Tag Archives: NFL

Who Wants Research Monies?

11 Apr

There are plenty of people out there that think they have the answer to the concussion issue.  From helmets (G. Malcom Brown) to mouth gear (Mark Picot), to assessment, to rehabilitation, to research, the whole lot of it.  Well now is your chance to put forth your best effort and get some money for research on your products or your ideas.  The National Institutes of Health and the NFL have created the Sports and Health Research Program;

The Sports and Health Research Program (SHRP) is an innovative partnership among the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Football League (NFL) and the FNIH. Launched in 2012, the program aims to help accelerate the pursuit of research to enhance the health of athletes at all levels, past, present and future, and to extend the impact of that research beyond the playing field to benefit others in the general population, including members of the military.

There is an agenda of sorts; regarding what they are looking at going forward (see article) but they are giving grants for those that meet the criteria; Continue reading →

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Sports discourse in the aftermath of Junior Seau’s suicide

13 Jan

Screen shot 2013-01-13 at 6.32.33 PMI remember the anguish that punctured my thoughts when Junior Seau, a star in his own right on the gridiron, placed a handgun to his chest and took his own life eight months ago at his California home. Sitting in my room, I sunk into my chair and spoke no words for more than an hour while giving all I could to refrain from shedding any tears. His death struck me in an unforgettable way that positioned myself, once again, at a crossroads with football and its place in our culture infatuated with the image of the modern-day gladiator.

On May 3, 2012, the day after Seau’s suicide, I scrambled for answers with the shadows of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) looking over my back. I ran a number of searches in Google’s archives for newspaper articles from the 1990s to find some sort of explanation for his actions, but rarely was Seau’s name mentioned directly in relation to a head injury. Although my efforts were rather premature and assuming, there had to be some sort of correlation between Seau’s noted altercations behind closed doors with the thousands of hits his brain endured over the course of a 19-year professional career.

There are, of course, many different storylines that people turn to to explain something so tragic immediately after its occurrence, but confirmation of my original hypothesis (shared by many, I’m sure) by the National Institute of Health several days ago left me in an inexplicable state of unsettled anxiety. Though I inferred Seau would be diagnosed postmortem with CTE, my response to the official announcement was still along the lines of, “Unbelievable.” Continue reading →

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What Is Going On In Arizona?

30 Oct

I only lead the story that way because this past weekend there have been two “interesting” situations involving potential concussions of football players, with ‘Arizona’ on the jersey.

Yesterday I posted about Matt Scott, University of Arizona QB (Dan Diamond also has a follow-up to his story here) and today after Monday Night Football Larry Fitzgerald of the Arizona Cardinals is under the microscope.  I too was watching and was mystified at the handling of the situation.  Watching on television you could clearly see a mechanism of injury that would predispose a player to a head injury, then as he rose to his feet – to this highly trained observer – he appeared gazed and “not all there”.  Apparently I was not the only one to see it that way;

When he got up from the field picking grass out of his facemask and looking woozy, there were fewer questions about whether it was a dirty play by Brown—it wasn’t—than how much time Fitzgerald would miss due to a possible concussion.[...] Continue reading →

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2012 NFL Concussion Report Week 5

11 Oct

The Concussion Blog Original, NFL Concussion Report, is a weekly compiling of the reported head injuries in the National Football League.  Concussions are added to the list each week from multiple sources to give you the reader a picture of what is happening on the field.  Each week we will bring you the information along with relevant statistics.  If we have missed a concussion or put one on here erroneously, let us know (we will also be using Fink’s Rule to classify a concussion/head injury).

This past week was an interesting week for concussion tracking in 2012.  First, week 5 had the most concussions for the week, 12.  Second, week 5 produced our first quarterback concussions (2) with RGII and Matt Cassel.  Third and finally, two players – Laurent Robinson and Daniel Thomas – sustained their second concussion of the season.

A trend that I find unusual, and it is only week 5, is that the offense is now outpacing the defense.  Although it is a bit over 30% more I feel that as the season progresses this will become a 50/50 split as it has been the past two years.

Now on to the numbers for the week (51 total regular season concussions bringing the 2012 total with preseason to 99); Continue reading →

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New Study; Posting for Reference

7 Sep

This information was not only new, but really took up time on the airwaves with its information.  For some this may be a head scratching, but for most in the know it was really confirmation of what the popular line of thinking has been.  Really, if you think about this in a vacuum, brain trauma is bad, and increased exposure over long periods of time is real bad.

Here is a recap from CTVNews in Canada;

Former NFL players appear to be at an unusually high risk of dying from Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or Lou Gehrig’s disease, suggests a new study that once again highlights the dangers of the game of football.

The study, which appears in the journal Neurology, found that the death rate from those three diseases among a group of former NFL players was about three times what one would expect from the general population.

