Jessica Gutschow
In 2002, Dr. Bennet Omalu performed an autopsy on the body of legendary Pittsburgh Steelers center: Mike Webster. Webster had gone from an American hero on the football field to a man suffering from extreme dementia and paranoia by the time he died at age 50. What Omalu would uncover within Webster’s brain would shock and change the pro football world forever. He called it, “Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy”, or CTE … a progressive degenerative disease of the brain caused by repetitive head trauma. A protein called Tau slowly forms clumps that spread throughout the brain, killing brain cells. Symptoms generally develop years after the trauma has been endured and include depression, paranoia, extreme anger, and eventually, full blown dementia. When Omalu released his discovery to the NFL, he expected them to be grateful for his in-depth research, but instead, the NFL attempted to completely discredit his work, even referring to it as “inappropriate science” that was a “complete misunderstanding” (Laskas 2009). After extensive research on Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy and the NFL’s timeline of its decision making, it is obvious that the league has, at various times, lied about what it knew about the disease and its effects. The league also dedicated an entire PR team to cover up the growing evidence connecting football and CTE. This was a public relations communication failure that went on for many years and, on some levels, continues today.
Football is an undeniably violent sport. On literally every play, players hit one another with as much force as they can possibly generate. The 17th century annual Monday football game at Harvard University was often referred to as “Bloody Monday,” and was even temporarily banned for its violent nature (Rogers 2017). By the early 20th century, the dangers of contact sports and concussions were well understood by the health field. The Academy of Pediatrics recognized the correlation between violent sports and mental developmental problems by 1957. They even took the position that no child under the age of 12 should play football, wrestling, or boxing. Unfortunately, their suspicions weren’t confirmed until decades later in 2002 when Omalu published his findings from his study of Mike Webster’s brain, but multiple studies have been conducted since then to measure the intensity of football and its impact on the body. A 2017 Stanford paper showed that in just one game, a player receives about 60 violent blows to the head. In fact, some of those blows have the equivalent g-force of a car traveling 13 miles per hour slamming into a brick wall. The University of Oklahoma conducted a study to measure the g-force of a typical lineman collision during play. A fighter pilot will generally pass out at five or six g’s over a long period of time. However, the study predicted that linemen face 20-30 g’s on every single play of every single game. There is no doubt that players put their bodies on the line for the sport they choose to play.
As public pressure mounted on the NFL, the situation had reached a tipping point and people demanded answers. Why were so many players slowly losing their minds after their NFL careers ended? Most CTE sufferers even ended up killing themselves or attempting to harm others. Dr. Omalu and his colleagues were determined to find answers as the NFL continued to deliberately deny to its stakeholders. After diagnosing Webster, Omalu sent a letter to the Hall of Fame, proposing a comprehensive, longitudinal study using genetic profiling of every NFL Hall of Fame football player. The NFL denied his request. They also denied his follow up request six months later (Laskas 2009). Between 2002 and 2014, the NFL repeatedly publicly denied that there was any connection between long-term neurological issues and football (Rogers 39). At a press conference following the NFL’s concussion summit, Ira Casson (co-chair of the NFL) said, “The only scientifically valid evidence of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy is in boxers and jockeys. It’s never been scientifically, validly documented in any other athletes.” The NFL’s choice to blatantly deceive the public instead of being open to conversations on the issue was extremely unethical. The only scientific studies related to CTE that the NFL would admit were legitimate and valid were the ones conducted by the doctors on its payroll. In fact, between 2007 and 2012 the NFL hired its Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee to publish studies claiming that repeated hits to the head do NOT cause long-term brain damage (Laskas 2009). However, Elliot Pellman, who was the chair of the MTBI, lied about his medical degree and actually had absolutely no experience or background in brain science. The founding of the committee was the NFL PR team’s inadequate response to public pressure for answers. At this point, however, the public was fed up with the stunt. In 2013, in an attempt to silence current CTE sufferers, the NFL suddenly settled a $765 million dollar lawsuit with 4,500 former players. The athletes claimed the NFL deliberately hid known research and information on the long-term consequences of concussions. This lawsuit later grew to cover a whopping 20,000 former players for $1 billion by 2016 (Rogers 43). If the NFL and its crisis strategy personnel didn’t look guilty enough already, in 2015, a congressional report stated that the NFL demonstrated a “long standing pattern of attempts to influence the scientific understanding of the consequences of repeated head trauma.” The report concluded by stating “While the NFL was publicly proclaiming its role as funders and accelerators of important research, it was primarily attempting to influence that research.” (Rogers 43). The NFL chose to keep its league alive rather than prioritize the health and safety of its players. Defenders of the NFL’s actions argue that the league was simply too big to fail. The NFL is estimated to directly employ around 120,000 people nationwide, and the average NFL team is valued at around $2.5 billion. So, how big is too big to fail? At what point do ethics overpower greed? Perhaps famed head coach, Vince Lombardi outlined the answer to that question when he said, “winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.”
