Concussions in Sports
Ever since its creation in the 1880s, football has been the most popular sport in America. Americans love fast-paced, high-action, sports. According to Forbes.com, the NFL receives around $7-8 billion dollars per year, and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell wants to increase that number to $25 billion by the year 2027. With numbers like these, the NFL has become a massive industry, and will most likely be around for a while. That being said, there do remain things that challenge the NFL. One of the largest problems the NFL has faced is the issue of injuries. More specifically, brain injuries. Doctors understand why an ankle gets broken or why a tendon gets torn, but injuries to the brain are more complicated. Concussions are one of the most common types of injuries in football. In the past 4 years, there have been around an average of 138 concussions per year. The NFL, for a while, did not seem willing to acknowledge that playing football could result in brain diseases. The NFL was brought to Congress, heckled by neurologists and neuropathologists, and even sued by former football players who demanded some sort of compensation for their injuries suffered during their time in the league. The rising issue of concussions in sports has surfaced more prominently in recent years. Through pathos, ethos, and word choice, concussion related articles make their argument on this topic. While the political side of this issue involves the intervention of Congress and the NFL’s use of political diversion, the technique of distracting from a major issue, the neurological side uses scientific data to illustrate why the way that the NFL deals with concussions remains subpar. As this debate continues, it has resulted in changed rules, and could result in more added regulations to the sport of football.
The concussion controversy first rose after the death of Mike Webster, a former center for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He had signs of dementia at only 50 years old, he couldn't sleep, and he couldn't complete a sentence. When his body was examined in an autopsy, Dr. Bennet Omalu, a neuropathologist, looked at his brain and noticed that on the outside it looked completely normal. This concerned Omalu and he studied it more carefully. After further investigation, Omalu discovered that Webster’s brain had signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease that mimics dementia or Alzheimer's disease. This was the first case of CTE found in a football player. Dr. Omalu’s discoveries were published in the magazine Neurosurgery and the NFL fought back, saying football did not result in brain injuries. This was the first time the NFL started using political diversion to distract the public from finding out more from what Omalu stumbled upon. However, this ended up being the first of an eventual 87 out of 91 football players’ brains that were found with CTE. Ever since the first case of Webster, more and more brains are being examined.
When the NFL was first being challenged about concussions, they did everything they could to prevent the truth from going out. Some people coined it the “League of Denial”, denying every piece of opposition that was brought against it by doctors and scientists. This strategy of denying became what is known as the politics of diversion. Political diversion is “[w]hen people create buzzy, puffy, talking points to distract the focus from larger issues” (2). The NFL has been engaged in this activity for years when the word “concussion” was brought up. In fact, every time Dr. Bennet Omalu presented new information, the NFL would immediately take action stating that his data was false. Omalu became an enemy of the multibillion dollar organization. He found CTE in multiple football players’ brains, and time and time again the NFL opposed him. They hired doctors and physicians that would insist that no connection existed between football and head trauma, instead of doctors that would present the facts and be openly honest. While the commissioner of the NFL, Roger Goodell, was being questioned in Congress, he gave incredibly weak answers about player safety, responding with long answers to avoid the actual questions asked - the definition of politics of diversion. The NFL was derailed after this encounter with Congress, and was instantly forced to do something about their concussion protocols. Currently, there are no strict set rules regarding concussions and when players can return to action; everything is based on whenever the team doctor clears the athlete to play or not. Unfortunately, teams do not have a specialized neurologists on the sidelines of games to diagnose concussions, and a team doctor usually makes that decision. The source about the political side of this argument seemed to use pathos in order to persuade to the audience that the NFL is evil in a way. By giving examples of players that were the victims of concussions, and stating that they were “rushed back onto the field,” it creates a feeling of dislike towards the NFL. In fact, most sources that brought up this issue depict the NFL as this greedy organization that cares very little about its players. Also, this article presents its own information, an appeal to ethos, by stating that concussions are a “clinical uncertainty” and even quotes The Summary and Agreement of the 2nd International Conference on Concussion in Sport in saying, “the science of concussion is at an early stage, and therefore management and return to play decisions remain largely in the realm of clinical judgment on an individualised basis” (1). By appealing to ethos this way, it establishes the author’s credibility, and allows the reader to know that what they are reading has been fully researched and remains unflawed. There is still work to be done on the concussion protocols, as it is definitely far from perfect, but the numbers of concussions have decreased since 2012, which signals gradual improvement.
