The National Football League has for too long neglected accountability of the physical and psychological harm that occurs to their players while they are on the job. Multiple studies, various researchers, and countless case studies have demonstrated that professional NFL players develop severe brain damage directly due to impact sustained on the football field. The scientific evidence that shows this is irrefutable and verifiable. In addition to the undeniable occurrence of brain damage in NFL players  --  there is a massive void of accountability on the part of the NFL to treat players for the damages they do incur.  As an employer, the NFL should be forced to provide a solution to the problem that is the degradation of their employees' mental and physical health, or else face severe consequences. There are past NFL players speaking out about this issue as well as prospective NFL players avoiding a career in professional football because of it. Even the greatest football aficionados can no longer deny the fact that 300-pound men crashing into each other repeatedly at superhuman speed creates physical trauma. There are independent studies and efforts to provide solutions that could reduce brain trauma in NFL players, yet still, the NFL largely avoids taking accountability to front-run harm reduction studies. If any other organization was responsible for the same amount of harm to the individuals that they employ it is hard to imagine that they could continue to operate at the level that the National Football League does. Still though, every Monday, Thursday and Sunday night the NFL continues to broadcast their extremely risky games completely unimpeded with no threat of legal action or moral repercussion. 

To completely understand why exactly the NFL should be forced into providing a solution for their employees, one must first completely understand the problem. The problem is that the concussive impacts that football players sustain play after play gradually causes extensive mental trauma. A recent study done on the brains of 165 men who played football in either high school, college or professionally has shown that 79% of them display evidence of CTE. (Beck) CTE is the abbreviation for the brain condition Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy is a condition caused by repeated impacts to the head that begin to degenerate the brain. CTE has been found by researchers to occur in four progressive stages. The early stages consist mainly of emotional symptoms  --  sufferers may display increasingly intense bouts of rage, depression, confusion and memory loss. As the condition advances to its later stages the memory loss and confusion begins to manifest in the form of full-blown dementia. (Wexler) 

To reinforce the scientific research behind the findings pertaining to CTE there are multiple first-hand accounts of the negative effects of football related brain injuries. A Green-Bay Packers Lineman, Aaron Taylor, was recently asked how many retirees suffer from depression. His response? "It'd be easier to start with which one's do NOT have depression." (Trotter) Taylor is not nearly a stand-alone case of an NFL retiree displaying frustration with the mental side effects of the sport he once played as a full-time occupation. One of the NFL's most celebrated players of all time, Antwaan Randle El, recently took to the press to describe the horrors of his post-NFL life. The star receiver who ran circles around defensive players for nine-years straight in the NFL reported that he now has trouble merely walking down the stairs. He is also hardly able to remember simple details, "I ask my wife things over and over again, and she's like, 'I just told you that,' " Randle El states. Randle El proceeded to mention that he prays excessively to God that he can live a long life and properly raise his kids. When asked if he would do it all over again if he could, he absolutely shunned the idea of playing professional football given what he now knows about the serious health impacts. (McCollough) Antwaan Randle El's heartbreaking story of going from a world-class athlete to a man incapable of performing basic household tasks is only growing more and more familiar. It has even gotten to the point where NFL stars are retiring after single seasons, turning down million dollar contracts. Chris Borland of the San Francisco 49ers was recently quoted as saying "I don't think it's worth the risk" in light of his turning down a $3 Million contract for just four years in the NFL. With both scientific experts and NFL players testifying to the negative side effects of professional football, one cannot dispute that brain damage does occur to NFL players. The only question is what must be done to remedy these negative side effects and how can the NFL be forced to spearhead the efforts. 

Since the matter of whether or not NFL players incur extreme brain damage is essentially settled via scientific research and first-hand testimonies  --  it is time to discuss professional accountability. As smallbusiness.findlaw.com points out, "Employers, and not the employees themselves, will often be held liable for the conduct of their employees. This is true even if the employer had no intention to cause harm and played no physical role in the harm." It is further noted that when an employee sustains harm on the job, the Unites States legal system generally assumes that the employer should be the entity responsible for reversing the damage. ("An Employer's Liability for Employee's Acts.") With this in mind, one must consider why then, the NFL is allowed to continually place their employees directly in harms way and not make efforts to prevent said harm BEFORE it occurs, and rarely even after the damage is done. The thing is  --  preventative measures can indeed be taken. Wired recently reported in an article that a private company, Vicis, has received grants from the NFL for their innovation in developing a safer helmet for football players. (Stinson) This is a step in the right direction, but is it enough? Clearly it is not. The thing is, for a corporation in which individual teams are worth $4 billion, merely throwing a bone in the direction of private companies seeking to reduce harm to football players simply is not enough. The NFL must change the nature of the competitions they host entirely until they can guarantee that their players are not going to suffer immensely as a result of their employment. This can be done easily. It is common knowledge that last year the NFL changed the distance of extra point field goal attempts. They did so because they feel it made the game more competitive. While that's great, it begs the question of what the NFL's actual intentions are. How can they display the power to easily alter the games rules so as to make it more competitive yet blatantly neglect the responsibility to implement more rules so as to keep their players safe? Why are the NFL's resources being dedicated to analyzing how many yards an extra point kick should be rather than how to keep their players safe from degenerative brain disease? To exemplify just how dangerous brain damage can be to former athletes, one can use deceased wrestler Chris Benoit as a case study. Chris Benoit was a former WWE wrestler who suffered multiple concussions over his career span, nearly identical to those incurred by NFL players. In June of 2007 Chris Benoit murdered both his wife and son then proceeded to take his own life. After the horrendous incident, examinations of Benoit's brain concluded he had the brain defects of an 85-year-old Alzheimer patient. (ABC News) While it is true that this particular incident involved a wrestler rather than an NFL player, the fact is that the brain damage sustained via concussive impacts is essentially the same as that sustained by NFL players in football games. Still, the NFL is not doing enough to prevent the damage that results in such horrors. How many lives must be cut short? How many minds must be ruined? How many social lives must become impacted before the NFL is required to take an immediate and actually effective stand against concussions? The fact remains that the NFL is still only doing the bare minimum so as to silence their critics rather than actually protect their employees. This behavior on behalf of the NFL is unaccountable, reckless and extraordinarily unethical.

