Concussion

by Jeanne Marie Laskas

  They wait for the results.

  Then, at the 2009 Super Bowl in Tampa, Nowinski and McKee hold a press conference.

  “A press conference?” Bennet says to Bailes.

  Tom McHale, offensive lineman for nine seasons, had CTE, Nowinski and McKee report. They say they have proof! Dr. Ann McKee of Boston University has found CTE in Tom McHale’s brain.

  “That’s my brain!” Bennet says, watching the coverage on CNN. But of course it was Nowinski’s brain, too. Half to each. And Nowinski will later claim that his group tried to call Bennet’s group multiple times, and Bennet’s group never returned the calls.

  The infighting doesn’t matter to the media. The wires pick up the headlines. CTE! Brain damage in football players! The story gets murky. Who discovered this new disease? Fact-checking slips. Ann McKee discovered CTE? Chris Nowinski and Ann McKee discovered CTE! That is how the narrative slowly gets rewritten, while Bennet struggles with his place on the sideline, convincing himself, yeah, sure, this is where he belongs. No, really, obscurity is fine.

  —

  In September 2009, a year after they began, the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research reveals its findings from the survey the NFL commissioned them to do. They find that Alzheimer’s disease, or something very similar, is being diagnosed in former NFL players nineteen times more often than in the national population among men ages thirty through forty-nine.

  Nineteen times.

  Their own study. It’s like Big Tobacco ordering a study that ends up showing that smokers get cancer.

  The Michigan study makes headlines. It’s one more thing on top of one more thing about concussions in football players. It gets Congress activated. What is going on with brain damage and the NFL? The House Judiciary Committee announces that it will hold hearings. They want Roger Goodell to answer for this mess. They want Casson. They want the NFL’s MTBI committee. The committee is still publishing papers in Neurosurgery—it has just come out with its sixteenth paper concluding that there is no worrisome link between football and dementia. What is going on?

  Everybody who is anybody in CTE research gets the call from Congress to come to Washington to testify.

  Bailes, Maroon, Cantu, Nowinski, McKee.

  Everybody who is anybody in CTE research gets the call.

  Bennet Omalu does not get the call.

  “Why am I not invited, Julian?” Bennet asks Bailes. It will become a refrain—“Why am I left out?”—in the coming years, as Bennet struggles to earn entry to the circles, circles pushing against circles.

  Professional sports. Science. Medicine. Politics. Law. Families suffering, guys going crazy, guys beating up wives, guys killing themselves. Bennet watches from the sidelines. He works on convincing himself he belongs on the sidelines, that he’s happy there, not quite knowing what to do with the fact that if not for his contribution, his determination, his discovery, none of the circles would have collided, the sparks would not be flying, the CTE light might never have come on.

  What are you supposed to do with knowledge like that? Sing your own praises? Stay involved in the national conversation just because hey, you’re the one who figured it out? Demand respect because, hey, you’re the guy who figured it out?

  Exactly how does one do something like that?

  —

  I try to understand, and I can’t come up with an explanation as to why the messenger is not listened to. And this is where I have questions of: Could it be related to racism? Could this be nothing more than racism? Where blacks are systematically—and systemically—excluded from mainstream American life?

  People have said that to me. They have said, “Bennet, you know, if you were white, if you were a white guy, with the work you have done, the whole world—they would have lifted you so high.” Even Nowinski said it that first day I met him. He said I didn’t have, what do you call it, “the believability factor.” That I’m young. I’m black. I’m from Nigeria. That if my name was O’Malu, an Irish guy with gray hair, a white guy who is in one of the Ivy League schools, everybody would have embraced me when I told them about CTE.

  I do think there’s a mind-set—no matter how much we may want to deny it in this country—about the perception of blackness. And sometimes it’s a subconscious mind-set. Where anything associated with blackness has a negative connotation. This mind-set has a very fundamental assumption. A false assumption that black people cannot be intelligent.

  I think this is my story, to an extent. It’s a manifestation of a way of thinking.

  Like Albert Einstein has said. He said, “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”

  When I was in Nigeria, I was not aware of the concept of racism. I was not. When I came to America, it was so alien to me. That why would somebody who does not know me—the mere fact that he sees that I’m a certain color, he would pigeonhole me? And then when it comes to creating opportunities for me to express my talent and become who I want to become, he would try to deny me those opportunities. To keep me down!

  That disappointed me about America. That disappointed me so much.

  What have I done? Can somebody tell me? If there’s something I have done wrong, I want to find out what it is so I don’t repeat it. I want to learn from it. But the more I search, the more convinced I am that I have not done anything wrong. I have done my part in the CTE world. I was able to make the impact I did while being unnoticed.

  I think the NFL was totally confused on how to address the CTE issue. They globally mismanaged it, because they dismissed me.

  —

  On a cold and rainy Wednesday morning in Washington, D.C., in October 2009, politicians and scientists and business men and women gather in the Rayburn House Office Building, wearing polite expressions of anticipation.