The study looked at 3,439 former players who had at least five playing seasons from 1959-1988 with the NFL. The average age of the study participants was 57 and only 334 players – about 10 per cent of them – have now died.

Researchers compared the players’ deaths to a comparable group of American men and found that in 10 of the former NFL players, either Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or Lou Gehrig’s disease (also called ALS) was listed as the cause of death.

That’s about three times the general rate for American men, the researchers reported.

I would also like to take this time to make sure we are not vilifying the NFL or football for that matter.  Sure the sport has plenty of brain injury, but concussions and repetitive blows to the head are not unique to the gridiron.  Soccer for one is a sport that is both understudied and had potential for chronic cases.  In the sport of baseball the catcher position is an area of concern.  Hockey, rugby, rodeo, Aussie Rules all have a place in this discussion.

Mostly, remember that kids are now exposed to sports at a much younger age then this study group, and the group also was playing before the 90′s – before everyone got bigger, faster and stronger.

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Official Study of NFL Concussions

8 Aug

It appears that there is an official study on concussions and injuries in the NFL.  This data came from the internal injury surveillance  of the league and is uncertain who sponsored it, however, this is our first chance to see “accurate” numbers relating to concussions in the league.  Edgeworth Economics did the study and was told that there were 266 concussions in 2011 (we found 217) and 270 concussions in 2010 (182) showing a slight overall decline;

The number of reported concussions had been on the rise since 2006.

“As an economist and a statistician, I can’t tell you whether that’s due to increased recognition of concussions versus an increased incidence of them,” David said. “It’s probably both. But nonetheless, you see a pretty significant (trend) over the last five years, roughly. However, in 2011, we saw a decrease — a slight decrease in the total number of concussions, the first time that’s happened in several years. And that is entirely due to a reduced number of concussions during kickoffs.”

The purpose of the study was to determine the effectiveness of the kickoff rule change.  As we noted here there was a decline in concussions on the kick off last year – although we could only discover single digits – where as the study had much more information;

There were 266 overall concussions reported in 2011, a decrease from the 270 reported in 2010. The number of concussions that occurred on kickoffs dropped from 35 in 2010 to 20 last season.

Yes, the kickoff rule change helped and looks like it helped the overall number as well.  We have opined here that 2011 could be the “high water” mark for concussions in the NFL.  We also have been extremely critical of the NFL for “hiding” their numbers, it appears that is changing.  It will also be very interesting to see if the reduced contact days also drives that number down.

It is good to see the league “opening the books” on the concussion injury, although it is curious it comes at a time when there is a plateau or decline.  I guess it is better late than never.  With these changes and decline we should see a trickle down effect as college and high school will be more accepting of “game” changes.

 

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Bombshell Found in Sports Illustrated Vault

4 Jul

Thanks to @ConcernedMom9 I was sent an article from Sports Illustrated written by Michael Farber.  Before I tell you the year and provide the link I want so share some quotes from it;

“People are missing the boat on brain injuries,” says Dr. James P. Kelly, director of the brain-injury program at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and an assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern University Medical School. “It isn’t just cataclysmic injury or death from brain injuries that should concern people. The core of the person can change from repeated blows to the head.

“I get furious every time I watch a game and hear the announcers say, ‘Wow, he really got his bell rung on that play.’ It’s almost like, ‘Yuk, yuk, yuk,’ as if they’re joking. Concussions are no joke.”

That sounds very similar to what we are discussing now in 2012.

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•Of the 1.5 million high school football players in the U.S., 250,000 suffer a concussion in any given season, according to a survey conducted for The American Journal of Public Health.

•A player who has already suffered a concussion is four times more likely to get one than a player who has been concussion-free. Quarterbacks, running backs, receivers and defensive backs are most vulnerable, [...] that special teams players were at the highest risk per minute spent on the field.

•Concussions are underreported at all levels of football. This is partly because of the subtlety of a mild concussion (unless a player is as woozy as a wino, the injury might go undetected by a busy trainer or coach) but primarily because players have bought into football’s rub-dirt-on-it ethos. “If we get knocked in the head, it’s embarrassing to come to the sideline and say, ‘Hey, my head’s feeling funny,’ ” says San Francisco 49er quarterback Steve Young, who has suffered at least a half dozen concussions. “So I’m sure we’re denying it.”

•Football’s guidelines for players returning after concussions are sometimes more lenient than boxing’s. The New Jersey Boxing Commission requires a fighter who is knocked out to wait 60 days and submit to an electroencephalogram (EEG) before being allowed back into the ring.

•According to Ken Kutner, a New Jersey neuropsychologist, postconcussion syndrome is far more widespread than the NFL or even those suffering from the syndrome would lead us to believe. [...] Kutner says that the players fear that admitting to postconcussion syndrome might cost them a job after retirement from football.

