Concussions in the National Football League are becoming a well known problem is the nation. Almost 300 concussions happened last year in the NFL and that number has gone down from years before. These concussions are what lead to the former players having CTE or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. CTE affects the brain in a negative way and may cause the former players go insane and have a lot of medical bills. The NFL aloud many payers to play soon after concussions and the players were not fully recovered. Coming back to soon after a concussion will higher the risk of getting another one. The NFL hid concussions and was against CTE when it was discovered that Mike Webster was diagnosed with CTE after his death and Dr. Omalu said it was because of too many concussions while he played football. The disease can bring former players to commit suicide and Mike Webster is not alone. Other stories include former players shooting themselves in the chest just so his brain can be looked at for CTE research and even some former players shooting other people before they take their own life. CTE does not only ruin the player's life but their family's too. Some former players who had CTE had their life changed, they became crazy and and weren't themselves anymore some of them even took their own life. The NFL is now changing rules but concussions are still happening and have gone up since last year. The NFL should be held responsible for paying for research about CTE and the medical bill of many former players. 

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy is not a well known disease and the symptoms are worse than most people think. CTE is caused by repetitive head trauma or concussions which is normally seen in football players, veterans, and sometimes boxers. A concussion is when the head is hit and the soft brain hits the inside of the school and can damage the brain tissue or veins. The constant head trauma causes a protein called tau to be produced which stabilizes and supports certain structures within brain cells. Repeated hits to the head makes too much of the tau protein which causes it to miss fold and change shapes. The change in shape cause the tau to clump together and slowly kill brain cells. The tau protein can stay even after the brain seems back to normal but really the protein is still killing brain cells slowly. This can lead to many symptoms such as memory loss, aggression, depression, progressive dementia and more. But these symptoms can take years or decades to show up and CTE can not be diagnosed until after death by looking at the brain tissues. 

CTE is not a new disease even though it has just become popular to the public. In fact, CTE was in the 1960's and was kept hidden by the NFL. People may think that this disease rare and doesn't affect most former players but it is not, 87 out of 91 former players have been diagnosed with it at the VA-BU-CLF brain bank which stands for Veterans Administrations- Boston University- Concussion Legacy Foundation.  In the movie Concussion Dr. Bennet Omalu discovers that former NFL football player Mike Webster had CTE from many blows to the head while playing for the Pittsburg Steelers this is known as the brain that sparked the concussion crisis (Landesman). When Dr. Omalu found this out he said "The condition can no longer be ignored by the medical profession or the public," (Laskas). Jeanne Laskas said "Plenty of guys had a hard time after retiring from football -- you had to adjust to a new identity and a new schedule, like coming home from war. But Webster's reaction seemed extreme" when she was describing Mike Webster's retirement. Mike Webster was one of the best center in the NFL, he was a 9-time pro-bowler and won 4 super bowls with the Steelers. Mike started doing very abnormal things after he retired. He would forget to eat and he peed in his oven one time. The older he got the worse his symptoms were. He wandered away from home and started sleeping under bridges and in Amtrak stations throughout Pittsburg. He started sleeping in his truck and somehow got a hold of guns and would run up to strangers yelling "Kill 'em I'm going to kill 'em". Later his teeth started to fall out and he tried to put super glue on them to put them back in. He bought a taser just to shock himself unconscious to be able to sleep. Sadly, in 2002 Mike Webster took his own life at the age of 50 (Laskas). When Dr. Omalu said that it was caused by constant hits to the head from playing in the NFL they said it was not because they did not want to be held accountable. When Omalu got permission from Roger Goodell to present what he found to the committee of player safety but they did not take his seriously and barred him from the committee meeting. Another story about a former NFL player committing suicide is Dave Duerson who was another great player. Duerson won a Superbowl with the 1985 Bears one of the greatest teams of all time and another one with the Giants. Duerson was also a 4-time pro-bowler primarily with the Bears. Right before Duerson took his own life he left a note saying to give his brain to research for CTE. Duerson was diagnosed with CTE and he knew he had it. The number of CTE found in suicide victims that played in the NFL is way too much for this to be not talked about.

The number of concussions that happen in the NFL needs to severely drop because safety comes first and though not every player will end up with CTE the number of them that will have CTE will go down. The NFL said in court that a third of every player will have CTE even the smallest form of CTE is no joke. In 2012 there were 261 concussions in the NFL. That number went down every year and by 2014 there were 206 concussions the steady decrease seems nice but in 2015 the number of concussions in the NFL didn't decrease with the flow and didn't just jump up a little it went up to an astonishing 271 concussions. Jason Breslow a publish for Frontline wrote "Head injuries in regular season games alone surged 58.2 percent from 115 to 182" (Breslow). 91 of the head injuries were from head to head contact, 29 of the head injuries were from contact with the playing surface and 23 were from head to shoulder contact. The numbers are going up and that leads to more problems with concussions and CTE later in life. The VA-BU-CLF found CTE in 131 of 165 men who played football before they died weather it was in high school, college or the NFL. 40 percent of the men to have CTE that played in the NFL were linemen. The numbers are rising and the the NFL needs to do something about it.

The NFL started a Mild Traumatic Injury Committee in 1994 and named Dr. Elliot Pellman the chairman despite having no experience with head injuries (CNN). When Dr. Omalu found that Mike Webster had CTE in 2002 and presented to the committee they did not do anything with it because they didn't want to believe it was real. The NFL said in 2005 returning to play after a concussion "does not involve significant risk of a second injury either in the same game or during the season." (CNN) and in the same year Andre Waters and Terry Long committed suicide. Dr. Omalu found CTE in the brain of both former NFL players. In 2007 the NFL starts to recognize concussions as being dangerous. June 7, 2012 over 2000 former players file a lawsuit against the NFL for accusing the NFL of negligence and failing to notify players of the link between concussions and brain injuries. Later in 2012 the NFL committed to pay 30 million dollars to research for brain injuries which may seem like a lot but its not compared to how much money the NFL made last year. The NFL made 7.2 billion dollars and to put that in perspective that could pay for 10 missions to the dwarf planet Pluto and have money left over to pay Peyton Manning to fly them. The point is that the NFL has plenty of money to pay more than 30 million dollars to research. In 2013 the former players reach a deal of 765 million to fund medical exams, families, and research on their brains which still need to be approved in court. At the end of 2013 the judge declined the 760 million dollars for the former players saying it wasn't enough. The judge finally approved the lawsuit and that every retired player will get up to 5 million dollars per seriousness of head trauma. After a long time in 2016 a senior NFL official, the vice president of NFL health and safety said that there is certainly a connection between football and CTE.

The NFL needs to do more than just pay the families and players that are affected by CTE. They have changed the rules but that doesn't seem to be working. The NFL has changed the rules to try and prevent concussions but the rules that they changed are more for big hits to wide receivers, running backs and kick returners. The two big rule changes before the 2015-2016 season is that an offensive player catching the ball in air is a defenseless player and can not be hit in the head or neck area or the opposing team will be penalized, and the second is certified athletic trainers will be watch the game to look for players acting funny and can stop the game at any time. They have also made it that head to head hits are illegal and the player will be ejected from the game. According to the stats these rule changes don't seem to have worked because the number of concussions have gone up. Out of the 87 former players that they have diagnosed with CTE 40 percent are lineman (wagner). The new rule changes are primarily for big hits even though plenty of linemen have been diagnosed with the CTE and they have not protected them with new rule changes. The NFL is focused on big concussions that the public sees like the big hits that leaves a player laying on the ground even though the smaller hits that the linemen take ever play can just easily cause CTE later in life. These are more dangerous too because the linemen could think that just because they get little hits they'll be fine and they would rather play than sit out because of a little hit. But that little hit play after play adds up and will cause the player to have long term impacts like CTE. One really good thing that the NFL made is a telephone hot line which was introduced in 2007 which players could call if they were being forced to play even though the doctor or trainer said that they should not be playing.  Another good rule change is that they made the kick off closer to the endzone and touchbacks are worth more yards. This makes it so its easier to kick a touchback and more players will try to return a kick because the touchback is worth more. Kickoffs are high risk plays and concussions are more common on kickoffs than other plays. The NFL has made some good rule changes but more needs happen to make concussions go down because they have gone up even since these rules were made.

The NFL is trying to limit concussions by changing rule and trying to help by paying former players but the best why to prevent CTE and concussions is to know more about them and the NFL has failed to try and do this. The NFL made more than 7 billion dollars last year and did not spend any of that money for research on the brain to find out more about concussions and CTE. The NFL gave only 30 million to the National Institute of Health also known as the NIH which sounds good but that's not much of the 7 billion they have and the NFL can veto what they do with the money. Later Boston University; the leader in concussion and CTE study asked for a donation and the NFL did not give any money so BU ask the NIH for a donation. The NIH did pay for the project but with no help from the NFL. ESPN writer Steve Fainaru said "The NFL, which spent years criticizing researchers who warned about the dangers of football-related head trauma, has backed out of one of the most ambitious studies yet on the relationship between football and brain disease, sources familiar with the project told Outside the Lines." (Fainaru). By this time the NFL already knows there is a connection between football and CTE but this quote makes it sound like they do not want the truth to come out. We know that their not funding the project because of money issues the NFL makes plenty of enough money to fund this project and pay all the former players. The doctors will make the full connection and I can see why the NFL is not funding it because it goes against them but once the truth is out it would look a lot better if it was funding by them. The best way to stop concussions an CTE is to get to know more about them but the NFL does not seem to want to want to know more.

Concussions have always been in the NFL but have not always been known to be so dangerous and frequent. Doctors found out that concussions are dangerous and can lead to CTE which will affect players the rest of their life. The NFL denied that there is a connection between CTE and playing football because they didn't want to pay for it. Now the NFL has to pay former players a lot of money for not informing them about CTE and that it can easily come to them from playing and getting hit in the head. The NFL backed out of their biggest chance to help prevent concussions when they did not fund a study of concussions and CTE by BU. The NFL is at fault for the players getting CTE and they need to help them and help prevent concussions from happening in the first place.

