a $40 million contract in 2012, hanged himself in a prison cell earlier this year while serving a life sentence for murder. He was 27 years old.
Dr. Ann McKee, a neuropathologist who directs research of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, at Boston University, said her research team found Hernandez had Stage 3 CTE and that they had never seen such severe damage in a brain younger than 46 years old. McKee announced her findings at medical conference on Thursday in Boston where she spoke publicly for the first time.
The researchers described the brain as one of the most significant contributions to their work due to the former athlete's young age at the time of his death. Also at the Boston Herald.
In other news, a lawsuit by the estate of Aaron Hernandez (filed while Hernandez was alive) against a prison phone service has been thrown out:
The identity of a hacker who accessed jailhouse conversations between Aaron Hernandez and his fiancee while he was awaiting trial will likely never be revealed now that a judge has spiked the former Patriot's lawsuit against the phone service hired to record and store non-privileged calls.
Suffolk Superior Court Judge Helene Kazanjian entered her judgment Monday allowing Texas-based Securus Technologies Inc.'s motions to dismiss Hernandez's complaint. It was initially filed in federal court last year, five months before Hernandez hanged himself in his cell at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley. Hernandez's estate was pushing forward with the civil action.
Did American football create a murderer and drive him to suicide?
Previously: NFL Acknowledges Link Between American Football and CTE
Ailing NFL Players' Brains Show Signs of Neurodegenerative Disease
Former Football Star Aaron Hernandez's Brain Found to Have Severe CTE
Abnormal Levels of a Protein Linked to C.T.E.[*] Found in N.F.L Players' Brains, Study Shows
Experimental brain scans of more than two dozen former N.F.L. players found that the men had abnormal levels of the protein linked to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease associated with repeated hits to the head.
Using positron emission tomography, or PET, scans, the researchers found "elevated amounts of abnormal tau protein" in the parts of the brain associated with the disease, known as C.T.E., compared to men of similar age who had not played football.
The authors of the study and outside experts stressed that such tau imaging is far from a diagnostic test for C.T.E., which is likely years away and could include other markers, from blood and spinal fluid.
The results of the study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday [DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1900757] [DX], are considered preliminary, but constitute a first step toward developing a clinical test to determine the presence of C.T.E. in living players, as well as early signs and potential risk.
[*] CTE: Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy
Also at NBC.
Editorial: Links in the Chain of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (DOI: 10.1056/NEJMe1903746) (DX)
Related: NFL Acknowledges Link Between American Football and CTE
What if PTSD is More Physical Than Psychological?
Ailing NFL Players' Brains Show Signs of Neurodegenerative Disease
Former Football Star Aaron Hernandez's Brain Found to Have Severe CTE
Researchers: Aaron Hernandez Had the Worst Case of CTE Ever Seen in an Athlete So Young
CTE Can be Diagnosed in a Living Person
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15 2016, @02:39PM
Parents will direct their sons away from football and hockey, while baseball becomes more popular again. Flag football and touch football (recreational variations of American football in which there is no blocking or tackling) might become competitive school sports. The generation that is under 10 years old now may have grow up with a different perspective on pro sports.
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Tuesday March 15 2016, @03:06PM
They will also not suffer from back problems because OMG backpacks+books
They will also probably not sit in their desks all day, because we realized that sitting all day kills us
They will probably go horribly blind because they will still be required to stare at a screen that is a fixed distance from their face all day later in life...
But hey it's probably an improvement overall
2 steps forward, one step back
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15 2016, @03:19PM
The NFL part doesn't scare me much. Many of these guys are getting paid large sums of money. It is up to them to decide if the risks like CTE are worth the rewards. Some players hang it up early - even after a year or two in the pros.
The part that scares me is all the age groups below that. College players are getting scholarships, but many don't really want the education. What's the up side for them if they don't care about a degree, and do they understand the risks? How about High School. Do this kids understand the risks, or is that the parent's call? If this is your only way to go to college or get out of your neighborhood, does that make it worthwhile? Does a 16 year old understand that being a defensive back and running into someone 40 plays a game once a week can have lifelong effects? My wife keeps watching some program on Netflix (not sure which network carries it) about a bunch of 10 or 12 year old kids playing in highly competitive full contact football leagues. I refuse to watch the show because it scares me what the parents/coaches might be doing to those kids that won't be evident for a decade or two. Even if it's just one kid on each team that develops symptoms that is too many for me.
I also see this as a future liability for High Schools and Colleges, which they may not be able to afford.
I'm just torn because I do enjoy watching NFL games, and have been a season ticket holder for an NCAA team. I see football being like boxing in a generation or so. The popularity falls off because the parents don't want their kids doing it, and if the kids aren't doing it they are less likely to watch and become fans.