Hmmm, we all thought this was information new to us – new being 2008.

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That, however, doesn’t console Lawrence and Irene Guitterez of Monte Vista, Colo. “He just thought it was something trivial,” Irene says of her son, Adrian, who was a running back on the Monte Vista High team three years ago. “He had a headache and was sore, but it seemed like cold symptoms. He wasn’t one to complain. He wouldn’t say anything to anybody. He wanted to play in the Alamosa game.”

He did play. At halftime Guitterez, who had suffered a concussion in a game two weeks before and had not yet shaken the symptoms, begged teammates not to tell the coaches how woozy he felt. When he was tackled early in the third quarter, he got up disoriented and then collapsed. Five days later he died.

Years later another Colorado high school football player, Jake Snakenberg, would unfortunately repeat history; leading to the concussion legislation passed in that state.

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Do you have a guess on the year… Continue reading →

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Actions Speak Louder Than Words

20 Oct

John Gonoude has been writing for The Concussion Blog since January 2011.  He has been an advocate for concussion awareness and education since his medically advised ‘retirement’ from football his junior year of high school in 2008, and has been vocal on the issue of the necessity for education at all levels, especially noting the need for concussed athletes to have a voice in the culture of the game we play today.  Gonoude is currently a student at the University of Pittsburgh studying English Literature & Communications and plans to attend graduate school for Bioethics.  Follow him on Twitter: @jgonoude_TCB

Michael Vick has been a central figure in this year’s debate on the proper management of traumatic brain injury on the gridiron, and has inadvertently placed himself within a category of his own that stands indicative of the NFL’s “protocol.”  Such protocol that demands a player to be removed from the game at any suspicion of having sustained a concussion has dwindled toward a diminishing standard that can be abided by if a team feels that they can continue without that particular player.  For the Philadelphia Eagles, of course, they need Vick to be out there every down of every game.  They have too much money invested in him, after granting him with a one-hundred million dollar contract.  They even shipped their prospective ‘quarterback of the future’ for Vick, at the detriment of Kevin Kolb’s stay.  And let us not forget that the Eagles have dubbed themselves during the preseason as the “Dream Team,” only to find themselves in a 1-4 rut at the beginning of the season prior to last Sunday’s game against the Washington Redskins.

To retrace our steps a bit, I want to explain how frustrating this pre-Vick-ament has been to me.  In June of 2010, I was asked to assist in sponsoring and promoting Pennsylvania House Bill 2060, entitled “Protecting Our Student Athletes,” which was proposed by State Representative Tim Briggs.  Part of the support I was asked to give to this legislation included speaking at a press conference at Lincoln Financial Field with Tim Briggs, Tracy Yatsko, Dr. Drew Nagele of the Brain Injury Association of America, and the head athletic trainer of the Philadelphia Eagles, Rick Burkholder.  All pushed for support of this bill, and all believed that this was the right thing to do—the right message to send to our youth athletes and program directors.  And it was Rick Burkholder who gave a series of compelling statements on the necessity of such concussion management legislation. Continue reading →

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Political Football: Irv Muchnick

14 Oct

Irvin Muchnick is a writer and investigative journalist who previously mainly focused on the WWE.  Muchnick has changed gears a bit and started Concussion Inc, a website focusing on the head injury issue.

On Friday, on Beyond Chron, Irv Muchnick wrote about the appearance of a conflict of interest between the Centers for Disease Control and the National Football League, in regards to the upcoming panel and recommendations.  In the article Irv was right to point out that the federally funded CDC is taking outside monies for the first time;

A CDC spokeswoman admitted to me that the NFL’s $150,000 grant for “Heads Up” marked “the first time the CDC Foundation has received external funding to help support” this initiative, which has a decade-long history encompassing various outreach to health care professionals and patients, school professionals, sports coaches, parents, and kids and teens. (CDC’s own funding for this program has averaged around $200,000 a year.)

Which brings into question who will be in control of the recommendations?  Will the people shaping the foundation of concussion management, aimed at athletic trainers and doctors, actually have representatives in place?  I am not talking about the usual suspects that may hold a MD or ATC tag – the ones who do Yoeman’s work in the research field – rather some of the “boots on the ground” if you will.  Yes there are some Continue reading →

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Sunday Night Debacle

19 Sep

Sunday Night Football (TM by NBC and NFL) was going to be a good watch with Mike Vick returning to his original place of employment.  Not only was that an underlying tone, the Atlanta Falcons faced an early season “must win”, the first half it did not disappoint as both teams scored and forced mistakes from the other team.  As the second half began it looked as though the visiting Eagles were going to take full control of  the game, and to be honest my interest started to wane a bit, then Dunta Robinson happened again.  It was his hit in Week 6 last year that started the avalanche of eyes on concussions in the NFL.  Tonight he basically did the same thing – the hit seen below (will be removed by NFL) and should be met with both a fine and suspension – and brought attention to the broadcast for what became a massive debacle in my opinion.