  “There appears to be growing evidence that playing football may be linked to long-term brain damage,” the House Judiciary Committee chairman, Representative John Conyers, says, opening the session. He’s in his eighties, broad, hunched over, smooth. He’s the longest-serving current member of the entire Congress, one of the founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus. He’s a walking monument; he was in Selma in 1963 on Freedom Day, he’s the guy responsible for Martin Luther King Day. He’s a no-bullshit guy, and he starts the three-hour morning session with blunt focus. “I say this not because of the impact of these injuries on the two thousand current players and more than ten thousand retirees associated with the football league and their families. I say it because of the effect on the millions of players at the college, high school, and youth levels.”

  It’s an issue that warrants federal scrutiny, he says, especially given the insidious fact that the NFL is tax-exempt. Technically, according to the books, the NFL is a trade organization, an unincorporated nonprofit 501(c)(6) association made up of and financed by its thirty-two member teams, and as such, it is required to pay no federal taxes. (Individual teams are for-profit entities, so they have to pay income taxes.) The NFL’s tax-exempt status was bestowed in the 1960s when Congress allowed the then American Football League to merge with the National Football League, granting the newly formed group antitrust waivers. That gave it a monopoly on broadcasting rights—and that’s largely how the league now makes about ten billion dollars every year, and how it can afford to pay Goodell’s annual salary of about $44 million. (In 2015 the NFL will decide to end its tax-exempt status, explaning that the nonprofit designation had become a “distraction.”) Meanwhile, state and local tax dollars go into funding stadiums—about 70 percent of the capital cost of NFL stadiums has been provided by taxpayers.

  America funds America’s game, and the NFL rakes in the profit.

  So, yeah, Congress has every reason to stick their nose into this business.

  “Is there a link between playing professional football and the likelihood of contracting brain-related injury such as dementia?” Conyers asks Goodell, who
is sitting across from him like a schoolboy, rosy-cheeked, his blond hair parted on the left, slicked over, his blue eyes set deep as if tucked beneath a shelf. He’s wearing a powder-blue tie.

  “We know that concussions are a serious matter,” Goodell answers. “Our goal will continue to be to make our game as safe as possible.” He goes on like this, like a salesman, polished and vague. No one cares more about concussions than the NFL, he says. In fact, they put a team of doctors together to study this very issue. “We have published every piece of data,” he says. “We have published it publicly, we have given it to medical journals, it is part of peer review.”

  “I asked you a simple question,” Conyers says. Is there a link between playing professional football and the likelihood of contracting brain-related injury such as dementia? “What’s the answer?”

  “The answer is the medical experts would know better than I would with respect to that,” Goodell says.

  The dodge does not go unnoticed. Especially given the fact that the NFL’s medical experts are not here to help answer the question.

  Ira Casson, the current head of the MTBI committee?

  Not here.

  Why is he not here? the committee wants to know.

  Nobody asked him to come, Goodell says, in so many words.

  Oh, yes, they did.

  An aide comes scurrying up to Goodell, hands him a slip of paper. Goodell reads it, leans into the microphone, says he’ll need to get back to the committee on the Casson issue.

  “From my experience, the NFL is a model in concussion management,” Maroon adds, when given the floor. He’s as close as the NFL comes to having a medical expert at the hearing. He talks about how honored he was to work with Super Bowl coaches Chuck Noll, Bill Cowher, and Mike Tomlin. He talks about ImPACT, the concussion test he trademarked that is now sold around the world.

  Representative Maxine Waters can’t stand listening to this crap. She knows the NFL. Her husband, Sid, played for the Browns. A charade, she says of the MTBI committee. “We’ve heard from the NFL time and time again,” she says. “You’re always ‘studying,’ you’re always ‘trying,’ you’re ‘hopeful.’ ” And she points her finger at Goodell. “Let me say this to Mr. Goodell and everybody who is here today. I think you are an eight-billion-dollar organization that has not taken seriously your responsibility to the players. The fact of the matter is, yes, people want to play. The fact of the matter is they are going to be injured. And we know no matter what kind of helmet you build, or what kind of equipment you have, it is a dangerous sport and people are going to be injured. The only question is: What are you going to do? Are you going to pay for it? Are you going to pay the injured players and their families for the injuries that they have received in helping you to be a multi-billion-dollar operation? That is the only question.”

  Goodell blinks.

  Representative Linda Sanchez hops on the bandwagon. She knows dementia. Her dad had Alzheimer’s disease. She knows labor. She used to be a labor lawyer. She wants to confront Casson personally. She has a lot of questions for him, says she wishes he was here. She cues the video. She shows a clip of Casson on TV, the clip of him being interviewed in 2007 saying “No,” and “No,” and “No,” all those times, denying the link between dementia and football.

  “A blanket denial!” she says. “It reminds me of the tobacco companies pre-nineties when they kept saying, ‘No, there is no link between smoking and damage to your health.’ And they were forced to admit that that was incorrect through a spate of litigation. Don’t you think the league would be better off legally, and that our youth might be a little bit better off in terms of knowledge, if you guys just embraced that there is research that suggests this and admitted to it?”

  “Well, Congresswoman, I do believe that we have embraced the research,” Goodell says.

  “You are talking about one study, and that is the NFL’s study,” Sanchez says. “You are not talking about the independent studies that have been conducted by other researchers.”

