Brett Favre, former NFL quarterback for the Packers and Vikings is one of the best to ever play the game of football. At age 47, Favre is suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s the reason due to concussions. Brett Favre had been sacked over 500 times over his 20-year career which is more than any other quarterback. He blames the NFL and his concussions over the past two decades for his memory loss, which is consistent with almost all players from his era and prior. “New research about the effect of repeated head injuries on pro-football players has only recently revealed how devastating the long term toll can be. As a result, the NFL has come under fire for putting players in unsafe conditions” (Mohoney). Former NFL players from the 1980s and 1990s are directly experiencing early onset Alzheimer’s and brain damage from repeated concussions prior to when relevant medical research was released on the topic.

The NFL is in the spotlight for injury related news regarding concussions. For decades the league and its officials did not address concussions and in fact, hid them from the public. The NFL is now backtracking to figure out what to do with all of the former players who were made to play or convinced they were okay when they were concussed. A large group of these players sued the NFL for compensation for brain damage. Concussions were once not a worry but with the new information regarding concussions and their lifelong impact on health, the league is scrambling to change their old ways. They are changing how they deal with a diagnosed concussion, but they are not changing how they diagnose them. “Unlike the NFL's Sideline Concussion Assessment, part of which requires the medical professional administering it to make a judgment on whether a player is showing signs of a head injury, the King-Devick test is completely objective. It takes just two minutes to complete, compared with five minutes or more for the NFL's current test” (Armour). The NFL has not yet changed to use the most effective concussion test available and their reasoning is not so good. “With so much at stake, the King-Devick test seems too simple. Too easy” (Armour). The NFL has not adopted one of the best ways to test for concussions because it is “too simple”. Another issue the NFL has not yet addressed is the reason that they did not stress the importance of concussions when they knew about them much longer than reported. 

The reasoning behind not reporting concussions is not entirely their fault due to prior belief that concussions are only a temporary injury. “On concussions, I think is one of these pack journalism issues, frankly… there is no increase in concussions, the number is relatively small… The problem is a journalist issue,” former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue said. The NFL was not worried about concussions in the early 90s because they were making so much money and they thought they had nothing to worry about. The NFL knew about the severity but they hid that from the public until Dr. Bennet Omalu discovered a disease linked to concussions called CTE, while he was performing an autopsy of former Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster. He packaged all of the information and sent it into the NFL where they hid his information and tried to scold him by saying he performed voodoo. NFL players were dying young with significant brain damage and the league did nothing about it, they continued to hide the facts. “From what he told me at the end of the meeting, they said to people, the consensus was: "Look, Omalu should not be trusted. Omalu should not be trusted. Yes, there may be a problem with concussions, but we don't think it's as bad as Omalu is claiming." ... I think they thought that with time I would burn out and it would fizzle out, but unfortunately I think they underestimated my resolve” Omalu said. (League of Denial). Although the league denied the claims made by Dr. Omalu the medical research behind CTE and concussions proves the lifelong impact that just a single concussion has on the body. 

Concussions have a lifelong lasting impact on your health. Gretchen Reynold’s article addresses this issue by discussing how concussions are on the rise in professional sports, including the NFL. A forty-year ongoing study on concussions in Sweden indicated that just one serious brain injury led to significant increase in medical disability need in the future and that personality and other psychological aspects of life were greatly impacted. NFL players are at the highest impact and risk of concussions because of helmet to helmet hits that were allowed until the mid 2000s. “A single concussion experienced by a child or teenager may have lasting repercussions on mental health and intellectual and physical functioning throughout adulthood, and multiple head injuries increase the risks of later problems, according to one of the largest, most elaborate studies to date of the impacts of head trauma” (Reynolds). A study conducted by Nyav et al Didehbani, a research scientist for Brainhealth Institute for Athletes, she is a licensed psychologist and a professor at University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, indicated that former NFL players who have suffered from concussions have a significant increase in neurological issues and depression. The NFL did not report these concussions or even that they were an issue for athletes they hid concussions from the general public to keep making money without any major scandal. The NFL still to this day, after being exposed for not releasing information or injury reports for players, still does not properly address concussions when diagnosing or treating players. Her study supports that former athletes from the 1980s and 1990s are directly experiencing brain damage from repeated concussions prior to when relevant medical research was released on the topic. “Overall, results compliment previous research that indicates individuals having sustained concussions in early adulthood may be at a higher risk for developing depression as they age compared with the general population. The findings further indicated that specific symptoms of depression may occur more frequently in athletes compared with controls and merit further investigation. More specifically, concussions were related to cognitive symptoms of depression, and it is possible that the high endorsement of somatic symptoms may be related to pain or other factors. This highlights the need to educate individuals and families about somatic and psychological symptoms associated with depression and to thoroughly assess depressive symptoms throughout the lifespan in professional athletes” (Didehbani). 

