THE NATIONAL Football League should take responsibility for what happens to the brains of its players. At a congressional hearing in Washington this morning, professional football will be in the dock for causing early-onset dementia and chronic traumatic encephalopathy - two impact-related medical conditions that physicians outside the NFL have seen with increasing frequency in veteran players. Congress should demand that the league, which has tended to discount the lasting effects of hard blocks and tackles, pay for an independent study of the game’s effect on players’ brains. The federal government should also commission its own research on the sport at all levels.
In its defense, the NFL points to a long-term study by its own committee on concussions. But no results are expected for several years, and the study has other flaws: It will compare just 120 men who played two or more seasons in the NFL with 60 men who played college football and no more than one year in the pros. The point clearly is to determine differences in brain injuries between pros and college players and not between pros and the population at large, where the disparities would likely be much more noticeable. Researchers of chronic traumatic encephalopathy are already finding it in football players who never reached the NFL.
Linda T. Sanchez, a California Democrat on the House Judiciary Committtee, the sponsor of today’s hearing, is rightly critical of the league for relying on its own study of the problem. “Hey, why don’t we let the tobacco companies determine whether smoking is bad for your health or not?’’ Her comparison is as on target as a Tom Brady pass. How the NFL - and organizers of football at all levels - can make the game less dangerous isn’t yet clear, in part because the existing research isn’t sufficient. The first step is for Congress to insist that the league pay for a scientifically valid study of the long-term effect of the hits that occur again and again in the nation’s stadiums every fall weekend.