Later in the drive, not only did Jeremy Maclin return to the game after the hit from Robinson (and being “down”), he caught a pass from Vick, but behind the play Vick was injured.  As you can see Continue reading →

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The Anatomy of the Illegal Hit

19 Aug

In last week’s preseason game between the Detroit Lions and Cincinnati Bengals, defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh acted in a way that opened the doors yet again to the debate regarding illegal hits in the National Football League.  A conversation that was fueled by contrasting opinions sparked uproar in the football community, in relation to the professional establishments themselves as well as the game’s followers, revived itself at the sight of Suh’s withholding of Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton’s head in his chest, and tearing him to the ground as the quarterback’s helmet snapped off of his body.  Where most defensive players would say they witnessed a play that should be applauded for its fearsome nature, others may say that Suh’s pursuit and finishing of Dalton would be clear and deserving of punishment.  From my own perspective, I viewed an act that steps too close for comfort upon the line of an active play being before a defender’s eyes, or rather behind the defender’s ears.  No matter what perspective you take on the situation that occurred in the preseason match-up between the Lions and Bengals, it is clear the National Football League had to take action, and did so by fining Suh twenty-thousand dollars, which has since been appealed.

How much blame can one put on the aggressiveness displayed by Suh?  We all very well know that this is going to be, and quite so is, a matter of one being the product of the environment he was raised within and continues to dwell within.  Since the beginning of Suh’s football career, there is no doubt that such violence was encouraged and applauded by his peers and mentors, as the ones who catered to his very needs as a developing football star were themselves accustomed to such play.  Sure, this will be Suh’s third go-around with a fine delivered by the National Football League, but as a former football player myself, and as one who has been surrounded by football fanatics my entire life, I know that such athletes function upon short memories.  This style of play that Suh has displayed, more specifically in his man-handling of the likes of Andy Dalton, Jay Cutler, and Jake Delhomme in the past two years, will continue to be engraved within the defensive tackle’s arsenal.  Of course he’s outraged at the fine, but I do also believe that with everything you align yourself within, there will be restrictions, and in our adjusted sense of awareness in regards to the medical evidence of today, football needs to adapt to the day, rather than continue the promotion of the game of the past.  As much as we want to hold on to it, there will inevitably be increased rates of fines and suspensions. Continue reading →

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Lockout is over, but the real issue?

26 Jul

The country sits relieved, and welcomes the long-awaited announcement of the approved collective bargaining agreement that brought us back to the daily interactions of the National Football League.  We immediately reminded ourselves of the barbeques on Sunday afternoons to come, the beers cooled for the acquaintances to come over and watch our favorite teams compete, the ESPN updates ahead of us that may mark the thrilling transactions as beneficial or malignant to the functioning of our beloved allegiances, and last, but not least, we reminded ourselves of the tremendous, uplifting sensation that we as fans, and former players, get from watching professional athletes perform in a way that provides unique brilliance to our prized possession—football.

This lockout, in some ways, has clouded the issues that have been brought to the immediate forefront of the headlines regarding the National Football League—most specifically, the sports concussion issue.  During the lockout, we have seen the lives of Dave Duerson and John Mackey pass before us, both NFL greats haunted by the repercussions of repetitive head injury (where Duerson would be diagnosed postmortem with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and Mackey, who had struggled with progressive dementia after his life in the NFL), and we have seen the collective action taken by 75 former NFL players to sue the league for withholding information on the implications of mild traumatic brain injury in their sport, which in turn allegedly allowed for the development of debilitative cognitive disorders and alterations in mental health.  We have seen these stories, and maybe we’re just starting to remember them as we look through this article, for to some, we have seen these issues live as one-day-acknowledgements, rather than signals for further action and encouragement for awareness and education regarding concussions. Continue reading →

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Lessons to Learn: Fighting for Football

26 May

“Like there haven’t been concussions in the last 100 years of sports.  Toughen up.  Quit looking for an excuse to sit on the sidelines.” [Comment on USA Today’s “Concussions now a hot issue as leagues toughen policies”]

In football, “pain” is considered “weakness leaving the body.”  It is a sensation that comes with pride and is the noted product of an individual own sacrifice of self to perform for the well being of the team he plays for.  The game itself revolves around the violence that defines football—a collection of organized aggression that is considered to be only accepting of the hard-nosed play of men.  If you can’t take a hit, then you might as well get off the field.  With violence comes expendability, where both characteristics of football blend to give it its beautiful but unforgiving persona.

