The topic of concussions has been increasing in interest ever since the discovery of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) by Dr. Omalu. CTE is a disease that is caused when a player receives too many blows to the head. This disease is very serious, and once diagnosed you slowly begin to lose your mind until you eventually die. CTE is undetectable in a living person, but after death most players are found to have this disease because of the constant hitting in the sport. This creates a problem for the NFL because when playing football for so many years CTE is very likely to occur in a player. This discovery had led to a lot of controversy on what the NFL needs to do about the situation. No one ever questioned the brutality in the game of football until the discovery that football can give a player more than just a broken bone or torn ligament. Over the past couple decades over a hundred NFL players have died from this disease. But it hasn't been until this past decade that the NFL has even tried to help fix the problem. The NFL is responsible for their player's safety, but instead of finding ways to help they refused to even recognize the problem. The NFL did not do everything in their power to protect their players from CTE, but instead kept the discovery of CTE away from the public/ players and focused on their profits. Even today the NFL is still a corrupt organization that has not done enough to lower the rate of concussions.

Recently there has been a huge deal made over a billion dollar lawsuit the players filed against the NFL. Their lawsuit is based on the NFL's lack of responsibility in the situation and their non-existent policies protecting players. The NFL can no longer ignore concussions and the doctors; they are "forced to care now because it's politically correct to care. Lawsuits make you care. I think the PR makes you care" (Elise 1). Since the NFL is the most grossing organization on sports the lawsuit they currently are undergoing will reach up to a billion dollar in payouts. It wasn't until recently that the NFL even started to implement concussion safety protocols, yet it was known that concussions were linked to CTE for over a decade. With all this attention on them now they are "forced" to care. The players know that they deserved better than what the NFL gave them. "The NFL had a duty to exercise reasonable care to the players. The publicly available record establishes that the NFL knew, or should have foreseen, the risk of harm" (Elise 21). In court they recognized that the NFL was not doing what they are required to do. The NFL focuses on profits and viewership, but the NFL also has a "duty", something that they are required to do. The organization has been ignoring their duties in the past, but they are now forced to recognize this because of the billion dollar lawsuit they are facing.

The NFL has been avoiding the topic of concussions ever since the discovery of CTE. The reason for this is because they know that concussions are a serious problem that can really affect the NFL industry. Although the NFL is doing a better job now of admitting to concussions and helping with safety that hasn't always been the case. "The condition can no longer be ignored by the medical profession or the public, and yet it was" (Laskas). The NFL refused to recognize the problem when it was first presented, causing the media to do the same thing. If the NFL would have thought about the player's safety before their own personal benefits, then they could have helped save lives and future lives of their players. Instead the organization chose to ignore this topic until recent years. There could be more advancement in the safety of concussions if they chose to do something decades ago. When Dr. Omalu made the discovery "he had reached out to the NFL Hall of Fame and suggested a design for a large longitudinal study that would track Hall of Famers over time. The suggestion was never acknowledged -- no one from the association had even written back to him" (Laskas). This shows how the NFL truly did not care about the player's safety. Omalu knew what he had discovered, he was thinking about all the dangers this discovery exploited. He chose to contact the NFL immediately in order to help develop a better understanding so they could help their players. But instead he was never even "acknowledged", an organization that cares about their players would have at least reached out to him and followed up on the potential dangers. 

Some people argue that the NFL is a safe organization and they are really doing their best to improve player safety. Although the NFL used to be very unsafe, now they are making strides toward a better and safer league. During an important game last season, "Steelers coach Mike Tomlin ensured that linebacker Ryan Shazier would submit to the concussion protocol, against his wishes" (Florio). Even with incentives of winning the game, Tomlin still pulled one of his players in order to ensure he did not have a concussion. Before if a player did not want to go through the test he most likely would not have, but even the coaches are now enforcing the protocol. This shows how the NFL really is making strides in the better direction and erasing the mindset that a NFL player can play through injuries like concussions. Last season there were many instances when "a player self-reported [concussion symptoms] in the middle of an intense game" (Florio). People say that the culture is changing, and evolving into a place where players and the NFL recognize the importance of safety, but this does not address the whole problem. There are more problems in the NFL other than just recognizing the need for safety. Change is needed to actually make a difference, but the NFL has not implemented enough policy and actual changes to the game. This is why the culture to the game has not improved.   

