For decades in football, the athletes participating in the game, the millions of Americans and people across the world, people everywhere were unaware of the massive destruction to the brain that football can place on an athlete. Players have been suffering concussions since the sport began but not until recently has it brought a dark cloud over the NFL that will never go away. This cloud was brought on by the increasing number of deaths and severe brain diseases that former players have been getting years after they finish playing football. While the NFL has taken action to reduce the number of concussions suffered by players and the brain damage year after year players still get concussed even with the drastic rule changes. So if concussions and players suffering severe brain damage that will extremely alter their everyday life and in unfortunate cases cut their lives short after football could that bring football and the NFL, possibly the most dominant brand in the world of sports to end? The answer to this question, an emphatic and resounding yes. The NFL, when it comes to concussions and their effect on the league, has a few main aspects that are the most influential the NFL’s popularity and perception and could ultimately be the downfall of the NFL. These aspects are the deaths of players and life-altering diseases they can get, the reaction of the NFL to concussions and deaths, the reaction of the players to those and the way the NFL handles it, and last but not least the reaction of parents of young children as well as the children’s reaction to concussions and what they can do to a person. 

The NFL’s biggest problem when it comes to concussions on players and the brain damage they receive from so many hits to the head is brain disease called CTE. CTE stands for chronic traumatic encephalopathy and is a degenerative brain disease that has been linked to the NFL and their players because it is mostly caused by repetitive blows to the head over an extended period of time. Players who get this disease from those repetitive blows to the head do not typically see symptoms coming on until 8-10 years after they have finished playing. However once the symptoms start to arise then the player’s brain and life will go downhill shortly thereafter. The symptoms of this disease begin with disorientation, dizziness and headaches then progresses to memory loss, erratic behavior, social instability and poor judgement, and after that it leads to progressive dementia and extreme feelings of suicide. This disease has been plaguing the NFL, players, and their families for decades and does not seem to be slowing down any time soon. Ken Stabler, a Hall of Fame quarterback in the NFL, is the latest fatality in the war against CTE, “ An analysis of his brain after his death by the Boston University of School of Medicine found that he had Stage 3 CTE. Boston University has found the disease in 7 NFL quarterbacks’ brains.”(Luckerson). Ken Stabler’s confirmed diagnosis of CTE thanks to the research done at the BU School of Medicine furthers the idea that the NFL, concussions, and CTE are linked. Stabler is now the seventh player at a position that takes few hits compared to the rest of the team to die from the brain disease, one can only imagine how many safeties or wide receivers have died from CTE.  Boston University also did research on other players brains as well, “Of the 94 former players' brains that BU has examined, 90 had some form of CTE”(Luckerson). It is results like this that seem to be bad omens for the NFL and their future. When there is a study done of almost 100 former players and 96% of the players that were studied did indeed have CTE and presumably died because of it that is a good sign that the game is dangerous and something drastic needs to be done or they’ll continue to be studies with these results. Now that these results have been presented, there is one thing that NFL has to and should do when put in this dilemma of dealing with concussions and CTE and that is acknowledge the clear facts that players are dying from the brain damage they suffered while playing. However the NFL and Roger Goodell still continued to play dumb. For instance, “Despite both of these developments, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell refused to acknowledge the existence of a connection between head injuries, sustained during a football career, and debilitating brain diseases, such as CTE, that develop later in life.”(Drysdale). It is the selfishness and lack of compassion and care that the NFL has for its players that is displayed when the Commissioner refuses to connect the dots and make the safer that will be the downfall of the NFL. If there is someone doing a job for you, even if they do a Hall of Fame job or not, if they are getting severely hurt while they are doing this job for you, it is your duty as the employer to do everything in your power to make it safe for them again. Not only will they stay alive and healthy but also the work you want them to do will get done. 

Another aspect of the concussion dilemma that the NFL has to face thanks to concussions and CTE are the families of former players who had to watch them go from the person the knew and loved to the horrible and angry monster that CTE turned them in to. Dave Duerson, a former NFL great who was on the revered 1985 Chicago Bears Super Bowl team, died of CTE and his death sparked an NFLPA executive to talk about CTE and its effect on families, ‘“According to DeMaurice Smith,the executive director of the NFL Players Association, “Duerson’s having C.T.E. ‘makes it abundantly clear what the cost of football is for the men who played and the families.”’(Drysdale). What Smith is trying to say in this limited quote is that because of players like Dave Duerson, Junior Seau, Ken Stabler we are now able to understand what their families were gong through while they were progressing through the stages of CTE and that it is the families who suffer the effects of football just almost as much as the players. Now if the NFL is not going to acknowledge the disease that these players are suffering how are they going to acknowledge the families suffering the aftermath. It is because of this that families of former NFL players in the past half-decade or so have been coming out in larger groups to sue the NFL and make them take accountability for what’s happening to their players. The Seau family is one of the families that has been leading this wave of players coming out and suing the NFL for neglecting the fact that the players are dying because of damage suffered during their career. Junior Seau is a Hall of Fame linebacker, who in 2012, committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest with a shotgun. After the discovery that he was suffering from CTE as well his family went to work, “The Seau family alleges that the NFL intentionally hid the link between repeated blows to the head and long-term cognitive issues. the family hopes it will ‘send a message that the N.F.L. needs to care for its former players...and make the game safer for future generations.”’(Drysdale). This suit that the Seau family brought against the NFL is one of hundreds of other players that are taking the NFL to court alleging that they knowingly were not doing enough to protect their players. Most of these suits end in settlements almost all the time so nothing is ever actually discovered about the NFL’s negligence when it comes to concussions and brain damage among players. With that being said if more players, especially the ones from the newer generation of players, start to develop CTE as well then the NFL will be facing many more suits like this as well as major questions about whether or not the game could ever be safe for players to play without getting a concussion or serious brain damage. 

