CTE SO FAR

Watching the New York Jets and Indy Colts on Monday Night Football, one guided by a Harvard guy the other by a Stanford guy.

Smart guys from smart schools playing a little football.

What are they thinking?

Ryan Fitzpatrick and Andrew Luck have got to know about CTE. They probably heard about it in college.

Go to a smart college and you’ll hear about CTE. From Northwestern, to Vanderbilt, to Rice, to Berkeley, to Nortre Dame, football players have to know.

And they keep playing.

Is it that bad?

When anyone from Texas raises a red flag CTE, it’s that bad.

Texasexes.org explains it this way:

Doctors diagnose more than 200 concussions in NFL players each year.

“That’s unacceptable, says Shyam Popat, BA ’15, especially considering the long-term consequences to players’ mental health. The Plan II Honors graduate is so concerned with those statistics that he wrote an award-winning thesis on the NFL’s safety policies. He says players often don’t fully understand the health risks associated with one too many bumps to the head.”

One might say this young UT grad doesn’t fully understand the idea of tens of millions of guaranteed dollars.

The football guys know what’s in store down the line. Brain damage is what you’ll get after decades of hits to the head. NFL football hits are quite a bit more than bumps to the head, Shyam Popat.

Imagine this: boxers once trained with mouthfuls of water to force them to breath through their nose. This opened up sinus cavities to more oxygen, which is important when you get get hit so hard you ought to go down but the extra oxygen keeps you up.

Smart guy play football knowing the risk. Even football crazy Texas gets it. What else do you need? PBS, of course.

The smart television channel posted a CTE story all the news outlets refer to. The numbers are key.

“A total of 87 out of 91 former NFL players have tested positive for the brain disease at the center of the debate over concussions in football, according to new figures from the nation’s largest brain bank focused on the study of traumatic head injury.

Researchers with the Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University have now identified the degenerative disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in 96 percent of NFL players that they’ve examined and in 79 percent of all football players. The disease is widely believed to stem from repetitive trauma to the head, and can lead to conditions such as memory loss, depression and dementia.

In total, the lab has found CTE in the brain tissue in 131 out of 165 individuals who, before their deaths, played football either professionally, semi-professionally, in college or in high school.”

Chronic Traumatic Encephalapathy is the name. This is the game.

The casual sports fan may not think twice about football mills grinding through young men and leaving them dazed and confused with post-concussive syndrome.

Throw Harvard into the conversation and it changes things? Just a little? Maybe you need a Harvard educated pro wrestler?

From harvardmagazine.com:

“Among those testifying before Congress was former Harvard defensive tackle Chris Nowinski ’00, whose 2006 book Head Games: Football’s Concussion Crisis from the NFL to Youth Leagues described his own traumatic experiences and spotlighted the issue. Nowinski wasn’t diagnosed with a concussion on the gridiron, but he took blows to the head in his subsequent career as a pro wrestler. (“The difference between a real kick and a ‘pro wrestling’ kick can be three inches,” he explains. “Sometimes they land for real.”) He blacked out at times in the ring, and says his last concussion left him with five years of “post-concussive syndrome.” Only in the last year have Nowinski’s headaches come under control, and he no longer needs medication for the sleepwalking that developed as a sequela.”

One way to prevent head injury and brain disease is eliminating all activities that include the head as a target. Which will never happen. Our heads are always a target. Just ask a tall person in a short world.

Riddell’s SpeedFlex helmet technology is another step. You’ve seen helmets with that front panel? That’s Riddell.

Bleacher Report did some research on helmet design.

“Once the helmet is on, it feels pretty standard. It takes a closer look to see that there’s a variety of padding. There’s the standard air bladder and foam, but there’s also a substance closer to the memory foam you see in beds in a couple locations. 

Riddell provided me with a test unit of the SpeedFlex, and while I didn’t test the impacts of the helmet, it does have a good feel. It was quickly and easily fitted using both the air bladder and the foam adjusting to my head. The ratchet chinstrap works better than a snap system. While the helmet is slightly bigger than the unit it replaces (yes, I have one of those handy too), it does not look or feel bigger. It passes both the mirror test and the feel test handily.”

Do we need a writer doing impact testing on a new helmet? Let him stick to the mirror and feel test.

The reality of CTE is slowly gaining ground in the NFL, which will trickle down to everyone else.

In the meantime the game goes on. We’ve waited months and months for football to start and now that the games are in full swing, the damage continues.

One question: why don’t all players wear the SpeedFlex helmet?

This law firm may hasten the process.

From Football Injury Claims dot com:

“According to a recent CNN article, the NFL® has agreed to settle claims with former NFL® players who experienced head injuries while playing resulting in dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS) and other serious neurological conditions. The NFL® has agreed to pay up to $5.0 million per former player. There is no ceiling, or cap, on the total settlement amount so it’s not too late to file your claim!”

The list of players affected is huge. Take a look and see if you recognize these guys.

What happens between today’s practice, this weekend’s games, and a future with CTE?

The picture grows more focused every time a player takes a hit and hides the symptoms to keep playing.

Get the right gear.