Dr. Omalu was silenced by the NFL and all of his research was found to be incorrect and biased. The NFL tried to ignore this problem for as long as they could in order to maintain their profitable secure league. Eventually CTE came out to the public after years of research and doctors recognizing the same issue. The NFL was put in the hot seat, especially now that the players were aware of this issue. Many players have decided to sue the NFL for withholding information that potentially could kill them one day, there were "documents filed in federal court that showed the NFL expects nearly a third of all retired players to develop some form of long-term cognitive problem" (Breslow). The numbers and percent of players expected to get CTE just kept rising, the more research there was the worse the NFL looked. The lawsuit the players made against the NFL soon rose to a billion dollar settlement. The NFL knew they had done something wrong, and because of that they were going to have to pay all the damages. More than just the players have been asking for change, but "CTE-related deaths of prominent former players, such as Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster and San Diego Chargers linebacker Junior Seau, galvanized the public to demand reform" (Barrabi). Now that the media is asking for change the NFL has no other choice, but to help out, this is why in the recent years they have contributed so much time and resources to help the CTE problem, not because they care, but because they need to show the media they are trying to make this league safer. If the NFL truly cared about its players then they would have implemented more drastic changes, but instead they are too worried on the profits and image of their game. 

Over the past few years there have been a lot of concussions occurring in the NFL. Many of these incidents have brought light upon the issue that the NFL is facing about if their concussion protocol is actually working. "The NFL has made continuous progress in improving its concussion protocol, but the system that has been created is failing. Not only is it not working as intended, or at least how the NFL sold it, but there's also no reduction in concussions" (Carroll). The NFL has been trying to make changes, but there are no positive results, clearly the changes they are making aren't enough. The NFL needs to be doing more and implementing more rule changes into the game in order to ensure the safety of the players. During a game when David Wilson was injured and hit in the head the giants staff told the media "we simply don't know if Wilson was ever checked for concussion. That diagnosis may or may not be correct" (Carroll). This should never be happening in the NFL, a player who gets hit in the head on a play should be going through strict and specific protocol until he is cleared to play. It is not the Giants fault, but it is the NFL's, because the teams are not put under enough attention. The NFL needed to address the problem before it even happened in the first place. "The NFL has made progress, but there are enough loopholes and problems in the current policy" (Carroll). The NFL is trying to show the media that they are trying and making progress, but they are not willing to do everything in their power to help these players. The NFL is concerned with only their profits, which is why they are facing a billion dollar lawsuit from the players. 

There is a certain mindset instilled in everyone involved in the NFL, whether you are a player, manager, or even just a spectator. This mindset is what is causing so many NFL players to get CTE because "football players can significantly impact their team's chances of winning by actually being on the field, there exists a strong incentive to return an injured player as soon as possible" (Goldberg). This incentive of winning in the past has outweighed the cost of safety, but this should never have happened. The NFL was not strict enough when they needed to set a precedent on how safety is the most important aspect of the game. Even when players and staff know a player is injured they try and make him play through it, "After the second concussion, Johnson said that he confronted Belichick and told him that Belichick knew that Johnson should not have been cleared to play" (Goldberg). Johnson knew that he should have been sidelined, he even said Belichick "was playing God with his health" (Goldberg). It's not only the staffs fault, but it is the NFL as a whole's problem. The players want to play through concussions because their whole career and paycheck ride on whether they can stay healthy and play. Johnson admitted that not only Belichick was at fault, but "he was partly responsible for his return to action, explaining that he already had a reputation as an 'injury-prone player' and did not want to exacerbate that perception" (Goldberg). A player becomes too worried on the mindset everyone in the NFL has about a player needing to be sturdy and always healthy.  If a player is known as being injured a lot he will receive a bad "reputation" and not be able to make a career for himself. This mindset is what is killing the NFL because it infers that football players should be indestructible and always healthy which causes players to play through a lot of serious injuries like concussions. 