(Score: 2) by Zinho on Tuesday March 15 2016, @03:42PM
There are proposals to make colleges provide lifetime medical treatment to players of high-impact sports, plus guaranteed enrollment for later in life in pursuit of a degree. It seems reasonable to me; during their sports careers the players are effectively majoring in "eligibility". Guaranteeing them a chance to earn a useful degree after their sports career makes up for the lost opportunity during their eligible years.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday March 15 2016, @04:23PM
A bit like the US military, then?
Volunteer now, you may end up with a major disability but we'll take care of you if we don't cut the budgets too much.
Sacrifice for the flag of your country, or that of your Alma Mater?
(Score: 2) by Zinho on Tuesday March 15 2016, @06:02PM
Sacrifice for the flag of your country, or that of your Alma Mater?
Yep, that's what the players are already doing.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 2) by physicsmajor on Tuesday March 15 2016, @04:41PM
What the actual fuck.
Guaranteed enrollment later in life to earn a degree? So what the heck were they doing in the first place?
What you're describing is an institution of higher learning sponsoring a professional team, luring players with benefits instead of cash. While it may seem the logical conclusion of our current path, we must go the opposite direction.
A reasonable proposal would be to disallow all scholarships for sports, period. Those who play, also must be in good academic standing. If your goal is to go to college to screw around for four+ years, playing sports or Halo, then you should fail out. The only disservice our current system is doing is not clearing these folks from the system.
(Score: 2) by Zinho on Tuesday March 15 2016, @06:20PM
What you're describing is an institution of higher learning sponsoring a professional team, luring players with benefits instead of cash. While it may seem the logical conclusion of our current path, we must go the opposite direction.
Yes, it is the logical conclusion of our current path. That freight train has a lot of momentum, and making it turn a 180 will take way more energy than steering it in a less harmful direction.
The problem is money - the top schools make 10s of millions of dollars annually from the sports programs, little of which goes to the players. Denying the students the support they already have (scholarships) would only make the situation worse: instead of being slave labor they'd actually be paying to suffer the abuse and neglect their sports put them through. The money isn't going to go away - fans want to watch, and will pay for the privilege (bowl games, direct contributions to the school, etc). Schools with $10^(6+) can afford to lobby to keep their activities legal, and their alumni will add political pressure for free.
Banning sports altogether seems unlikely (by classical standards, a University education should include encouragement and instruction on keeping the body strong and healthy). Requiring schools to deliver on the promise of an education doesn't seem unreasonable.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 2) by physicsmajor on Tuesday March 15 2016, @03:50PM
The average age at which point people gain the ability to fully evaluate the impact of their current decisions on their future is 25.
Seems high, but remember it's a bell curve. The point is that from a policy perspective, allowing children under this age to mage decisions with permanent impacts is, arguably, unethical. This also has interesting implications for things like student debt, but that's a discussion for another time.
Back on topic: I agree. I have no problem with professional players throwing away their cognitive lives, so long as they start playing only after the age where they can properly evaluate this decision. This is firmly established at 25 in the literature.
However, for everyone younger - including essentially all persons through college - full contact American football sport should be outright banned, full stop.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday March 15 2016, @05:55PM
Some do actually care about the education. For example, 2014-5 championship-winning quarterback Cardale Jones did not go into the draft (as he probably should have from a football perspective) because he wanted to finish his degree.
In many cases, I think they do understand the risks, which gets to the next point:
Potentially relevant here is that LeBron James refused to let his kid play football on the grounds that although it worked out very well for LeBron, part of the reason LeBron has been relatively careful with his money is precisely because he doesn't want his son to have to go through what he did. In other words, I get the definite impression that for many players, they absolutely understand that they're signing up for a lottery in which they're betting their health or even their life. It's worth it to them because the alternative for many is resigning themselves to a life of drudgery.
The difference between the NFL and Roman gladiator shows seems to be mostly a matter of degree.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15 2016, @11:24PM
Wait, isn't LeBron James a basketball player? I don't think basketball is anywhere near as hard on the brain as football is according to TFA's research. I suppose you meant it in the sense of his son getting into a career in professional sports in general as he had gotten into professional basketball.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday March 16 2016, @12:06AM
LeBron played both football and basketball prior in high school. He was good at football, but not as good as he was at basketball, and it was fairly late in his high school career that his coaches convinced him to concentrate on basketball (good advice, for obvious reasons).
So yes, he knows exactly what football can do to somebody's head, and doesn't want his kid going through what he went through.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by termigator on Tuesday March 15 2016, @04:43PM
I do not know. I do not believe there is proven correlation between the participatory level of a sport and its popularity. For example, soccer has a high participatory rate among the youth but is not very popular in the US. Spectating is different from participating.
What is TBD is CTE and other long term health problems impact to viewership. At this time, I doubt it. Humans have always enjoyed watching violent-based competitions.