So tell me what pain is.  Across the country, football players throughout all levels of play are taught the clear difference between being hurt and injured.  The aches, bruises, and cuts; this is when you’re hurt.  You can play through them, and one way or another, you or your coach will make damn sure that you play through them.  The muscle tears and broken bones, however, are clear to be defined as injuries, where slings, crutches, and casts are provided in relations of series of x-ray scans that prove that something is wrong with your body.  Here you are forgiven.  We’ll see you in a few weeks when you’re ready to go.  And as long as you stay true to your promise that you have dedicated yourself to this football program, then you will have your position on the depth chart back when you’ve shown the medical professionals that your body is in sufficient condition to play.

Now the real question is, what is a headache?  Sure, we’ve all played through headaches at one point or another throughout the course of our football careers, but did we ever stop to think about what it may be, or take the time to give ourselves a self-evaluation of our ability to continue playing at an efficient level?  Did we maybe forget being the huddle immediately as we placed our fingers on the line of scrimmage before the play began?  Did we fumble our words when calling an offensive or defensive play because we simply did not consolidate the routine signals or calls that our coaches have engrained in our minds since day one?  Did we ever come to forget the score of the game, or wonder how or why you were in on a certain play but not have the ability to recall making the tackle? Continue reading →

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The Media and Concussions

18 May

After being ignored for far too long, concussions and brain injury seem to have been rightfully recognized as the most important issue in contact sports. However, even the medical community is quick to note the dearth of good information about brain injuries. After my cycling accident and subsequent coma almost 8 years ago, the information my family was given had them constantly bracing for the worst. My mom tells me that when she was a kid and she’d ask her dad a question, the answer would invariably be, “Look it up.” That explains her career choice (librarian) and her never-ending search for more information. Yet, even she had a very difficult time finding information that would give her solace or at least an idea of what problems her son would face. Even though my brain injury was more acute and severe than a concussion, both are brain injuries. I think that an extremely important point about concussions is being lost in the extra-subjective and passionate world of pro sports.

It’s fortunate the newspapers like the Globe and Mail and the New York Times were quickly on the issue as it came to the fore in their health and sports sections. As would be expected, the Globe and Mail centres most of their attention on hockey, while the New York Times focuses primarily on football. They’ve obviously done an outstanding job of bringing the brain injury issue forward. An issue will not become important to the public by starting with explanations and definitions, but once an issue goes from afterthought Continue reading →

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The Downfall of Dave Duerson

6 May

(Project Brain Wave)  In 2007, at a Senate subcommittee hearing regarding the implications of long-term cognitive deficits as it relates to repetitive trauma to the head in football, Dave Duerson questioned the legitimacy of such a claim by dismissing any thoughts of relation to the game he played and loved to the neurological struggles of his peers.  Such an assertion at the time was of course denied by many involved with the game, and was largely considered an attack on the forefront of football’s integrity.  During his career, Duerson had at least ten concussions, and lost consciousness during some, according to his family.  And yet Duerson’s argument was founded upon the following claim:

“In regards to the issue of Alzheimer’s, my father’s 84, and as I mentioned earlier, Senator, spent 30 years at General Motors,” Duerson testified.  “He also has—he also has Alzheimer’s and brain damage but never played a professional sport.  So the challenge, you know, in terms of where the damage comes from, is a fair question.”

2007 was a time of inquiry for the national pride of football, as it found itself under tremendous scrutiny dating back to the finding of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in former Pittsburgh Steelers Hall of Fame center, “Iron” Mike Webster.  Chronic traumatic encephalopathy is a progressive degenerative disease of the brain that develops as a result of repetitive head trauma.  This trauma includes the symptomatic, and asymptomatic concussive blows to the head.  It is a disease that is associated with memory loss, impulse control problems, confusion, impaired judgment, aggression, depression, and eventual progressive dementia, most notably characterized by the build-up of tau protein in the brain—an abnormal protein that serves as a decisive key to the mental deterioration of the individual.

What is it that Duerson allowed to blockade his openness to such a proposal?  Without a doubt the pride instilled in the football athlete holds true and strong to the immense withholding of responsibility to the game itself.  Players will defend their sport, because they feel indebted to the numerous life lessons, experiences, and unforgettable memories that paint the legacies of players such as Duerson.  It is also a tremendous rejection of anything that may have been perceived to be a way of life to rather be a way of deferring one’s future to that of an accelerated cognitive decline.  It is fear.  It is knowing that the unknown could be developing without your awareness.  Duerson’s comments regarding the rejection of such a proposal of neurodegenerative implication as a result of playing football signify the feelings of the time.  After all, this was only found in just a few of his fellow football retirees.  This was something that was not widely accepted or acknowledged by those with medical degrees all throughout, and it certainly was something that the National Football League was not willing to endorse. Continue reading →

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Further Thoughts on Manning’s Statement…

27 Apr

This post is a collection of John Gonoude’s thoughts on the Peyton Manning statement in an interview with ESPN’s Rick Reilly concerning concussion testing in the NFL, and how Manning purposely ‘cheated the system’ to ensure a higher probability of return when and if injured. These are just ‘ramblings,’ but underline some key points that Manning’s statement may lead the conversation toward.

