It's Time for the NFL to Stop Hiding the CTE Crisis

There will never be a moment where the entire world agrees on a single matter. In fact, there may have never been a moment that half the world has agreed on the same thing, and there most likely never will be. But there is no question that the NFL’s attempt to hide the dangers of football is something that EVERYONE needs to agree on.

Since the first discovery of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) in 2003 by Dr. Bennet Omalu, the NFL has done nothing but try to hide the fact that this problem is the most serious issue to ever hit football.

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE, is a progressive degenerative disease usually found in people with a history of reoccurring brain trauma. This disease appears from repetitive blows to the head, usually in athletes such as boxers or football players. This disease is the degeneration of brain tissue and accumulations of tau proteins. Symptoms of this disease are characteristics such as dementia, memory loss, aggression, and depression, which are usually found in much older people.

Since its first discovery in 2003 inside the brain of Hall of Fame center Mike Webster, there has been over 100 confirmed cases of CTE in the brains of deceased football players. These players haven’t been just been former NFL players either. Before 2008, when Boston University began its research of CTE through the National Institution of Health led by Dr. Robert Stern, independent scientists including Dr. Omalu and Dr. Stern discovered CTE in the brains of football players as young as high school.

The NFL has only considered CTE to be discovered in 2008, when Hall of Fame linebacker, Junior Seau, was found to have CTE after he took his own life with a gunshot wound to the chest in his home. However, since 2008, the National Institution of Health (NIH) has discovered 87 cases of CTE in the brains of former NFL players. 87 is an impressive number within itself, but it’s even more serious when you realize that it is 87 out of 91 brains that have come up positive for CTE.

Now, the NFL is known for the extraordinary ways it gives back to the community through countless donations to charities. They do their best to appear to the public as a generous company who cares about their fans more than they care about themselves. For years, this is exactly how the world saw the NFL.

Since 1973, the NFL has donated $368 million to charities. Obviously, they care about giving back, or at least perceiving themselves as a company that gives back. The NFL may be the only organization in the entire country that has done enough publicly to receive the recognition as a charitable company. Their goal has worked, as they’re known across the globe as a company that is determined to give back to their fans more than they receive. But maybe the NFL isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.

Dr. Omalu reported the first case of CTE in 2003, and it took the NFL until 2012 to finally donate money to the NIH to contribute research towards CTE. That’s what the problem was, and continues to be. It seems that the NFL is more concerned about hiding this discovery and making it seem unbelievable than actually trying to help it. The problem isn’t that the NFL is concerned about making money. Obviously, they’re a business and above all, their main objective is to continue to grow and earn as much profit as they can. But when it comes to a human being’s life, is money really more important than possible death?

96% of CTE testing done by the NIH since 2008 has come up positive. When a number that high comes out, people start to believe that there is a problem, and that’s exactly why the NFL is turning against it. If 10% of mothers in America didn’t allow their children to play football, there may not be enough players in the NFL to make an entire league. When it comes to statistics like 96% of NFL brains being tested are positive for CTE, mothers begin to do what mothers do best, become protective.

Almost every major news station in the United States has reported the dangers of football, questioning whether or not parents should allow their children to play. That has caused nothing but trouble for the NFL. That is why in 2012, ironically as soon as all this controversy began to appear, the NFL created the Heads Up program for youth athletes. This program assures the proper coaching for youth coaches, players wear fitted protection, learn the correct way to block and tackle, and other safety procedures within a football game.

It’s clear that the NFL created the Heads Up program to salvage any chance they had of calming the worries of parents throughout the entire country. Protecting the reputation of the NFL and hiding the dangers were top priority for the NFL during most of 2012. After all these reports began to be released of positive CTE results and the positive test of Junior Seau, 18,000 former NFL players sued the league for claims that the NFL hid information about brain injuries from them. What most don’t know, but should, is that the NFL reached a $765 million settlement with these players. That isn’t the concerning part. Within the settlement, there was an agreement that the statistics shown within the court concerning CTE would not be released to the public. That's the concerning part.

It’s apparent that the NFL has something to hide when it comes to brain injuries and the problems they cause after retirement. Since 2003, they have attacked numerous independent scientists including Dr. Omalu for supporting CTE’s connection with football. It’s great to think of the NFL as a company who is focused on giving, but now that the curtain is coming up, they don’t look as innocent as they seem.

In their most recent attempt to mask the CTE outbreak, the NFL has reportedly revoked their $30 million donation to the NIH. ESPN reported that the NFL dropped this donation because of the lead scientist of the NIH, Dr. Robert Stern. Of course, as soon as this story was released by ESPN, the NFL’s spokesperson, Brian McCarthy, tweeted out saying that the story was wrong and the NIH “makes their own funding decisions.” This retract of the $30 million donation came when the NIH decided to begin an intensive seven-year study that would cost them $16 million, which would be funded by the $30 million donation. The NIH has said that they will find other ways to fund this study without the NFL’s donation.

There seems to be countless scenarios where the NFL has barked off the idea of CTE and the research behind it. More and more, they look like a company who is concerned about growing rather than saving the lives of their players. No one knows this though. There are 318 million people in the United States and maybe a tenth of them are aware of the dangers of football and CTE. It’s no surprise that a company big enough to own a day of the week is capable of hiding one of the most significant health concerns this country has seen in the last hundred years. If only 10% of mothers in America were able to see the facts about CTE, maybe the 96% of brains studied for CTE would begin to decline instead of increase.