The science behind the concussions occurring in NFL football players has been found to be more interesting than what was first thought about concussions. At first, in the mid 1900s, concussions were thought of as minor injuries. The expression “getting your bell rung” was used often in describing concussions, and most of the public did not think much of them at all. Even NFL coaches did not consider them very serious either. Coaches Bill Belichick and Tom Coughlin were known to pressure their players into playing, despite how long they were supposed to remain sidelined (1). Neurology, the study of the nervous system (brain and spinal cord), and neuropathology, the study of diseases in the nervous system, play the biggest role in studying sports related head injuries. Two of the most important people in the study of CTE were Dr. Bennet Omalu and Dr. Anne McKee. Omalu was the first to discover CTE in a football player's’ brain, and his findings were what sparked the war against the NFL. Concussions are more severe than the public first thinks. Technically, it is defined as a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), not just getting a headache. In fact, it has been suggested that concussions “speed up the aging process” in a way. In the scientific article on this particular topic, the author uses a large amount of scientific data to appeal to ethos. The article presents its own study that it made on sports concussions and aging. It provides visual aids in order to help the reader understand its argument more clearly, as most of this article is written in an elevated scientific fashion. When a football player gets hit in the head, it can result in “cortical thinning in regions more vulnerable to the aging process” and “episodic memory and verbal fluency decline” (3). Memory and verbal decline are generally observed in the elderly, not 40 to 50-year-old retired football players. However, brain function anomalies detected in retired athletes who sustained 3 or more concussions have shown memory and motor system dysfunctions, a clinical condition that can be defined as mild cognitive impairment (MCI) (3). MCI-diagnosed athletes or individuals display cognitive decline, but they show it without showing it. They do not exhibit any difficulties or impairments on everyday activities. Overall, this source was very informative, and contained a significant amount of scientific data. Adding such data improved the author’s credibility, and makes the reader think very highly of the author as well.
This debate over concussions from both a political and a scientific side has been ongoing on and off for years, even a couple decades. As more evidence suggests football leads to brain disease, the more the NFL is required to spend on researching player safety. It seems to be a never-ending process. Nonetheless, as we continue into the future, football will most likely remain America’s number one sport. More advancements will be made in player safety, and better equipment will be created for the players to use. The total number of concussions per year has decreased significantly since 2012, so the NFL is on the right track, but just with some more work to do. Also, one is not to forget that the players in the NFL do choose this profession. Richard Sherman, a Seahawks cornerback in the NFL, explains this very well. Players have seen the research, and know now more than ever that football can result in brain injuries. They play because they want to play and love what they do. Sherman said about the concussions in football: “If you don’t like it, stop watching” (5). He states that he does think about his future, but sometimes things happen you cannot plan for, so he wants to enjoy his life in the now. As long as the players know what they are doing, then that should be more comforting. The NFL is learning and doing more about concussions than ever before now, and it will continue to do so as long as concussions remain a problem.
Works Cited
1. Goldberg, Daniel S,J.D., PhD.(c). "Concussions, Professional Sports, and Conflicts of Interest: Why the National Football League's Current Policies are Bad for its (Players') Health." HEC Forum 20.4 (2008): 337-55. ProQuest. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.
2.
http://www.si.com/nfl/audibles/2013/09/14/nfl-concussions-roger-goodell-mlb
3.
http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/5/1159.full.pdf+html
4.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/league-of-denial/
5.
http://mmqb.si.com/2013/10/23/richard-sherman-seahawks-concussions-in-the-nfl
No comments:
Post a Comment