(Score: 1) by redguitar2009 on Tuesday March 15 2016, @02:58PM
Many sports fans are people who are not overly rational, or like to have a break from all the critical thinking. It is a time to relax into a my team - their team meme and have some fun. Nothing wrong with that. But complicated issues like brain damage sometime arise, and suddenly there is this pre-modern / post-modern tension, and it ruins it for those who just want to keep things simple. The post-modern folks are burdened with being able to see the narrative of a big evil corporation (NFL) treating players like commodities, willing to overlook a growing life-threatening problem, and even spin a story about it that is counter to the evidence. Of course no one is force to play football, and a few of them are highly compensated.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15 2016, @03:16PM
Instead concentrate on "lifelong" sports that one can pursue regardless of future vocation or location.
Running, bicycling, swimming, weight-lifting...all have relatively manageable injury rates while providing solid, lifelong cardiovascular fitness.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15 2016, @03:29PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15 2016, @05:48PM
Purely anecdotal, but I've had more friends lose their lives running and bicycling than to football or ice hockey. Sharing your practice space with moving automobiles will do that.
You definitely make a point.
I used to ride on the roads all the time, but now I can't imagine...scary!
Still, there are sidwealks, bike paths, and the like. Not as exciting as a 100-miler on the highways, but we're not talking about semi-pro athletics, but rather basic fitness management.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15 2016, @06:13PM
Awesome, let's ban all fun. Thanks grandma.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday March 15 2016, @09:14PM
Awesome, let's ban all fun. Thanks grandma.
What fun? the conversation is about football (multiple codes).
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by bootsy on Tuesday March 15 2016, @06:34PM
We are having a similar discussion with rugby in the UK.
Doing competitive sport at any level is actually not very good for you. The amount of sports injury specialists shows this and most of the injuries at my desk bound job come from the lunch time football ( soccer ) games.
What concerns me is that parents won't get their children doing any exercise. Dancing, yoga, pilates and walking, hiking etc can increase fitness with a lower level of injury risk. Doing nothing will give us a generation of obese children with brittle bones. Knocks increase bone density. There is a trade off between the benefits of impact on toughening the body and the potential damage to the brain and other internal organs.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday March 15 2016, @09:05PM
We are having a similar discussion with rugby in the UK.
We are having that debate about rugby here in New Zealand too, the difference being that it's our national sport, and the NZRFU is extremely powerful, so I don't expect the debate to amount to much.
As an aside, my son played rugby in the lower grades for a prestigious rugby school. Despite him never being a star, it gave him a certain level of respect among his peers, which counts for a lot when you're 14 or 15.
He did get the odd head knock, and a neck injury once, but to their credit the coaches he had handled things really well. In the most serious case he was stood down for 4 weeks or so.
It has always been my contention that the NFL could reduce head trauma massively just by banning helmets and pads. Players in the NFL use their heads as weapons, despite it being against the rules.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday March 16 2016, @01:38AM
It has always been my contention that the NFL could reduce head trauma massively just by banning helmets and pads. Players in the NFL use their heads as weapons, despite it being against the rules.
A friend of mine from Australia rails against the tackling skills of American football players compared to NRL players. He's right of course, in American football the tendency is to hit, not tackle, hence the higher injury rates.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 16 2016, @01:06AM
As an adult, I play golf and enjoy watching that on TV as much as American football, baseball, or basketball. But in schools and colleges, the emphasis is on team sports because it's more fun to root for, and because the ability to play together as a team is obviously an extra dimension of difficulty not present in individual sports, particularly for youngsters. I think that's a good thing. Go ahead and have tennis and golf teams, but they probably shouldn't be the big men/women on campus.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15 2016, @03:26PM
After football becomes sissified in the USA, how will we win the World Series?? OMG!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by FrogBlast on Tuesday March 15 2016, @03:34PM
What the NFL has been fairly successful at is steering the public conversation toward the danger of concussions, which can often be mitigated with equipment and procedure. Unfortunately, the thing that's so interesting about the research is that it's linked "sub-concussive" hits to long-term dementia. If you rattle the brain gently for several hours a day, it adds up to major brain damage, even if no one gets sidelined for major trauma.
In fact, the quoted executive didn't even mention concussions, so the few articles I've seen about this so far are giving the NFL a bit of a pass. He was asked if "there is a link between football and degenerative brain disorders", and he said, "Yes." They didn't admit that concussions cause brain disorders - that wouldn't be particularly newsworthy. They admitted that normal football, played correctly and without noticeable injury, can lead to brain damage.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday March 15 2016, @08:08PM
How is that 2hr daily car ride from the suburbs sounding now?
compiling...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by CHK6 on Tuesday March 15 2016, @04:42PM
I recall times in school (80's) where I could not remember walking home from school after football practice. Between the hits and the heat, I'm surprised I'm still here. I played first string quick guard (one position to the left of center) and far left wide out on kickoff teams. I was a horrible tackler for the kickoff team, but I knew how to hit like a ram. My coaches told me, if you cannot tackle then hit hard enough that they go down. And that's what I did. I recall my worst hit knocking myself and the other completely out with a head on head collision. I was awake before the coaches got me and I recall coming to the bench to the hails of praise and slaps on the helmet for the "incredible hit."