For the sake of unbiased journalism, it is important that one allows the NFL an opportunity to defend itself from the multitude of fiery accusations and allegations levied against it. In a public statement responding to a particular New York Times article, released directly by the NFL itself on March 24, the NFL offers its defense  --  sort of. The NFL provides six main counterpoints in its rebuttal to the specific New York Times article and the criticism of its integrity as a corporation. Of these six points, five revolve almost entirely around refuting the claim that the NFL used Big Tobacco companies as a role model for neglecting accountability of the damage that their competitions cause to its competitors. The NFL maintains that they did not solicit advise from lawyers and lobbyists employed by Big Tobacco corporations as though that completely absolves them of all they're currently being accused of. (National Football League) What is sad about this is the NFL's blatant neglect of the actual issues at hand. Yes, the New York Times article did accuse the NFL of soliciting advice from Big Tobacco companies pertaining to how to escape responsibility. However, that was hardly the point of the article. The authors of said article even explicitly point out that "Concussions can hardly be equated with smoking ...  and The Times has found no direct evidence that the league took its strategy from Big Tobacco."  The real point of the New York Times article was, as stated in the article, "The NFL's concussion research was far more flawed than previously known." (Schwarz, Bogdanich, Williams)  This is a point that a member of the NFL's own negligent Concussion Committee immediately agreed to when telling The Times "If somebody assumed the data was absolutely correct and didn't question it, well, we screwed up. If we found it wasn't accurate and still used it, that's not a screw-up; that's a lie." (Fisher) Yet still, rather than admit the indisputable root of the problem, that professional football is currently an unsafe and unhealthy sport  --  the NFL merely focused their PR statement on the fact that comparisons to Big Tobacco companies were unfair. The NFL is one of America's largest corporations and they employ some of the countries premier researchers and intellectual experts. They are not dumb, yet they have thus far largely gotten away with playing dumb. The NFL would rather desperately attempt to defend their public image by arguing the small points as opposed to doing the right thing and acknowledging that their corporation has a problem that they need to fix. 

The bottom line is that professional football, as practiced by the National Football League is currently unsafe and hazardous to the players that are employed by the NFL. This is a problem. It is a problem that affects NFL employees, affects aspiring young children that idolize the NFL style of football, and affects everyone in society when NFL players with demented brains act out in outrageous ways. The NFL knows this, major news outlets know this and even the people that watch football must surely know this as we continue to see NFL retirees die at early ages and lose their sanity prematurely. It's not enough for the NFL to merely downplay accusations and delay instituting changes that result in real beneficial progress. The NFL needs to immediately enact real regulations that protect their players and all those who interact with and/or idolize their employees. From a legal standpoint, a business ethics standpoint and a basic moral decency standpoint  --  the NFL's refusal to do this is absolutely heinous. The question must again be raised; what must occur before the NFL takes accountability and makes changes? Whatever the answer is to this question, everyone who observes the problem can agree upon one thing. The National Football League is espousing a dangerous culture of sports that directly harms its own employees and others who observe National Football League games. Acknowledging the extensive and harmful neglect of the NFL towards its players and refusing to play dumb to the clear research and testimonies that prove this fact is the first step in forcing the NFL to make a difference. Like many Americans, I am an avid football fan and greatly enjoy NFL games. I seek not to depreciate the legendary football league that so many of us derive pleasure from. Nor do I wish to see a great American tradition and past time shut down. I merely hope for the benefit of the NFL, its players that many idolize and young aspiring football players everywhere, that the NFL will take accountability for their player's health and safety. If the NFL can purify it's corporation of the dangers and hazards that currently plague its image and integrity, the entire culture of sports can be positively impacted for the benefit of all of society. 

