The National Football League came into fruition in 1920, almost one hundred years ago.  Back then, players wore no shoulder pads, no back plates, no leg pads, and most importantly, no helmets.  It seems insane to think of the players now running around on the field, hitting each other without any protection, especially nothing to protect their heads.  Soon the league evolved into making the players wear leather padded hats that were supposed to help prevent injuries.  As time went on, the protective-wear used progressed until athletes began wearing the equipment they do today.  The gear that players sport now seems far more protective than what was worn back in the early years of the league.  In many cases it is, but most don’t take into account that the players in the 20s and 30s were not conditioned the way players are today.  Nobody had the access to the workout facilities or the diet plans that today’s athletes do which explains why NFL players from ninety years ago did not possess the same strength and size as players have today.  The amount of concussions per season has increased from 143 in 2000, to 244 in the 2016 season.  There has been an increase in concussions in almost every season since 2000, with the most being recorded in the 2015 season when there were 275 (Smith).  It is clear that this rise in concussions is a large problem in the NFL.  To many, these numbers indicate that the league is not doing enough to protect its players from concussions and other long term head injuries.  However, the NFL is doing everything it can to protect players from concussions and other head injuries by implementing new rules, creating new equipment and technology, and spending millions of dollars to compensate former players and fund research.

Since the concussion totals began to spike dramatically, one of the largest initiatives that the NFL has taken came in 2013 when the league announced that they would be conducting periodical scans of current players (Drysdale).  The goal of these scans is to try and catch the long-term head injury, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), and be able to warn players before the condition gets too detrimental.  Since the first case of this conditioned surfaced in 2003, discovered in deceased of former Pittsburgh Steeler, Mike Webster, concern has grown in players, coaches, league officials, and doctors.  Webster was 50 in 2002 when he died of a heart attack after several years of suffering from the symptoms and effects of CTE.  Since Webster became the first player to be diagnosed with this disease, 33 other former players have been officially diagnosed with CTE after their deaths (Blackstone).  Although this number will most likely continue to rise, all but two deceased players with CTE played prior to 2005, meaning that athletes who have played within the last decade or so have yet to suffer from this condition.  This shows that in recent years the league is doing its best to protect players who are yet to feel the effect of this awful condition.  It is a massive step for the NFL to be willing to conduct scans on current players, because not only does it show the league’s commitment to player’s safety, but it is an extremely expensive endeavor which helps further back the belief that they are doing everything they can to protect current players.  The league is clearly putting player safety above everything considering they are willing to spend so much time, money and resources to make sure that the athletes are protected from long-term harm.  The NFL is willing to do anything they can to avoid more ex-players being diagnosed with CTE by protecting the current athletes so they do not retire with chronic brain trauma.

During the 2016 NFL regular season, the league announced an initiative to invest one hundred million dollars into concussion research and to improve the safety of the game.  League commissioner, Roger Goodell, spoke to the public on September 4th, 2016 regarding the new initiative and what it would encompass.  Goodell stated that the owners from all 32 teams agreed to the initiative and will all be providing funds to support “engineering advancements and medical research” (Scutti).  This $100 million is on top of another $100 million that was previously promised by the league to invest for the same advancements and research (Scutti).  This continues to back that the league has put an enormous amount of money into incidents involving concussions.  Their new plan to help make the game safer by trying to prevent, diagnose, and treat head injuries such as concussions is so extensive and expensive that it is clear that the league is trying its best to make football a safe game for the current athletes.  On top of the investments that have recently been made, since 2002 the league has adopted 42 rule changes with the intent of increasing player safety.  The NFL has also begun to staff each game with 29 medical professionals in order to help diagnose injuries, including concussions, as soon as possible to keep player out of harm’s way, something Goodell noted in his statement last September (Scutti).  By taking this action, the NFL proved to many non-believers that they are working hard to fix the problem at hand.  Before this initiative was made public, many were against the way the league has handled the concussion crisis.  However, many changed their mind once they heard that $200 million is being invested in research and player protection.  Dr. Semyon Slobounov, the director of Penn State University’s Traumatic Brain Injury Research Laboratory, was originally critical of the league but thinks this initiative is “critically important” (Scutti).  For somebody of this caliber to publically state he now approves of what the league is doing shows that they are making great advances in safety of players.

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy and symptoms similar to it have been seen much more often since the first case was discovered in Mike Webster back in 2003.  Before then, not much was known about the effects playing tackle football for ten to twenty years could have on a player’s brain in the long run.  Although only 34 cases have been confirmed, it is estimated that nearly 40,000 more players are currently suffering from it (Hersher).  One problem with CTE is that unfortunately it cannot be officially diagnosed until the patient is dead because a diagnosis requires close inspection of the person’s brain.  Since CTE was discovered, living former players have begun to associate their post-career mental issues with the disease.  Because of this, more than 20,000 law suits have been filed against the league.  Since these conditions developed during their playing careers, they are entitled to receive compensation from the league for their mental deterioration (Hersher).  Although this leaves many with a bad first impression, considering a large portion of the league’s ex-athletes are suffering from these symptoms and are now suing the league for compensation, the NFL is actually handling these law suits extremely well.  There are guidelines describing the compensation that a player is entitled to depending on what post-career issues they are experiencing.  For example, a player who dies and is found to have suffered from CTE is entitled to up to $4 million, the second highest maximum financial award that can be given to a player, only behind ALS which can earn a payment of up to $5 million (Hersher).  The league is now expected to pay around one billion dollars in compensation to these former players and their families over the course of the next 65 years.  Most importantly, the league is fully accepting the responsibility of these former players and are willing to pay back the families of former athletes, as made clear by the NFL’s Executive Vice President for Health and Safety in 2015 (Hersher).  The leagues commitment to better the lives of former players, their families, and fund research to help prevent CTE continues to rise and impress many former doubters of the leagues actions.