The news of Peyton Manning purposely tanking his concussion testing set me back a bit at first, but did not necessarily come to surprise me. What are we to take from this? I know that Rick Reilly’s interview with the Manning family was in an easy-going environment of discussion, but the fact that this what Manning’s response to the question—“How do you feel about all the new research about concussions that’s coming out?”–only came to make me wonder, is football taking this tool seriously? Is football taking this issue of sport-related head trauma seriously? Is Manning’s confession of undermining concussion testing one worth praising or criticizing?

Let’s face it, the guy is the face of the National Football League, and with that he comes to be an involuntary representative of professional, collegiate, and youth football. He has opened up a clear avenue of discussion for those trying to combat this issue, but also one that has brought forth even further criticism of this problem. The most frustrating thing about the fight to take on the concussion crisis is that everyone is ‘right,’ and that for every point there will always be a counterpoint. For every argument there will always be a counter-argument—so what is there to do?

Persist. I cannot thank or knock down Peyton Manning for this. I know one thing for sure, however, and that is the fact that our youth football players, and even contact sport athletes at large, will take note of this predicament and use it as a way to even further their own chances of dismissing this tool as a blockade to their performance. What are parents going to say about this? What are the individuals, and to my knowledge, these are athletic trainers conducting this testing, going to do to prevent this tanking from happening? When I was playing high school football, I know that all of my teammates thought that this testing was a joke. They found it useless, and a waste of their time. Sure, many programs use this just as one of many instruments or operations contributing to the recovery of an athlete. Many programs may rely on this almost solely, specifically at those without a present certified athletic trainer on site. Many programs go on about their activities without concussion testing.
Continue reading →

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Shane Dronett diagnosed with CTE

2 Apr

Shane Dronett, former offensive lineman for the Atlanta Falcons, has been diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy.  The discovery was made following his 2009 death, which was ruled a suicide.  CNN Health does an excellent job giving a synopsis of his downward spiral.  I recommend everyone to take the time to view the story of Dronett, as well as how his erratic behavior affected his family leading up to the self-inflicted termination of his life.

Featured quotes from the CNN Health article include…

It began in 2006, with a bad dream.

“He woke up in the middle of the night and started screaming and told everyone to run out of the house,” said Chris Dronett, Shane Dronett’s wife. “He thought that someone was blowing up our house. It was very frightening.”

Chris tried to dismiss the incident as isolated, except that two weeks later, there was another outburst, then another, until they were an almost-nightly occurrence. And as Shane’s fear and paranoia began overwhelming him, so did episodes of confusion and rage that sometimes turned violent. Continue reading →

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Madden NFL Football Introduces Concussion Policy

30 Mar

Madden NFL Football has been one of my favorite series of video games throughout my childhood.  It has truly captivated a generation of young athletes, and even adults for that matter, and has come to produce a world that is so intricately similar to that of what you would see on a Sunday afternoon on your HD television.  It has come a long way since its conception, and has leaped to the foreground of sporting video games to be, without a doubt, the most popular and well-known.  Today, Madden NFL Football, despite any rumors of the lockout for the NFL this upcoming season, is back in the news.

According to a report published by NBC Chicago, the game has decided to incorporate up-to-date management policies on how a concussion is dealt with in the game.  As noted on my own personal Facebook wall, I called this- for lack of a better term.  I had a feeling that, with all of the attention concussions were getting during the 2010-2011 season, concussions would soon find their way into the game of Madden NFL Football, which has been praised for how close-to-reality it has been.

And yet as soon as I posted this on my Facebook wall, the expected response came up as a notification.  Please, excuse me and the individual’s comment for using the following adjective in an inappropriate and incorrect way…

The response: “wow, this is gay” (followed by an immediate ‘like’). Continue reading →

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Another Perspective on Duerson

22 Feb

In an article written by Irv Muchnick we the reader get another perspective on the concussion issue, as highlighted by the suicide of Dave Duerson.

The gruesome decades-long underground American saga that is the football concussion crisis has never gotten in our faces quite like the story of the suicide last week, at age 50, of one-time National Football League defensive player of the year Dave Duerson.

How many levels are there to the news that Duerson put a gun to himself, but not before texting family that he wanted his brain donated for research on the brain-trauma syndrome now known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)? Let us, like Elizabeth Barrett Browning, count them. It begins with the fact that he shot himself in the chest – perhaps with supreme confidence that by avoiding his head and leaving intact his postmortem brain tissue, it will confirm that he is around the 21st diagnosed case of CTE among former football players.