With all this criticism that the NFL faces about how it does not do anything to protect its players they decided to make some rule changes they believed would make the game safer and reduce the amount of head injuries. This brings us to the next aspect of the NFLs fight against concussions to stay alive, the changes the NFL makes to the game because of concussions. Because of the massive amount of criticism the NFL was facing form the families of former players, fans, and people everywhere about the lack of care for player safety the NFL tried to make its stand against concussions with rule changes, “Since 2010, alone, the NFL…has imposed new rules to limit head and neck contact with defenseless players…in an attempt to reduce the number of head injuries…Despite the NFL’s best efforts, however, football is an extremely physical and violent game, in which concussions and head injuries are inevitable.”(Drysdale).  In making these rule changes the NFL is just trying to get themselves out of sticky situation and basically do what they can so the blame can not be placed on them again if players keep getting concussed. Not only were these rule change not nearly as effective as the NFL had hoped and anticipated but to the fans the NFL made the game significantly less entertaining for them thus putting the NFL in a lose/lose situation. They lose because they are making the game boring when they change the rules to protect players and they lose because if they do not try to make the game safer they will be seeing more lawsuits. 

Another aspect of the NFL’s fight against concussions to stay alive is one that the NFL frets the most because it is the one they have the least control over, the players. The NFL can do all it wants to make the game safer if the players are going to play the way they want then it is going to be extremely difficult for the NFL to prevent head injuries. In order for the NFL’s rule changes and initiatives to make the game safer to work the players have to buy in too,  “Players continue to hide concussion symptoms from coaches and trainers to avoid being taken out of a highly contested game and possibly even losing their starting positions permanently.”(Drysdale).  This is where this concussion situation starts to get a little ironic. Although the NFL made these rule changes to make the game safer for the players, the players do not see it that way. During their careers players make money off the games that they play in, so if someone’s about to miss a game because of a concussion they might try to hide symptoms so they can play. However, this defeats the purpose of having the rule changes to make the game safer for the players if the player are not even going to protect themselves. Like it is for the NFL, the one thing that will keep the flame of concussions burning down the house that is the NFL is denial that there is something wrong, “Some players openly admit that they will continue to play violently despite the new rules, while others still deny that the NFL even has a concussion problem”(Drysdale). It is arguably worse for a player to believe that there is not a concussion problem because if they believe that they are going to play like it, unlike the NFL who have no direct impact on the way people play besides through rules which might not even be followed. An NFL player saying either they do not believe that there is a problem with concussions in the NFL or that they are still going to play as violently as they did before is basically a confirmation to the NFL that this problem they are facing is going to become more and more prevalent as time goes on and more players either continue to get CTE and die from it or the epidemic will die out, the latter being less likely.

Another crucial aspect in the NFL’s fight against concussions to keep itself thriving and prevent its downfall is that of concussions at the youth level. If there are kids that are playing high school, middle school, and even pee-wee football that are getting concussions and facing brain damage at that early of an age the NFL is losing it future due to concussions before these players even make it to the college ranks. While the brain injuries are definitely the most important part of this when it comes the NFL’s future, the most influential aspect, that is when it comes to youth football are the moms and dads, but mostly the moms. Now imagine if a mom or a dad saw someone on their son’s team go down from a big hit and become paralyzed or even worse they see one of their son’s teammates die from a hit they suffered in a high school game. Now how much longer do you think those parents will willingly send their child out there to play a sport that took the life of someone else’s child. It is clear that the NFL’s concussion crisis has spread concern all over the country from household to household because more and more parents are seeing other people’s children getting severe head trauma from playing. There is this statistic on pee-wee football that represents this perfectly, “The decline in youth football participation has in recent years been stark — enrollment in Pop Warner leagues alone dropped 9.5 percent between 2010 and 2012 — and it's a change that experts say is clearly linked to the NFL's high-profile concussion problem”(Drummond).  This sharp decline clearly conveys the thought that an increasing amount of mothers and fathers every are not letting their children play Pop Warner football because of the concussion epidemic that is plaguing the NFL and now football in general at all levels. 

While the football is the nation’s most popular sport where people watch at all levels religiously it has become increasingly difficult for people to follow it because its participants are dying from injuries they sustained while playing. The concussion epidemic since the beginning of the century has spiked and will continue to grow as players and families decide not to play because they fear the dangers of the game and what it could do to themselves or to their child. So in order for this epidemic to be dissolved there is going to have to be serious changes that not only the NFL has to make but its players do as well.