 The NFL is going to destroy their own organization unless they show the media that this sport can be safer. The NFL originally thought by ignoring the idea of CTE that it wouldn't affect them, but now that CTE is all throughout the media it has become a bigger problem. Not only is the game unsafe for NFL players, but the game is unsafe for all the younger kids in middle school and high school playing. A mindset is imprinted in the minds of all parents that the game of football will give kids concussions. This caused "Pop Warner a 9.5 percent drop in participation between 2010 and 2012 -- right when the concussion issue reached popular prominence" (Gordon). Already you can see significant drop in the numbers of people playing football at a lower level. Parents do not want to put their sons in a situation where one day they might die from playing a sport. Until the NFL does something, whether it be protocol changes or safer rules/ equipment, then football will continue to lose potential players. The NFL only recently has implemented safety protocols for players, but the issue of CTE has been around for over a decade. If the NFL really cared about this problem they would have been more proactive over the past decade. This matters because it shows how the NFL does not truly care about its player's health, but instead considers its own organizations problems. 

There are many options to improve safety in the NFL, but the league decides not to change the game. It's hard to understand why the NFL won't make changes to the game, I understand that it's about tradition, but there are many aspects of the game that could become safer. There have been many innovations to football technology like "Sensors similar to the accelerometers inside most smartphones could be installed inside helmets, as they have been on a few test occasions and for a landmark concussion study performed by Purdue University" (Carroll). Devices like these could really revolutionize and simplify the process of finding concussions. With the NFL being the most grossing sport in the world it would be easy to implement something so simple like this. Recently there has been a product "marketed by Reebok that gives a visual indicator and is available for about $150" (Carroll). With the NFL being a multibillion dollar company they could implement technology change like this within a week, yet they have not spent any money for this. Change is what the NFL needs and in order to do that they need to realize the priority of safety.  

Just this past month, after about 13 years of denial and evasion the NFL finally admitted that CTE in fact was related and linked to football. Up until that point they would deny the problem and say that there wasn't enough proof between football and CTE, even though it was recognized by the whole science and health community. "NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and other league representatives have for years avoided taking a position, repeating that the league would let the medical community decide. The league had never expressly linked playing football to CTE" (Fainaru). The league clearly knew about this problem before, but avoiding the problem in order to avoid being guilty. The commissioner shows poor leadership and avoids taking a side so they can't be wrong, they would just dish off the problem to their medical staff. Over the time that the NFL was "avoiding" players were at risk for CTE, every year the NFL decided not to do anything more players were put at risk. In order to make change they need leadership changes and a completely different set of priorities. They need this change because "the NFL is peddling a false sense of security. Football is a high-risk sport because of the routine hits, not just diagnosable concussions. What the American public need now is honesty about the health risks and clearly more research" (Fainaru). This shows how the NFL has lied in the past because they have been under this "false sense of security" for years now; they need to just come out with "honesty". With change in leadership, a new face to the organization would be able to earn the trust of the public and players. The current regime is too corrupt and greedy, but with change the league will be able to become a better organization as a whole. With the NFL admitting to their mistakes in the past they are showing that they are ready to move forward towards a new and better direction as an organization. 

CTE has revolutionized the way we look at football. It has exposed the biggest organization as being corrupt and greedy. In order for the NFL to change this view people hold from their actions in the past, they will have to really implement change in the league to show they care. Safety should have always been the NFL's number one priority, but it wasn't until very recently. They need to use all the power they possess to protect their players from harm, rather than put their players in harm's way. 

