HJNO Jul/Aug 2024

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS I  JUL / AUG 2024 17 You think you are watching football; you are actually watching live brain damage, and it is showing on the brains of high school players. It is the beginning of another football season in the South, almost 20 years after CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, was identified in the brain of Mike Webster, a hard-hitting NFL hero who suffered the effects of broken neurons — impossible to heal and chronic neuro-inflammation from repeated blows to the head, all while we cheered. Decades later, with the revelation that football was causing the same brain disease as boxers get, concussive and non-concussive hits are still inherent to the game. The humane solution at first seems like a no-brainer once brain damage became a factor: Either change the game to protect the players, or end the carnage. The former has been tried, but no matter how many changes the NFL has enacted, anyone with a fundamental knowledge of brain structure knows the attempt is futile. It is a collision game, and even the ground doesn’t give up its yards without a fight. Would the NFL stop the brain damage if they could? Absolutely! Brain trauma and its horrific results in players isn’t actually good for business, although the league is doing surprisingly well despite the costs to players. But if you ask former players, and they open up to you, you will find men secretly frightened who realize their profession set them up with the equivalent chance of having Alzheimer’s on both sides of their families. Mike Webster was not an enigma. When NFL players’ families started sending their dead-too-soon loved ones’ brains for CTE analysis, the NFL, taking the Big Tobacco playbook, vehemently denied any connection to brain damage. They paid for many researchers to say just that. Their team doctors denied it, even in front of congress. But former NFL players kept having neurological issues, and they and their families demanded compensation. So far, the NFL has paid over $1 billion to former players from a concussion settlement, a much higher amount than the NFL was expecting, especially once race- norming was dropped recently to give Black players equal footing with White players for similar symptoms of neurodegeneration. 1 Interestingly, the concussion settlement was sparked by the revelation of CTE in former players, but the NFL stopped paying for confirmed CTE cases in 2015. “The NFL said paying families for CTE would encourage players to commit suicide to get payouts,” scoffed Lisa McHale, the NFL football widow of Tom McHale. His brain was among the first donated. The cynical side of me thinks the NFL wanted to disincentivize families from donating brains and getting firm CTE diagnoses, which is currently only diagnosed postmortem. Many argue that these men are/were pros, at least now know the risks, are being somewhat compensated, and have/had the privilege of basking in the glory of playing a game few would or could play at that level. Just 1% of American boys who play in high school will play in the league, and, so far, that level of human sacrifice hasn’t hindered fans’ appetites or player participation. In fact, EDITOR’S NOTE: