NFL Commissioner Supports CTE Link

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has supported the assertion of a senior league official who last week acknowledged the connection between football and the degenerative brain disease CTE, describing the statements as “consistent with our position over the years”.

Goodell’s comments on Wednesday at the annual owners meetings directly referenced NFL senior vice president Jeff Miller, whose remarks to a congressional roundtable last week represented the first time a league official has acknowledged a link between football and CTE by a league official.

“The most important thing for us is to support the medicine and scientists who determine what those connections are,” Goodell said. “We think that the statements that have been made by Jeff Miller and others have consistent with our position over the years. We’ve actually funded those studies. So we’re not only aware of those and recognize them but we support those studies. A lot of the research is still in its infancy, but we’re trying to find ways to accelerate that.”

The remarks came one day after Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones characterized the connection between football and CTE as “absurd”.

The commissioner addressed a broad range of topics at the news conference on Wednesday, including the potential relocation of a team to Las Vegas and the reports suggesting the league is near a deal to host a regular-season game in China in 2018.

Goodell wouldn’t dismiss America’s gambling capital as a potential home for an NFL team when asked about Oakland Raiders owner Mark Davis’ interest in moving his club there.

“Mark Davis is appropriately looking at all his alternatives,” Goodell said, adding the city’s association with legalized betting “are things we’d have to deal with. We would have to understand the impact on us. Each owner would have a vote; it would be a factor many owners would have to balance, the league would have to balance.”

The commissioner stopped short of confirming the Los Angeles Rams’ would play a regular-season game in China – news first reported by the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday and by NFL.com on Wednesday – but acknowledged the league’s well-documented global ambitions.

“I think the size of China in the global marketplace, that’s something you can’t ignore. We know we have lots of fans over there, and more important, potential fans over there,” Goodell said. “We have multiple teams that are interested in playing. We have more than we can handle at this point in time.”

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NFL Official Acknowledges CTE Link

An NFL official has acknowledged a link between football and a degenerative brain disease for the first time.

Jeff Miller, the NFL’s senior vice-president for health and safety, spoke about the connection during an appearance Monday at a congressional committee’s roundtable discussion about concussions.

Democratic representative Jan Schakowsky of Illinois asked Miller: “Do you think there is a link between football and degenerative brain disorders like CTE?”

Miller, who was referring to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), began by discussing the work of Boston University neuropathologist Dr Ann McKee, who has found CTE in the brains of 90 out of 94 former pro football players.

“Well, 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, but there are also a number of questions that come with that,” Miller said.

Schakowsky repeated the question: “Is there a link?”

“Yes. Sure,” Miller responded.

The NFL has not previously linked playing football to CTE, a disease tied to repeated brain trauma and associated with symptoms such as memory loss, depression and progressive dementia. It can only be detected after death. Among the players found to have CTE in their brains were Hall of Famers Junior Seau and Ken Stabler.

During Super Bowl week, Dr Mitch Berger, a member of the NFL’s head, neck and spine committee, would not draw a direct line from football to CTE.

Miller appeared at the discussion of concussions before the House committee on energy and commerce. ESPN first reported Miller’s appearance before the committee.

Last month, Berger, chair of the department of neurological surgery at the University of California, San Francisco, repeatedly said that while the types of degenerative changes to the brain associated with CTE have been found in late football players, such signs have also been found “in all spectrums of life”.

Tao, a protein that indicates the presence of CTE, “is found in brains that have traumatic injuries”, Berger said. “Whether it’s from football, whether it’s from car accidents, whether it’s from gunshot wounds, domestic violence – it remains to be seen.”

Miller said he was “not going to speak for Dr Berger” when asked by Schakowsky about those comments.

Just before Miller spoke, McKee was asked the same question about the link between hits in football and CTE. She responded “unequivocally” that there is, and went into details about her research findings.

Miller told the committee that the entire scope of the issue needs to be addressed.

“You asked the question whether I thought there was a link,” he said. “Certainly based on Dr McKee’s research, there’s a link, because she’s found CTE in a number of retired football players. I think that the broader point, and the one that your question gets to, is what that necessarily means and where do we go from here with that information.”

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Watt Not Shocked about NFL Head Trauma

Houston Texans defensive end JJ Watt says he’s not shocked by the recent clamour around head trauma – because he knew the risks going into the NFL.

Watt said he takes all the precautions he can when it comes to safety, but admitted: “I don’t think any of us got into this game thinking we were not going to get hit on our heads.”

The conversation about head trauma has intensified in recent weeks, thanks in part to the film Concussion, which details how many former players suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a brain disease linked to repeated blows to the head. Fresh research into the deaths of Giants safety Tyler Sash and Raiders quarterback Ken Stabler found both players had CTE when they died.

Watt, a dominant defensive player who holds the Texans franchise records for sacks and forced fumbles, said he expects to get hit when he goes out on the field. “I know for a fact that every time I go out to practice I am going to hit my head. It’s just like a fire-fighter knows he may have to go into a fire at some point, or a soldier knows he may get shot at some point.”

He said: “While we are all learning a lot about and do understand there are serious implications that come with it, I don’t think any of us got into this game thinking we were not going to get hit on our heads.”

He added: “You do everything you can to make sure that you are safe and that you are sound, but I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t know that was a possibility.”

Boston University, a leader in researching CTE, has found the disease in 90 of 94 former NFL players it has examined. About 6,000 of 20,000 retired players are expected to eventually suffer from Alzheimer’s or moderate dementia. 

The list of NFL greats who have been found to suffer from the CTE include Junior Seau, Frank Gifford and Mike Webster.

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