Duerson is the latest casualty of a sport that has evolved, via training technology and industrial design, into a form of gladiatorialism whose future human and economic viability is questionable. The New Yorker and New York Times have started assessing this cultural phenomenon with their own brands of competence and Ivy League restraint. From the closeted gutter of pro wrestling, where all the same venalities play out with less pretense, I’m here to tell “the rest of the story” – such as how the same corrupt doctors who work for the NFL also shill for World Wrestling Entertainment, and how it’s all part of the same stock exchange of ethics for profits and jock-sniffing privileges.

To read the rest of this story go to Beyond Chron, HERE.

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Better concussion policy: NFL, NHL or MTV?

21 Feb

When MTV takes more decisive action than the NFL or NHL, perhaps it’s time to look at who makes the final decision in pro sports. ‘Pro’ being the operative word.

MTV’s The Challenge isn’t technically a sport. Unless you hear ESPN’s Bill Simmons and Dave Jacoby talk about it. They’re probably on to something – it should be the fifth main sport. If you haven’t seen the show (it’s not in-season, but it is here), this season – The Challenge: Cutthroat – provided a good example of why everyone should pay attention to concussions. Seriously. MTV.

It’s not like Jersey Shore (but there is drunk fighting and debauchery), it’s more like Survivor meets a gym (30 contestants, 9 challenges). Unlike the quirky challenges in which ‘castaways’ compete, the competitions in The Challenge are extremely physical. Case in point was a team challenge this season in which the contestants had to dive/jump from a moving platform into a pond and then swim a circuit. Chet, a member of the red team, landed awkwardly on the water, and once on the shore he was attended to by paramedics, brought to hospital, diagnosed with a concussion and told he wasn’t allowed to compete anymore.

What made Chet’s removal an easy decision for MTV was at least partly because Chet wasn’t a professional MTV contestant. His career was not The Challenge (at least, I hope not). Whatever his eventual career choice Continue reading →

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Brad Scioli On Concussions

15 Feb

For nearly a decade, the media has effectively contributed to the heightened awareness of concussions in football.  Many individuals, who either were or were not involved in the sport itself, became enlightened by the growing results of medical discoveries that connected mild traumatic brain injury to conditions such as post-concussion syndrome, depression, second impact syndrome, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.  The widely dispersed spectrum of opinion on this subject often provided vague interpretations of concussions in sports, so I engaged in something that would be a bit more effective in opening the public’s eyes, as well as my own, to the personal predicaments between concussions and professional athletes.  To do so, I contacted Brad Scioli—former defensive end for the Indianapolis Colts.

Scioli played for the Colts from 1999 to 2004.  He attended the same high school that I graduated from a year ago, and is forever enshrined in the athletic legacy of Upper Merion Area High School’s halls.  He is known to be one of Upper Merion’s greatest, and most proud, athletes of success who took his talents to the professional level.  Today, he is now a health and physical education teacher at Upper Merion, and is an assistant coach for the school’s football program.  During my high school career, I had the pleasure of working with Scioli in a productive player-coach relationship, where I learned a tremendous amount of skills for the defensive end position through his expertise.

By speaking to Scioli, I wanted to learn about what the voice of a former NFL player had to say about the league’s most recent dealings with all aspects of mild traumatic brain injury.  I wanted to see how we could further illustrate an issue that has been brought to the foreground of neuroscience and professional sports.  After seeing my junior year mark the end of my high school football career, it was interesting to see what Scioli, a former defensive mentor who shares similar homegrown roots, had to say about the issue. Continue reading →

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The Machismo of Football

5 Feb

The recent campaigns to raise awareness of the long-term repercussions of repetitive mild traumatic brain injury have succeeded in opening the eyes of many, but has also failed to plenty making their living within the guidelines of the National Football League.  Never have we seen such conflicting parties at work in the past establishing sides that put forth the future of their lives, as well as the lives of their families, in opposition to those who maintain the ‘old-school’ mentality that generally supports the commandment in which “pain is weakness leaving the body.”  Never have we seen such a deflation in the all-around machismo of the game of football, where there has been even the slightest consideration of one’s future after the game of football.

In an article published by Alan Schwarz of the New York Times, such an extraction of the changing culture of the game is depicted through a conversation between Donald Driver and Aaron Rodgers after the quarterback had sustained a concussion following a collision against the Detroit Lions on December 12, 2010.

“I went behind him and told him that this game is just a game,” Driver recalled this week. “Your life is more important than the game.”

Heresy!  Planting a seed of long-term consideration for Rodgers’ health is an unwritten offense in the culture of the NFL.  You can imagine that as Driver approaches the end of his career, he has given much thought about the long-term issues that may or may not be in his future.  But even so, there are a handful of players who are open towards criticizing such an issue.