The man who discovered CTE in Mike Webster 14 years ago is a Nigerian neuropathologist based out of Pittsburgh is named Bennet Omalu.  Back in 2002 Omalu became fascinated with the case of the former Steelers Center.  He spent countless hours studying the brain of Webster after hearing how he was living his life leading up to the time of his death.  Webster was living out of his car for a long time before moving in with his son where he would pee in the oven, Taser gun himself to sleep each night, and eventually forgot how to eat on his own (Lakas).  Omalu wasn’t a big fan of American Football, however he was deeply interested in what had caused “Iron Mike” to suffer and behave this way at a relatively young age.  After months of research and studying the brain cells of the late Mike Webster, Omalu discovered tau proteins in the brain of Webster, “sludge-like buildups in the brain that slowly kill the cells in regions of the brain responsible for controlling his mood, emotions, and executive functions like managing time and paying attention” (Lakas).  When Omalu first went public with his findings, the league was reluctant to accept that so many of their former players were suffering from a condition caused by playing football.  They were mostly afraid of what it would cost them, both monetarily and in the way the public would view them during this crisis.  Soon enough, however, the league came to accept the findings and prepared to help compensate players and fund research so that they could control the rise in cases that they expected to find.  Since their acceptance, the NFL has not ceased to help the ex-players and their families while still fighting for answers to how they can stop this condition from occurring in even more players, primarily those currently playing in the league.

Former NFL Commissioner, Paul Tagliabue was commissioner as the concussion problem in the league began to take off in the 1990s and early 2000s.  He went on record several times to address the crisis and assure critics that the league was doing everything in its power to fight for player safety.  In 2003, Tagliabue wrote an article concerning the breakout of the concussion problem that was growing in the NFL during his time as commissioner.  In 1994, he created a committee made up of brain trauma scientists and doctors to further study the effects of concussions, long and short term (Tagliabue).  He was hoping that this committee would be able to help better understand concussions and help in diagnosing, preventing, and treating such injuries.  In the years to come after the creation of this committee, the members were able to develop a new helmet that was safer than the one being used on the field at the time, with the hope that it would be able to better prevent concussions (Tagliabue).  For somebody of his caliber to take such initiative to work towards a safer game speaks to how long and hard the league has been working with this issue.

In 2006, scientists and researchers not associated with the NFL performed an experiment involving the new and old helmets to see how well the new ones were preventing concussions.  Extensive experiments and testing showed that the average shock absorbing ability of the new helmets was 10.8% higher than that of the old helmets (Viano).  This was a very big deal because not only did it show that the league has been trying to make playing conditions safer, but that they’re actually succeeding.  These upgraded helmets yielded up to a 20% lower risk of concussion from normal game collisions (Viano).  Player safety has been the leagues number one priority for over two decades, and the research and studies are producing positive results.  If in 2003 scientists and engineers were able to construct equipment that is 20% more protective, the boundaries for what they can do now and going forward are limitless.

There are some who still believe that what the league is doing is not helping, or that they simply aren’t doing enough to fix the problem.  Those who don’t think the league is working hard to fix this problem believe that the initiatives that have been implemented during recent years are too insignificant to impact safety of the game on a large scale.  Gay Culverhouse is the former president of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers who, during her time as president (1991-1994), was widely and openly disappointed with how the NFL dealt with current and former players who were suffering from chronic brain issues.  She wrote a book six years ago concerning this issue that the league tried to suppress during the 1990s.  She states early in her book that because of the way the league treated her father, who was the Buccaneers longtime owner, she “grew to distrust the National Football League” (Culverhouse).  This distrust began in the 70s when she was much younger, long before her time as the team’s president.  Her biggest issue became the fact that league officials in the 90s tried to ignore concussion related issues, worried that if they surfaced that it would be an enormous hit to the integrity of the league (Culverhouse).  They also worried that if people began to learn of the long-term problems players were having after playing football from the time they were in middle school, until the time they were retiring from the NFL, the participation at lower levels would decrease immensely (Culverhouse).  Although this was a fear early on when the theory that repetitive hits to a player’s head was ruining athlete’s lives after football, the league ultimately realized the severity of this issue and quickly began to change their actions and behaviors.  During the years following Culverhouse’s presidency, the league began instituting new rules, increasing research, and also increasing funding for concussion-based programs.  By the time CTE was discovered in 2003, the league had already implemented many changes to help improve safety.  Paul Tagliabue, who was commissioner while Culverhouse was president of the Buccaneers, began initiatives to formally study concussions in 1994, while she was still with the team (Culverhouse).  Even though she typically was against the actions taken by the league, Culverhouse was ultimately able to admit that the NLF was beginning to make changes towards improving safety of the game, something that was difficult for her to do based on her previous beliefs.

One of the largest growing issues in sports and the medical field is concussions in the NFL.  The amount of concussions has increased greatly over the past 20 years primarily because the frequency of diagnosis has gone up tremendously.  Along with concussions, the other problem that is growing at an alarming rate is the amount of long term brain injuries that former players are experiencing several years after they retire.  This growing problem has caused many people to take a side either for or against the way the NFL is handling concussions and the long term impacts that these head injuries have.  Although a majority of the articles written on this subject show disappointment with how the league is handling concussions and what they are doing to protect players, it is clear that league officials, team owners and employees, and the commissioner are doing everything in their power to keep players safe and minimize concussions, therefore minimizing the life-long impacts several hits to the head can have.  This is because the amount of money, time, and research that is being put into protecting players is so large that it is very evident that the league is working hard to improve the overall safety of the game.  If everybody can get on board and support the leagues efforts, the NFL will be able to gain more funding and thus create a sport that is both entertaining, and safe.