It took the NFL until 2016 to finally admit there was scientific evidence linking CTE to football. Once they had publicly acknowledged the problem, the NFL needed to prove its dedication to righting its wrongs and making football safer for the future. First, The league decided to implement stricter return-to-play guidelines for concussed players. Since the most concussive hits generally occurred on kickoff, the NFL moved the kick-off line up by five yards to reduce the speed of collisions. The new rules also state that a neurosurgeon must be on the sideline for every game. Even amidst the recent league changes and profound scientific evidence, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, maintains that the league “has never admitted that anything was caused by football” (Rogers 43). The NFL website now includes an entire health and safety tab where it discusses the actions the league has taken to combat all injuries on the field. The page is complete with a summary of its research on brain injuries and an entire “injury reduction plan.” According to the NFL, its newly implemented, “Player Safety Advisory Panel” reviews injury data after every season and examines video recaps to analyze how injuries occur. This, along with pointing out the amount of money the league continues to donate annually to concussion research is a PR strategy to take public attention off of the negative press linking CTE to football–especially NFL football. In an attempt to maintain the trust of the families of its players, the NFL often hosts family days where teams will bring in athletes’ parents to participate in drills and get a behind the scenes look at their child’s day to day life as an NFL athlete. Often, the NFL addresses the concept of “heads up football” during family day activities, which encourages players to safely bring down their opponent while protecting their neck and head from impact. Due to football’s influence on kids, the NFL also funds a youth football concussion awareness initiative in order to teach players from a young age the importance of safety on the field. The league wants desperately to maintain the trust and funds from the public that allow football to thrive in American culture which is why it has recently made such drastic changes in its public image. The NFL wants people to believe it really is leading the way in progressing the research and understanding of brain health and football because the NFL needs public funding to survive.
The amount of evidence convicting the NFL of unethical behavior is staggering and yet, there was very little public backlash when it was first discovered. Most people agreed it was wrong of the league to manipulate the CTE issue, but they argue that players chose to play the sport and that it was not necessarily the responsibility of the NFL to pay for the damages the players caused to themselves. However, former players fighting back claim they had a right to know the risk of long-term, progressive brain damage football posed. Physical injuries are an obvious risk when an athlete decides to play football, but how were they supposed to protect themselves from the mental damage they were unknowingly enduring on every play? Professional sports (especially the NFL) are a foundational piece of American culture, and many sports fans had the same reaction as the NFL did when CTE was first discovered. People didn’t want to believe that their favorite teams they’d grown up cheering for could face possible extinction. When Omalu first published his research on CTE, he was attacked, harassed, and even discredited as a neurologist by the public. Today, it is easy to look back on the crisis and point out where the NFL’s strategies for handling the situation were unethical, but it reacted the same way most of the nation did. Unfortunately, many social issues such as this one seem much more complicated up close than they really are. Even though it would have been much more difficult, the NFL’s PR team should have addressed the problem as soon as it came to their attention. They never should have attempted to discredit Dr. Omalu and/or keep information hidden from athletes. The organization should have funded additional legitimate third-party research regarding the problem immediately to protect players and prove to the public that they were willing to take responsibility for the issue. The NFL’s decision not to take the ethical route of crisis strategy even cost the lives of multiple former athletes. Though the NFL is a multi-billion- dollar empire, it is not excused from the basic rules of ethical communication. Communication is the key tool in shaping how conflict plays out, and the NFL’s actions dragged out the issue, making it worse. However, according to Dr. Omalu, the public should not expect the NFL to solve this problem. In fact, in an interview with CNN Omalu said, “The NFL is a corporation. What do corporations do? Sell a product or a service to generate revenue and make as much profit as possible… The NFL is not in business to protect your child or to provide health education.” (Doximity 2018).
