http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/league-of-denial/

Anybody watch? Thoughts after watching? I thought it was pretty disgusting how long the NFL has worked to deny / discredit the findings of neuro-specialists that were finding alarming trends in the brains that were examined.

Some reactions:

http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on-football/24052263/reactions-to-the-frontline-pbs-documentary-league-of-denial

10/9/2013 10:56:36 AM

Quote :

"I thought it was pretty disgusting how long the NFL has worked to deny / discredit the findings of neuro-specialists that were finding alarming trends in the brains that were examined."

To be fair, that makes them no different from any other sports league in the world. I play rugby and the International Rugby Board and rugby fans pretty much talk like the NFL and football fans circa 2006 when it comes to concussions. FIFA acts like there's zero issue at all when former U.S. forward Taylor Twellman had about 20 or so in his career reportedly.

Sports communities in general are very isolated closed societies that seek to minimize outside influence and downplay outside criticism by their very nature. Once you penetrate that culture, then you can instill positive change.

[Edited on October 9, 2013 at 11:21 AM. Reason : /]

10/9/2013 11:18:34 AM

Quote :

"To be fair, that makes them no different from any other sports league in the world."

But football is exponentially more violent than most league sports in the world.

10/9/2013 12:01:38 PM

Does your head care when it gets a concussion? Just had a cousin of mine get two concussions in a row from HIGH SCHOOL CHEERLEADING because her coach is useless and the girls catching her weren't very good. One concussion is bad but you can deal with it. Two within a week can cause serious problems. And it's just cheerleading.

The only semi-mainstream sports in the U.S. that don't look like they have concussion issues are basketball, baseball, golf, and tennis. Every other sport has cases of them. Some of them are blissfully ignorant and some are where the NFL, NHL, and fighting sports are of having standard protocols. Still having issues fighting against the natural coaching and player urge to pass off the concussion as nothing. It's known in high-level rugby circles that players intentionally score low on their standard impact tests so when they do have a concussion mid-game they can beat the score and get back in right away.

[Edited on October 9, 2013 at 12:20 PM. Reason : .]

10/9/2013 12:12:52 PM

Here's an interesting article i just found when googling sports-related concussion statistics:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2012/10/11/concussions-nascar-nfl-mlb-nhl-nba/1628129/

10/9/2013 12:16:40 PM

I caught most of this last night and I thought it was really interesting. They were obviously playing up the comparison between the nfl and big tobacco, why else would the league fight this data so much other than mitigation of their liability?

I also wonder about the whole "would you let your kid play football" issue. Mike Wilbon is always saying that his son is not going to be allowed to play. I am in that camp after watching league of denial last night.

10/9/2013 7:24:33 PM

^ Your son would've never made the NFL. Concussions at say HS football would've been more down to coaching and trainers on the sidelines and how professionally they handled a concussion, which is hit-or-miss because coaches in all sports at all levels are not trained in concussions and want to win so want their best players back out there quickly, and players in all sports want to downplay their own symptoms so they can play quickly. To act like it's a football-only issue trivializes concussions to the point of being dangerous to participants in other sports making it seem like they have no issues and then incidents can go undiagnosed, like they did for my cousin initially to the point it potentially could've greatly harmed her.

http://www.scotsman.com/sport/tom-english-rugby-concussion-rule-causes-alarm-1-2868497

Quote :

"Barry O’Driscoll played rugby for Ireland in the Five Nations championship of 1971. As a respected doctor (whose son was team doctor for Ireland and the Lions in the recent past) with a background as an international full-back he became an important figure on the International Rugby Board where for 15 years he held positions on the medical, anti-doping and disciplinary committees. Until late last summer, when he resigned. In giving an example of why he left the game’s governing body he tells you of the events of 9 March this year, when Ireland played France in the Six Nations and when his nephew, Brian, got concussed on the field. What happened next was Barry O’Driscoll’s issue in microcosm. After one collision too many that day Brian O’Driscoll lost his bearings, was clearly unsteady on his feet and had to be helped from the field, like a boxer assisted from the ring. You did not need experience in pathology to know that the great man was out of it for a moment in time. Yet a few minutes later he was back on the pitch, supposedly as bright as a button and fully recovered. Regulation 10 of the IRB code says that any player suspected of concussion must be taken off and not allowed back on to the field. There is an accompanying rule now – still on trial – and it states that if a player with suspected concussion can pass a series of tests lasting five minutes then he can be allowed back into the fray: the Pitch Side Concussion Assessment (PSCA) – or the five-minute rule. The Six Nations did not have this rule in place for this season’s championship, so you have to ask, why was O’Driscoll, above, allowed back on? His uncle is asking further questions. The five-minute rule is one that Barry O’Driscoll suspects will be introduced across all elite rugby in the near future and it troubles him deeply. It was the introduction of the rule that sparked his resignation from the governing body. “Rugby is trivialising concussion,” he says. “They are sending these guys back on to the field and into the most brutal arena. It’s ferocious out there. The same player who 18 months ago was given a minimum of seven days recovery time is now given five minutes. There is no test that you can do in five minutes that will show that a player is not concussed. It is accepted the world over. We have all seen players who have appeared fine five minutes after a concussive injury then vomiting later in the night. To have this as acceptable in rugby, what kind of message are we sending out? “If a boxer cannot defend himself after ten seconds he has to have a brain scan before he comes back. And we’re not talking ten seconds for a rugby player, we’re talking maybe a minute that these guys are not sure what’s going on. They don’t have to have a brain scan, they have to have five minutes where they have to stand up straight without falling over four times, they have a basic memory test – ‘What’s the score? Who are you playing against? Which half did it happen in? And do you have any symptoms?’ “These questions should serve as a landmark for when you examine them six hours later to see if they’re getting worse or if they’re bleeding into their brain. That’s why you ask them, not to see if they can go back on. They are already concussed at that point. You don’t need to ask questions to find that out. If six hours later their responses are worse than they were earlier you say ‘Wait a minute, this shouldn’t be the case, is this guy going to bleed?’ That’s why you ask the questions and so it has always been. But we’re going in the other direction now. We’re going from being stood down for three weeks to one week to five minutes with players who are showing exactly the same symptoms. The five-minute rule came out of the blue. I couldn’t be a part of it so I resigned from the IRB. It saddened me, but I couldn’t have my name attached to that decision.”"

