Concussions are to the NFL What Steroids Were to MLB

For the longest time, no one would even admit that steroids existed in professional sports, especially baseball...well, at least not until second basemen started hitting 50 home runs a season and the sluggers started looking like Popeye. I don't think the issue of steroids is something the federal government should become involved in, especially with the idea of sending people to prison. The manufacture and use of steroids by private citizens, is, in fact, legal, and until it isn't, no doctor or MLB player should be subjected to jail time over it. The NFL has acted a lot like MLB and the smoking industry (there's no conclusive evidence linking cancer and death to cigarettes) when it comes to the issue of concussions. Football is a violent sport that produces tons of collisions and more than its share of concussions. Some of the men who have played the game have reported depression, decreased mental function, and even brain damage after their playing days. I know it would make for bad PR, but the NFL owes it to the men who played the game and made the sport what it is to at least see what honest, unfiltered scientific data says about the link between conccussions and mental problems suffered by pro football players.

"Sad but true: You didn't have to actually read the comments by the NFL or the doctors on its concussions committee to know how they were going to respond to the Andre Waters case.

In a New York Times story on Thursday, forensic pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu of the University of Pittsburgh says that former NFLer Waters had the brain of an 85-year-old man with signs of Alzheimer's disease before he killed himself on Nov. 20, and that multiple concussions caused or severely worsened Waters' brain damage.

And as usual, you could count on the league and the scientists conducting research for its committee on mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) to channel South Park's Officer Barbrady, who likes to say, "OK, people, move along -­ there's nothing to see here." For years, the NFL has maintained there is no scientific evidence connecting concussions to lasting injuries or brain damage while also asserting that its committee is about to look into the matter. ...

After more than a dozen years of studying concussions, the NFL is -- still -- just getting around to examining the long-term effects of head trauma but still -- still -- refuses to acknowledge the validity of outside research on the subject. As Julian Bailes, chairman of neurosurgery at West Virginia University, told ESPN The Magazine, the MTBI committee "has repeatedly questioned and disagreed with the findings of researchers who didn't come from their own injury group."

What gives?

The explanation is straightforward, if depressing. The NFL has used the work done so far by its concussions committee to justify league practices. And if that research turns out to be flawed, and those practices turn out to be dangerous, the league could face massive liability, financially and legally. ...

As independent research continues to paint a different picture, the NFL is finding itself pushed further and further out on a limb. It's getting harder to deny the assertions of outside doctors and former players that concussions are linked to lasting problems. ...

Yet it also would be difficult for the NFL to turn its back on its own research and admit it has a long-term concussions problem. The league is well-known in legal circles for tenaciously fighting even minor disability claims, and the last thing it wants to face is a flood of lawsuits by athletes who suffered head injuries and kept playing.

"There is the potential for bankrupting the league pension and disability plan if the NFL had to honor claims of disability brought by players who have concussions," says Michael Kaplen, a New York lawyer who specializes in brain injuries.

Some doctors and former players have long suspected that the NFL has always intended to use the MTBI committee's work as a bulwark against just such liability. One of the scientists who reviewed the committee's work for Neurosurgery told ESPN The Magazine: "They're basically trying to prepare a defense for when one of these players sues. ... They are trying to say that what's done in the NFL is OK because in their studies, it doesn't look like bad things are happening from concussions."

But as the concussion committee's studies turn out to be flawed or incomplete and outsiders are linking concussions to serious illness and even death, the NFL is going to need a new strategy. Its same old dismiss-and-wait statement on Andre Waters shows it's still looking for one."