In retrospec I wish I never really played. It was a risk with zero rewards.
(Score: 2) by physicsmajor on Tuesday March 15 2016, @04:46PM
At that age (under 25) you were not able to assess the impact of current decisions on your future.
Many, many children make the same mistake.
The only way to fix this is to ban sports which, in the normal course of play, cause permanent injury for all people under 25.
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Tuesday March 15 2016, @05:17PM
That depends where you want to draw the line defined by "in the normal course of play." For instance, under certain commonly available concussion statistics [wikipedia.org], there'd be more of a case for banning women's soccer than for men's (American) football. I think there's much more that can be done for safety before talk of banning sports for those under 25 comes into play.
(Score: 2) by physicsmajor on Tuesday March 15 2016, @06:49PM
I am aware of the soccer statistics and deliberately chose my wording, as it's likely next in line.
Decelerating a bunch of goo in a closed cavity over a short period can't be solved by more padding or better helmets. Those help bruises, not cerebral contusions or whiplash. Fact of the matter is there is nothing more that can be meaningfully done for safety; it's time to stop playing games with our childrens' brains.
(Score: 2) by captain_nifty on Tuesday March 15 2016, @05:20PM
Outright bans are not the way to go.
If those under the age of 25 cannot make this decision then maybe some one over 25 with an interest in that persons well being could make the decision, like say a parent.
Last time I checked all school sports require a parent signed permission slip. Consent is being given that the activity has a possibility of causing serious injury. And as a previous poster noted with the increased research and publicity of the risks associated with these sports more parents will withhold that consent, the system is working, no need for banning activities.
Bans are not the way to go, because they never work when there is a demand to be met.
Drugs, copyright DRM, pick any example you like. Bans won't work.
Provide people with information about the actual risks/costs vs. rewards/benefits and let them decide, stop trying to tell everyone what to do!
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Tuesday March 15 2016, @06:47PM
Does anyone actually read those permission slips?
I hand out permission slips along with brochures for kids wanting to use our public access computers, which clearly set out not only the rules, but our limits (i.e., we do not filter the internet, nor do we monitor their activities on the internet, as our state has rather strict privacy laws, which apply to children as well as adults).
We hand out the brochures with the permission slips and ask that the parents read and discuss them with their children before signing the permission slips. In almost every case, the slip comes back too quickly to have allowed even a cursory reading of the brochure, and parents later have no knowledge of what is in the brochures. I'm not even sure the parents read the brief boilerplate on the permission slip.
OTOH, when I tell the parents directly about our no-filter-no-monitor policy, a few of them will decline to allow their children to use the computers.
Permission slips are like EULAs: No one reads or understands them and their only practical function is CYA for the organizations that are issuing them. A verbal warning, however, sometimes gets through.
(Score: 2) by physicsmajor on Tuesday March 15 2016, @07:02PM
For the record, I'm a Libertarian and in the general case would always support allowing persons to make their own decisions. Permission slips are not at all the same, they're the school legally covering their ass. The expectation is that nothing listed is going to happen in the vast majority of cases, same as side effect lists for medications etc.
For context, let's review. Football directly causes brain damage, full stop. If a parent were to sign a consent form for their child to become brain damaged, for fun (because it ain't money until later), in any other context we'd call that abuse. Consent forms will not cut it here, because any fully informed party would come to this conclusion.
This is an exception where the laissez-faire philosophy doesn't and won't work. Bans won't work you say? I disagree. Remove all Federal funding from all schools or institutions who still have any sports programs which, in the normal course of play, result in permanent injury to the participants, and they will disappear. Pure private schools could still field programs, but the aforementioned legal problems mean they (and their students' parents) would be piled with litigation. Additionally, the field of competitors just evaporated so how long do you think enthusiasm would continue?
Bans will work in this case, and the sooner the better. Sorry if I'm raining on your favorite game, but if so, your favorite game is permanently harming future generations and I have no sympathy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 16 2016, @12:46AM
But it's the same thing with loud rock music, musicians and some of their fans end up with tinnitus or lost hearing. Of course they're warned about those things, but that seems far off, whereas the music and the crowds on their feet going crazy is what's happening right now.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 15 2016, @11:25PM
What if the predilection to chronic traumatic encephalopathy pushes player to pick a career in NFL? Or what if it is the global warming that causes both? (large grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford