NFL Official Admits Connection Between Football and Brain Disease
For the first time in the sport's history, a senior official of the National Football League (NFL) has come out to declare the correlation between American Football and brain damage.
In a report by Alex Johnson for NBC News, NFL vice president for health and safety policy Jeff Miller confirmed that chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) has a strong link to the game of football.
Miller adds that many of these manifestations occur among former players when they were conducted some research on by Boston University's Dr. Ann McKee.
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"Certainly, Dr. McKee's research shows that a number of retired NFL players were diagnosed with CTE, so the answer to that question is certainly yes," Miller said.
In another report by Rich McCormick for The Verge, Dr. McKee's research found signs of CTE among 90 out of 94 deceased players, 45 out of 55 among players in the collegiate ranks, and 6 out of 26 among players in the high school ranks.
Earlier this year, Dr. Mitch Berger, a member the NFL's Head, Neck & Spine Committee, declared that there was no link between football and brain damage, noting that CTE signs could also be found among ordinary people living different lives.
"Whether it's from football, whether it's from car accidents, gunshot wounds, domestic violence, remains to be seen," Berger said in an early February interview with the Toronto Star.
Brain trauma within a sport such as American Football has been a long-standing issue. So much so that it has become a point of comparison for mixed martial arts, another sport that has been initially criticized because of its "barbaric" nature in its early years.
In January 2013, UFC president Dana White openly declared that fighting in the Octagon carries fewer risks physically, compared to playing in the NFL. White's main point was that UFC fighters are usually given medical suspensions after a brutal knockout, which usually last for months.
NFL players, on the other hand, he says, just cannot afford to be sidelined for that long a time.
"In the NFL, you're not going to lose Tom Brady for three months, man," White said. "You lose Tom Brady for three months and your whole season is wiped out."
