[Vision2020] Hit Lists and Brain Damage... No, Not the Mob!

[Ted Moffett]

Editorial: An NFL hit
list<http://www.news-record.com/content/2012/03/26/article/content/2012/03/26/article/editorial_an_nfl_hit_list>

3-27-2012

http://www.news-record.com/content/2012/03/26/article/editorial_an_nfl_hit_list

There’s no small irony in the fact that a team called the Saints has
behaved so badly.

Coaches and some players on the NFL team sanctioned a system that offered
cash bonuses for severe hits to star opponents, including Carolina Panthers
quarterback Cam Newton, former Minnesota Viking Brett Favre and Green Bay
Packer Aaron Rodgers.

The bounty on Favre, offered before the 2010 National Football Conference
Championship Game, totaled $10,000 and was dangled by a Saints player,
defensive captain Jonathan Vilma. Knock Favre out of the game and the cash
was yours.

When Favre was hit high and low by a pair of Saints defenders, and had to
be carried off the field, a microphone picked up one unidentified player on
the sideline yelling, “Pay me my money!” Not so fast. Favre returned to
finish the game, but said afterward that ever since he was asked repeatedly
whether a price had been put on his head.

The punishment has been sweeping and severe: Saints head coach Sean Payton
last week was suspended for the entire season. Former defensive coordinator
Gregg Williams, who directed the bounty program, was suspended
indefinitely. An assistant head coach and the team’s general manager also
face suspensions.

Further, the Saints will lose their second-round draft picks in 2012 and
2013 and must pay a $500,000 fine. Penalties loom as well for some
individual players, as many as 27 of whom may have participated in the
Saints’ bounty system.
-------------------------------
Junior Seau's death reopens debate around NFL brain injuries

5-3-2012

Death of former San Diego Chargers linebacker may show further evidence of
link between concussion and mental illness

Junior Seau's death by an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to his
chest adds his name to a growing list of
NFL<http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/nfl>stars who have killed
themselves in retirement.

There are little known details about the circumstances of Seau's death, but
police have said they have found no evidence of foul play and are
investigating it as a suicide.

If so, this will be the second suicide of a retired football star in two
weeks, and the third recently that hints at a connection between football's
physicality, and long-term brain damage that may result from repeated blows
to the head.

Ray Easterling, a safety for the Atlanta Falcons in the 1970s, died on
April 19, also of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Easterling was the lead
plaintiff in a lawsuit against the NFL over concussion-related injuries.

Easterling's lawsuit, filed by his attorney Larry Coben last August and
joined by more than 1,000 former players, claimed that the NFL
"continuously and vehemently denied that it knew, should have known or
believed that there is any relationship between NFL players suffering
concussions while playing … and long-term problems such as headaches,
dizziness, dementia and/or Alzheimer's disease that many retired players
have experienced."

Another lawsuit <http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/03/sport/nfl-lawsuit/index.html>,
filed on Thursday in US district court in Atlanta by attorney Mike McGlamry
on behalf of more than 100 former pro players, claims that the NFL
"repeatedly refuted the connection between concussions and brain injury."

In 2011, Chicago Bears safety Dave Duerson, like Seau, shot himself in the
chest, leaving a note that he said he wanted his brain donated to be
studied.

When doctors examined Duerson's brain they found he had extensive damage
from repeated trauma to his head over his years in the league. Researchers
at Boston University's Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy
have found – and testified before
Congress<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/27/AR2009102703547.html>–
that repeated concussions in football have long-term effects and can
lead
to dementia at a young age.

"We don't know what has gone on with Junior Seau, but he could fit the
pattern of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, especially with it ending in
suicide," Julian Bailes, a Chicago neurosurgeon, told the Guardian.

Bailes has studied the brains of more than 30 former football players as
well as wrestlers, boxers and some returning military veterans who
sustained repeated mild head injuries.

Bailes added: "These athletes end up having, after they retire, a latency
period after which they have problems with failed relationships, marriages,
business failures, depression, often drug and alcohol abuse. There can be
some form of dementia but they usually end in suicide. And most of it has
only been expressed after they've stopped playing their sport."

League commissioner Roger Goodell has in the past made efforts to the make
the game safer, tweaking rules that relate to illegal use of the helmet and
hits to the head and neck.

Bailes, an NFL fan and former team physician, is supportive of such moves.

"Ultimately what is going to have to happen is they have to take head
contact out of the game," he said. "I realize that's much easier said than
done. I think that's where we're going with this. Head contact and
repetitive blows to the brain are going to have to be removed from the
game."

Some players have balked at such moves. "It's football, you know. If people
want to watch soccer, they can watch soccer," Troy Polamalu of the
Pittsburgh Steelers told the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette<http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/breaking/polamalu-goodell-has-too-much-power-271368/>.


But Seau, 43, a San Diego Chargers linebacker who played through multiple
concussions during his time in the league, had defended Goodell's efforts.
"It has to happen," he told his friend, the Sports Illustrated writer Jim
Trotter<http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/jim_trotter/05/02/junior.seau/index.html#ixzz1tnjD7Q8T>.


"Those who are saying the game is changing for the worse, well, they don't
have a father who can't remember his name because of the game. I'm pretty
sure if everybody had to wake with their dad not knowing his name, not
knowing his kids' name, not being able to function at a normal rate after
football, they would understand that the game needs to change.

"If it doesn't, there are going to be more players, more great players
being affected by the things that we know of and aren't changing. That's
not right."

Although Seau's behaviour had become erratic in retirement, there were few
glaring clues in the immediate run-up to the former Pro Bowl veteran's
death. The day before his death, Seau, a gregarious and beloved future hall
of famer, texted his ex-wife and three children simply to say: "Love you."

Seau spoke to his distraught mother the day before his death. "He know I
heard a bad voice on Wednesday morning," she told the New York Daily
News<http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/future-football-hall-famer-junior-seau-dead-43-self-inflicted-gunshot-wound-article-1.1071694?print>
.

In 2010, Seau was in an accident in which he drove his car off of a 30ft
cliff after an arrest on suspicion of assaulting his girlfriend. Seau
emerged uninjured and no charges were filed, but police initially
investigated that incident as a possible suicide attempt.

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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett









charges were filed, but police initially investigated that incident as a
possible suicide attempt.
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