The recent discovery of CTE’s and concussions and how they are lifelong and can cause memory loss and mental health issues is a main reason behind why the NFL did not report their findings with concussions. The NFL is not to blame for concussions because no one really knew how serious concussions were. They have yet to adopt the most recent concussion testing possible because they feel the test they use is adequate enough to determine if a player is concussed. Overall this is true, their test has worked well enough to the point that they feel as If they are doing enough. The NFL is not all bad and the league’s officials are working and conducting their own research on concussions. “Several former National Football League players have developed neurodegenerative defects after retiring with an apparent history of repeated concussions, and the league is conducting a study, with results due next year, "to determine if there are any long-term effects of concussion in NFL athletes" (Phend). The NFL is currently working to find better testing although they have not introduced the best test because teams are worried that the test may limit how many players can return to the field due to failing the sensitive test. There are on average 27 medical professionals at each game, including independent neurologists on the sidelines and injury spotters in the press box. The return-to-play protocol is specific and science-based, and the NFL is spending millions on research on everything from tests to helmets. But the science is evolving so rapidly it takes time to vet something like the King-Devick test. In Dodick's opinion, that's now been done. "It has now emerged as a gold standard, I think, for sideline diagnosis for concussions," Dodick said. "So it's only a matter of time, I believe, once the word gets out, where there's going to have to be a very good reason for them not to use it” (Armour). 

Another instance that proves the NFL’s case on concussions is Dr. Conidi’s study that proves there is a link but not that it is due to football exactly. “He admits that even his results, which are the strongest yet bridging play in the NFL and brain injury among living athletes, don’t prove that football can cause brain injury” (Park). The link between football and brain injury is not yet proven because CTE and other types of brain injuries can only be revealed after the athlete dies. He discusses that he does not believe that football is entirely the reason they suffer from brain issues, and that in some ways it shows that it can be due to a genetic deformity. “He notes that not everyone with signs of brain injury will develop more serious brain disorders, including headaches, deficits in cognitive functions or even dementia. Finding a way to distinguish between those who do, likely because of some genetic predisposition, and those who don’t, could be helpful for diagnosing and treating players who have had brain injuries” (Park). These findings are valid that not every football player who suffers from concussions is going to suffer from brain damage when they are older or retired. The NFL also follows older medical research that sports related concussions are not that severe and that they are not life threatening or a lifelong impact due to out of date research. “However, this acute effect is essentially zero beyond seven days postinjury (ten days for delayed memory). It is interesting that the overall effect size of sports-related concussions is similar to the effect size of a non-sports related concussion in the general population” (Belanger). However, this article was written in 2005 and is out of date, which is one of the NFL’s main flaws in the concussion scandal. 

The fact that not every player will suffer from serious brain damage may be true, but the NFL denies the claims that football is a link to brain issues for a lot of players. A study conducted by Dr. Joseph Nordqvist shows that repeated concussions in NFL players are linked to Parkinson’s Disease, and Alzheimer’s “In addition, further tests revealed that the older athletes who had suffered from concussion experienced a thinning of the cortex in the same part of the brain that Alzheimer's affects. Lassonde added: ‘That tells you that first of all, concussions lead to attention problems, which we can see using sophisticated techniques such as the EEG. This may also lead to motor problems in young athletes. This thinning correlated with memory decline and attention decline’” (Nordqvist). 

Another aspect of concussions and their issues in the NFL is that players do not go through the proper medical protocol and return too soon to play and reinjure themselves causing concussions to worsen and lifelong impacts to be greater. “Athletes who return to their sport too quickly following a concussion and subsequently suffer another one are at an extremely high risk of serious brain damage” (Nordqvist). The NFL performs their test and clears player right away if they pass, but concussions are delayed sometimes and in many cases for this reason athletes are injured severely due to returning too quickly. “We have to accept that the idea of letting someone pass the concussion protocol on the sideline is flawed in itself," said Chris Nowinski, co-founder of the Sports Legacy Institute, the non-profit dedicated to advancing the treatment and prevention of concussions in athletes. ‘There will be some percentage of people who will pass the test, but will have symptoms later," Nowinski said. "It's inherent in concussions’"(Armour). The system the NFL has in place is the reason that former athletes are suffering later in life because they are damaged goods returning to the field too quickly and they are put in a bad situation. The brain is not something to mess with and the NFL does not worry or care about the players before they are concussed. The league wants its stars to play each week so they can continue to make more money, at the cost of athletes’ health. The concussion protocol allows players who are diagnosed enough time to return, but they are inadequate when diagnosing players with concussions. They allow their own personal gain to get ahead of the players’ health which has resulted in backlash from the press and former players who realize they were used and abused. Recently, the NFL has been sued for their part in not preventing concussions and for clearing players too quickly. 

Former NFL players from the 1980s and 1990s are directly experiencing early onset Alzheimer’s and brain damage from repeated concussions prior to when relevant medical research was released on the topic. Future generations of football players need to be educated on concussions well enough to know that they are very serious and not something to avoid so they can continue playing. The injury may not be visible but a concussion will become visible later in life when suffering from memory loss and early dementia. Some of the biggest names in football have retired from concussions and the list is very long, a brief list of players includes: Brett Favre, who cannot even remember playing outside with his family sometimes, Rookie AJ Tarpley, Calvin Johnson Jr., Chris Borland, and Patrick Willis. The list is much longer but these young players took advantage of their health and wanted to preserve their life so they retired from the game they love. Currently, not enough is being done within the NFL to prevent or educate its players from getting a concussion which is only hurting the NFL’s PR and causing many of its super stars who earn the NFL millions of dollars, to retire early. Can the NFL survive from all of this bad press? The answer is yes. They will survive and thrive in the world of sports continuing to make billions of dollars off of its players and future players until something changes. The NFL cannot continue to abuse its players, they are seeing the issues that they did not solve in the past and it is coming back to harm them. The league needs to adopt the most up to date testing to reveal concussions, and give longer periods of time for the athlete to recover, also needs to invest more money and time teaching players new techniques to promote player safety. Football is a dangerous game no matter what, but concussions can be a thing of the past if new protocol is put in place. 