  The comparison is made explicit in the first session, and repeated in the second: Big Tobacco. The NFL is like Big Tobacco. The MTBI committee is a charade. Nowinski piles on. McKee piles on. Bailes piles on. He mentions Bennet’s name several times, says he’s the guy who figured this out. None of the other scientists mention Bennet.

  It’s a PR nightmare for the NFL.

  Three weeks after the hearing, Casson is relieved of his duties with the MTBI committee, and the committee itself is scrapped. The league announces it will start over, with new researchers, actual independent scientists.

  Then, two months later, the NFL does something that catches everyone off guard. On December 20, 2009, they announce a gift of one million dollars to Nowinski’s group at Boston University. One million dollars for them to go ahead and study CTE. In addition, they will encourage their players to pledge their brains to BU’s new brain bank.

  The gift appears to flummox even Nowinski.

  “A million dollars, Julian,” Bennet says, calling Bailes after hearing the news. “The NFL is giving Chris Nowinski a million dollars?”

  “Something like that,” Bailes says.

  “They’re buying support.”

  “That’s too simplistic.”

  “It’s the NFL again funding concussion research,” Bennet says. “It is what it is, Julian. The NFL paying for science.”

  Nowinski’s group throws Goodell a party after he gives them the million dollars. At the Boston Harbor Hotel, they present him with the Impact Award. They have a big cake. It has a brain on top, made of frosting, in the shape of a football.

  “A cake, Julian,” Bennet says. “A cake.”

  CHAPTER 13

  WORD

  Just because politicians, scientists, and business execs are raging about it, and newspaper headlines are screaming it, doesn’t mean the message sticks—or that people care. It takes more than that to change a culture.

  In the wake of the congressional hearings, the NFL announces that coaches will start putting posters in locker rooms. “CONCUSSION: A Must Read for NFL Players. Report It. Get Checked Out. Take Care of Your Brain.” The text explicitly warns of personality changes, depression, and dementia that could happen if you keep banging your head into guys. “Concussions and conditions resulting from repeated brain injury can change your life and your family’s life forever.”

  The media heralds the poster as a seismic shift in the NFL’s handling of head trauma, and yet, at the same time, it’s…a poster.

  In a single weekend in October, despite the poster, four players are knocked out cold with concussions. That’s when the league announces it is changing the rules: it will start handing out fines and suspending any player judged to be guilty of “devastating hits” and/or “head shots.”

  This announcement finally activates football fans. The concussion issue is starting to become a serious buzz-kill. Like a looming player strike or something—one of those things you hope won’t happen. You hope the guys work that buzz-kill thing out so that your Sundays—your tailgate parties, your beer and Dorito and wing ding gatherings—are not ruined.

  But fining guys for big, awesome hits? From a fan’s perspective, it’s now getting personal.

  Discussion boards light up:

  This is not good. Freaking women organs running this league.

  The NFL is turning into a touch football “Nancy Boy” League. Steer your kids that have talent into baseball, basketball, or any other sport that will still have dignity left in two years.

  The pussyification of the NFL continues. Every single goddam year the rules get more and more VAGINIZED.

  Right about the time the NFL starts penalizing players for violent hits, it also quietly removes from its website the popular DVD Moment of Impact, which it sold for $14.99. The package copy for Moment of Impact put you on the scrimmage line. First you hear the breathing. Then you feel the wind coming through your helmet’s ear hole. Suddenly you’re down, and y
ou’re looking through your helmet’s ear hole. Pain? That’s for tomorrow morning….‘Moment of Impact’ takes you…into the huddle, up to the line, and under the pile with some of the game’s roughest customers.

  Because it’s you. This violence is for you, a chance to imagine yourself taking it, absorbing punishment you never actually would. A vicarious thrill. The violence is virtual.

  The last thing you want to be reminded of is the fact that it’s not really virtual at all, that these are actual people doing the bashing and getting bashed, people with families and histories and dreams.

  You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to recognize the stark contradiction that begins to befall the NFL. The violent nature of the sport, the very thing it’s built on, is now called into question. Even sportscasters struggle to reconcile what football is with what it’s doing to its players.

  Postgame commentary following Monday Night Football in 2010 gets at the heart of the dilemma:

  STEVE YOUNG: If you do something that’s devastating—a big hit—you’re going to probably be exposed to being suspended.

  STUART SCOTT: But isn’t that football? I mean, seriously. A devastating hit—isn’t that, hasn’t that been football?

  MATT MILLEN: Listen, this bothers me, what we’re talking about right here. It’s wrong. You can’t take the competition and the toughness and all the stuff that goes into making the game great—you can’t take it out of the game.

  YOUNG: What they’re worried about is that Darryl Stingley hit. They’re going to legislate it out.

  MILLEN: That is stupid.

  TRENT DILFER: This game was built—and people love it—because of the gladiatorial nature of it. Those are guys out there, and they’re sacrificing their bodies and laying it all on the line, and that’s what people enjoy. And the league is going to rob us all of that….It’s an absolute joke. First of all, every week we’re talking about thousands of hits. Eventually the head is going to get hit. This is part of football.