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The long-awaited Frontline feature documentary League of Denial: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis aired last night, putting Pittsburgh in the spotlight for both good and bad reasons.
The documentary was a joint project of PBS and Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada, who wrote the accompanying book and have reported on the NFL concussion crisis in the past. The Fainaru brothers have reported in the past for ESPN, which, until August, was a co-producer of League of Denial. In August, ESPN abruptly ended its participation in the project, allegedly because of pressure from the NFL.
If the NFL was worried about League of Denial making it look bad as an organization, the worry was warranted. While plenty has been reported in recent years on concussions, chronic traumatic encephalopathy and football, the Frontline doc laid out a comprehensive history of the matter, highlighting the work of Dr. Bennet Omaru, formerly of the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s office, and Dr. Ann McKee, of Boston University’s Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy.
Pittsburgh plays a starring role — for better and worse — in the documentary.
It opens with Omalu, then working in Allegheny County, performing an autopsy on Mike Webster, the Steelers center from the 1970s who died in 2002 at the age of 50. Omalu, a native of Nigeria who professed to know little about American football, says he was shocked by the condition Webster was in physically — estimating that most of his body seemed to better befit a man in his 70s. He examined Webster’s brain — Webster had in recent years acted erratically — and found evidence of CTE, a degenerative brain disease. Webster’s family sued the NFL for damages based on the NFL’s retirement plan, which they argued should have covered the disease because it stemmed from his playing days.
The documentary then follows a string of players, many Steelers, who died and whose brains were examined and found to have CTE: Terry Long and Justin Strelczyk both committed suicide.
Both Omalu and McKee are lightning rods, of course; Omalu’s findings about CTE, which connected the disease to professional football, were criticized by the NFL at the time, and still are. (The producers’ most serious ire is reserved for former commissioner Paul Tagliabue and his posse; his successor, Roger Goodell, is portrayed as trying a little harder to get to the bottom of the problem, but continuing to stall and resist any conclusion that might hurt football.)
At one point, Omalu, who lives and practices in California now, contends that he rues the day he examined Webster and began the CTE debate; that was what thrust him into a debate with the NFL, and, he says, “You can’t go against the NFL. They will squash you.”
The film made a special impact on Pittsburghers — take, for example, Zack Furness, a professor at Penn State-Greater Allegheny whose father, Steve Furness, was a defensive tackle for the Steelers in the ’70s, and died in 2000, two years before Webster. Furness tweeted:
The film makes the accusation, based on documents that had been acquired by a New York Times reporter on the case, that the NFL knew far earlier that CTE was related to football injuries, and in fact had previously admitted so, but then backpedaled and began denying that there was a clear causal relationship. (Some on the NFL’s side argue that CTE could be related to the use of steroids or other illegal substances, or other outside factors.)
The other big argument made in the documentary is that not just big, concussion-causing hits — the bone-crushing sacks and helmet-to-helmet tackles the NFL has cracked down on recently — but also the everyday smaller “sub-concussive” collisions can lead to CTE. It’s hard to find a solution that doesn’t involve the downfall of football in America — but then, as Frontline notes, it’s hard, too, to picture football going anywhere. The NFL is an American phenomenon, and clubs are billion-dollar enterprises.
And as Omalu recalls in the film, some associated with the NFL don’t want CTE to become synonymous with football — because if even a small percentage of American mothers became afraid of CTE and stopped their sons from playing ball as kids, the NFL as we know it would cease to exist.
Watch the film in its entirety here.
This article appears in Oct 9-15, 2013.
I played football, we knew you could get injured and suffer concussions and I and my buddies at one time or another had our bells rung. But that is also true of other sports baseball player’s get there bells rung all the time, even basketball player’s but not a peep from the media on that issue and what about hockey player’s its a far more violent game ? This is an orchestrated by the leftist media and Bolsheviks in this country to turn men into girls. The hard fact is this 75% of all NFL Players end up declaring bankruptcy,, with in five years of their retirement, Most of them have bullshit college degrees that are useless, These guys think they are invincible and they let all that attention go to their heads and they think they can play forever and do not know when to say enough and walk away, and move on with life’s work. There is constant competition in that the team will bring in other players to challenge you and maybe take your job, so players look to gain an edge, that is why many of Iron Mikes Generation looked to steroids to enhance their strength, many of these players who claim (CTE) were once steroid users, question can it not be possible that the steroids not the concussions have affected these former players brains ? Lets not forget many of these guys over used the steroids and other drugs, forming a nasty drug cocktail only God knows what affects these drugs have had on their systems, look at pirate baseball and the drugs that many on the team where into back in the 1970’s. Many are young and dumb and blow the money, most however, are conned or swindled out of their money through bad business deals, Do I believe something is going on with some of these former player’s and is it called CTE? yes I do; but not all of them , we must face facts many of these guys who have Brain issues, more than likely are suffering from naturally occurring Alzheimer’s or dementia, and or also through the use of and over indulgence of performance enhancing drugs or illegal drugs they have suffered what I call Chemical induced Alzheimer’s or or chemically induced dementia in other words they over loaded and fried and short circuited or should I say fried the mother board , of their brains. When I was a kid once in a blue moon you saw a Lineman who weighed 300 pounds, today you have guys well over that weight and they are cut like stone, they by no means have a natural look to them, Most linemen when I was a kid weight averaged around 260 pounds, they were also far more mobile than the guys of today that is why the running game is all but extinct. Now we have all these bleeding hearts for these guys many of who when they were on top of the world were Ass-holes, and acted like Ass-holes. Than you have some poor shelp who I mean busts his ass 40 hours a week in a shity job gets hurt and the company says to him or her one day hey we do not need your services any longer we eliminated your position. Or you loose part of your foot like I did and I received two years salary and they were supposed to pay medical costs, I had to take them to court for breach of contract only after I tried numerous times to get the other side to pay the bill s that they were supposed to pay.
Three days before the hearing they paid the bill, the hospital provider upmc once they got paid cut a deal with liberty mutual and stabbed me in the back, legally speaking and the judge was ok with that. as is the media.
Steroids (and Growth Hormone) undoubtedly made them Bigger and Faster. And it is also True that Mike Webster an some of the others mentioned in “Concussion” had Mental illness in their families. But, perhaps, it Helps to have Bipolar when you play a sport such as Football.
That Said, it is FOLLY to think that such violent hits cannot cause massive brain damage. The Evidence is Legion.