Hines Ward and James Harrison of the Pittsburgh Steelers have been two outspoken individuals about the faults of the league’s attempt to limit the occurrence of head injury through serious enforcement of helmet-to-helmet hits, which led to a series of fines for the ‘tackling’ that James Harrison put on display this season.  As Schwarz puts it: Continue reading →

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Oh, the Turmoil of Negligence!

3 Feb

As we approach the conclusion of the NFL’s 2010-2011 season, the battlefield of mild traumatic brain injury has been brought back to the spotlight of league policy.  A question posed in John Culhane’s article, entitled “The NFL’s Next Big Headache,” concerns the capability of the National Football League to withstand a class action lawsuit from players with brain injuries.  Are we sitting in the backseat of a potential revisitation to the framework of Merril Hoge’s lawsuit (2000) against the physician employed by the Chicago Bears who failed to warn him of concussions as well as the dangers of returning to play while still exhibiting post-concussive symptoms?  It may very well be so, but only time will tell.  Let’s take a step back and view a general synopsis of the Hoge case, which was a successful shot at a culture so driven by financial capacity in opposition to its care for the players contributing to such profits.

According to Robert Fogel, Hoge’s attorney…

“[This] may be the one of the first [lawsuits] of its kind. . . . It is . . . an extremely important case because the message should go out that the brain is the most important part of the body, and it should be treated that way by doctors.  [Physicians] have a responsibility to the players . . . to re-evaluate them, re-examine them before they go out to play, tell them about the signs and symptoms, and warn them about the risk of permanent brain damage or even death from second-impact syndrome.”

Following their declared victory and after drawing upon the malignancy of a culture stricken with compromised medical interests and treatment relationships, Fogel says the following…

“[The jury] sent a message to coaches at all levels . . . [that the] culture of medicine should supersede the culture of football.  It is more important to treat an athlete properly than as a piece of property.”

Today, the imminent threat of two class action lawsuits sits at the doorstep of the NFL.  What is to be expected is the accusation that the NFL had known, but suppressed, information on the long-term effects of playing football that hold risk for neurological impairment to one’s future.  As an action coming from two different angles, the NFL expects to see the following claims… Continue reading →

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Football As A Concussion

1 Feb

We are surrounded by hypocrisy, denial, and complete ignorance. The political and economic sphere of the National Football League has swollen into a cyclic route of blindness, though we allow some of the ‘light’ to enter our tunnel each time a tragedy may occur.  Like a concussion, the culture of football is presented in a state of instability, with neurons no longer responding to transmitted signals, complimented by the biological processes of the brain striving to reach, yet again, a level of homeostasis within the area of damage.  Players, coaches, and fans have plentifully ignored the significance of mild traumatic brain injury, and even as some, including medical professionals, strive for further awareness to make certain leaps in the right direction, football still remains as a tarnished entity that will be forever haunted by the concussion crisis.  Football, in a sense, is an area of the brain that is no longer stimulated, though ‘neurons’ still send signals to such ‘target cells,’ despite the fact that such a practice of plasticity seems to receive no positive feedback.

So what do we do?  We need to realize that this ‘concussion’ of a culture could have been avoided, and that there needs to be a widespread consensus on wanting to reach a period in which we can all say, “we did all that we could.”  We’re not there yet, though, and I am sure it will take quite some time to revive football’s reputation in relation to this chronic pain that neuroscience has declared to be a crisis.

In 2002, the National Football League was introduced its offensive weapon that deflated its multi-billion dollar balloon.  This weapon, in a sense, is the brain of former Hall of Famer Mike Webster, who played sixteen seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers.  Webster’s brain was acquired by Dr. Bennet Omalu, who would later find the presence of a neurodegenerative disease in “Iron Mike.”  This disease would be named chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), and served as a bridge that linked Webster’s erratic behavior towards the end of his life to the years of concussive and subconcussive blows to the head.

Webster struggled significantly after his playing career ended.  He had invested his money in a handful of miserably unsuccessful attempts at running businesses, and often found himself homeless, living out of his car.  What was it that could have led such a successful man on the football field, filled with pride and confidence for years, to follow such a dramatic downward spiral? Continue reading →

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NFL’s Goodell in Washington for Conccusion Conference

11 Oct

As reported by Liz Matthews of MYNorthwest.com some heavy hitters were at the Virgina Mason Athletic Center for a conference on concussions.  Roger Goodell, Commissioner of the National Football League, as well as Zackery Lystedt were there to “Keep Youth Sports Safe.”

Because of the popularity of the NFL and the important role it plays, “we have a responsibility to do what’s right and make a difference in people’s lives,” he said. Having started in the State of Washington, Goodell believes that the passing of this law would make a difference for all sports – not just football – for kids across the country.

“We all are learning more about the seriousness of the injuries. Continue reading →

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