Ever since Dr. Bennet Omalu’s discovery of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in Mike Webster’s brain, the NFL has been teetering on the edge of a sport- wide crisis. As CTE awareness spreads throughout the sports world, its profound impact is being recognized earlier than neurologists ever expected. A Boston University study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association found CTE in the brains of 99% of former NFL players, 91% of college players, and 21% of high school football players (Moran 2017). After analysis of the NFL’s crisis strategy, it is evident they were unethical in their handling of the CTE crisis. Today it feels as if the league is genuinely attempting to further the fight against the disease, but many still wonder how much we should trust the organization. After a history of repeatedly lying to the public and even its own athletes, many wonder why we still have faith in the league to truly solve the problem. Possibly this stems from the public’s long-standing love for the game of football … a game that these fans don’t want to lose. This gives the NFL the power to use its public relations messages to suggest to the public that it truly cares about player safety, that the game is getting safer and that the cases of CTE can be reduced. Of course, none of these messages have any basis in fact as yet. This is a public relations game with billions of dollars and one of America’s most loved sports at stake. And it’s a case study for ethics in journalism – public relations that should be closely examined by all of those pursuing this career.
Works Cited
“BU Researchers Find CTE in 99% of Former NFL Players Studied.” Boston University, http://www.bu.edu/articles/2017/cte-former-nfl-players/.
CBS News. “NFL Players with CTE.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 24 Jan. 2018, http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/nfl-football-players-with-cte/5/.
“Dr. Bennet Omalu on Why the NFL Isn’t Responsible for Brain Safety.” Op, opmed.doximity.com/articles/dr-bennet-omalu-on-why-the-nfl-isn-t-responsible-for-brain-safety-599db200-c7ab-482c-8dff-e6fe39392f7c.
Fainaru-Wada, Mark, and Steve Fainaru. “NFL Retakes Control of Brain Research as
Touted Alliance Ends.” ESPN, ESPN Internet Ventures, 31 Aug. 2017, www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/20509977/nfl-takes-control-brain-research-100-million-donation-all-ending-partnerships-entities.
Higgins, Matt. “Football Physics: The Anatomy of a Hit.” Popular Mechanics, Popular Mechanics, 14 Nov. 2017, http://www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/sports/a2954/4212171/.
Laskas, Jeanne Marie. “Game Brain: Football Players and Concussions.” GQ, GQ, 26 May 2017, www.gq.com/story/nfl-players-brain-dementia-study-memory-concussions.
Martin, Jill. “NFL Acknowledges CTE Link with Football. Now What?” CNN, Cable News Network, 16 Mar. 2016, http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/15/health/nfl-cte-link/index.html.
“NFL Health & Safety.” NFL Football Operations, operations.nfl.com/football-ops/nfl-ops-honoring-the-game/health-safety/.
Nowinski, Christopher. “Sports-Related Brain Injuries.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., http://www.britannica.com/topic/Sports-Related-Brain-Injuries-1803638.
“Study Finds Evidence of Brain Injury in Living NFL Veterans.” Scientific American, 12 Apr. 2016,www.scientificamerican.com/article/study-finds-evidence-of-brain-injury-in-living-nfl-veterans/.
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