Another incident more recent than the O'Driscoll incident above was from this past summer where during a major event, George Smith of Australia came back on the field 5 minutes after getting knocked out even when you could look at him and tell he was groggy, but he passed the test.

Quote :

"FRAMINGHAM, Mass. -- Former New England Revolution star Taylor Twellman said Friday that the Major League Soccer team ignored his symptoms of multiple concussions, even sending him back on the field after he said, "I have a concussion," following the hit that eventually forced him to retire. Twellman, the keynote speaker at a conference on brain trauma, said the trainer instead asked him his name, the score of the game and to count backward from 100 before telling him he doesn't have a concussion and sending him back into the game. "It's horrifying," said Chris Nowinski, a founder of the Sports Legacy Institute, which raises public awareness of head injuries. Revolution spokeswoman Lizz Summers said the team had no comment. "I'm appalled. I'm angry," said Nowinski, a former Harvard football player and professional wrestler who retired after a series of concussions. "I thought I had it bad with my concussions, but at least people were trying. ... My God! For him to say he had a concussion and be told that he doesn't because he could count backward from 100 is absurd." A five-time MLS All-Star who was the league MVP in 2005, Twellman scored 101 goals in eight years and also had six goals in 30 appearances with the U.S. national team. He now works as an analyst for ESPN. He said he has been diagnosed with five concussions, so he knew he'd sustained one in 2008 when he went for the ball and was punched in the head by Los Angeles Galaxy goalkeeper Steve Cronin. But the team's trainer cleared him to return after a cursory exam. Later, Twellman said, he took a shot that was 10 feet wide of the net and began celebrating because he thought he had scored a goal. He was seeing double. "For a professional sports trainer to be blowing off these symptoms was despicable," Nowinski said. "It feels like a violation of their ethics. I hope (Twellman's) considering suing." Dr. Robert Cantu, a neurosurgeon who is co-director of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University's School of Medicine, would not comment on the quality of Twellman's treatment. He said Major League Soccer -- like most leagues -- has improved its handling of concussions since 2008. "There's a lot more known about the management of concussions in 2011 than in 2008," Cantu said. Twellman noted that he was injured during a home game in Foxborough, just down the road from where Cantu is researching brain trauma. He saw a half-dozen other neurologists before his concussions were properly diagnosed. "If the star player in MLS is 18½ miles away from the top concussion doctor and doesn't see him for 19 months, there's a problem," Twellman said. "Imagine if there's a kid in Billings, Montana." Speaking to a crowd of several hundred people at the conference sponsored by the BU medical school, many of whom were doctors and athletic trainers there to learn about managing concussions, Twellman said he spent nine months in a dark room, unable to watch TV or walk his dog, and was nauseated every day for two years. "I was completely helpless," he said, "and when I say 'completely helpless,' I mean you can't look at your cellphone without seeing three of them." Doctors told him he had everything from diabetes to the flu to "post situational depression" -- ostensibly because he was upset the team had refused a $2.5 million transfer offer from a team in England. He saw seven different neurologists in all, tried acupuncture, and took antidepressants but said they only made him feel worse. He played in only 16 games in 2008 and only two the next season. As late as 2009, the team was listing him with a neck injury. He said he got himself ready for his final game, on June 7, 2009, by taking four Vicodin, three Excedrin and "shotgunning a Budweiser"; he entered as a second-half substitute because he could only manage to play for 45 minutes at a time, and scored two goals. His teammates wondered why he did not celebrate. "My head was as soft as a sponge," Twellman said. "I knew deep down I was done.""

On the lower levels, a girl in Ottawa that played high school rugby died from two concussions in a short timeframe earlier this year when the first one went undiagnosed. The news media in this country completely ignored it because it was Canada and it was rugby, but I was reading the article the whole time thinking "if this was a high school football player, it'd be all over ESPN". http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/teen-rugby-player-dies-after-suffering-head-injury-in-game-1.1361147 The one ref for the soccer game in Utah that died after getting punched in a game by the player was concussion-induced. If your son wants to play sports, unless you wrap him in a bubble, the chances of him getting a concussion are there because most of what he can do is a physical competitive activity and knocks happen.

[Edited on October 10, 2013 at 12:36 PM. Reason : .]

10/10/2013 12:30:05 PM

I know it sounds callous, but I don't really care if players get concussions or not. Many of them get paid handsomely for playing a game they enjoy, while lots of untalented people slave away at jobs they hate for peanuts. You have brain damage for playing a brutal game? Boo hoo

10/10/2013 12:49:53 PM

great post. strong take.

10/11/2013 12:01:28 AM

I couldn't help but think of P.J. Hairston's concussion that he received prior to his recent off-the-court antics.

10/14/2013 10:40:47 PM