NFL’s Super Bowl Commercial: Rehabiltating An Image, Despite The Lawsuits

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Posted on 1st February 2012 by Gordon Johnson in Brain Injury

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Brace yourself to see a commerical Sunday that you wouldn’t expect to pop up during the Super Bowl: An NFL ad on player safety.

The league, according to The New York Times, has anted up several million dollars to produce the TV spot and a companion website, nfl.com/evolution. It looks like it is an attempt to rehabilitate the NFL’s image.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/sports/football/nfl-to-address-head-injuries-in-commercial.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=sports

The NFL has 120 seconds of very, very valuable commercial avails on NBC during the big game, which is pitting the New York Giants against the New England Patriots.  The Times reported that 30 seconds of ad time during the game is selling for an average $3.5 million. But the NFL  will still devote half of its ad time, 60 second, to its safety spot.

A cynic might question the NFL’s timing and motives.

The league is now facing a dozen lawsuits from ex-players who allege that the NFL hid, or ignored, evidence that repeated concussions can cause permanent brain damage. In fact, The Times quoted a lawyer who is representing some of those players. He believes the TV spot will paint an unrealistic, rosy picture about how the NFL has been addressing player safety for years. 

The ad was directed by a talented TV actor/director, Peter Berg, who was the force behind the high-school football drama “Friday Night Lights,” The Times reported. It will run at the end of the third quarter of the game, and will depict the sports “evolution,” in terms of gear and rules.

The commercial with apparently end with a comment by Ravens player Ray Lewis, who The Times reported will say, “Here’s to making the next century safer and more exciting. Forever forward. Forever football.”

In another interesting tidbit, The Times said that the players’ union and the NFL are talking about devoting much of the $100 million they have for medical research, as part of their contract, to the Foundation of the National Institutes of Health. That money would go toward research on concussions.

The commercial will probably be well produced and memorable, but it won’t make a batch of lawsuits disappear.   

The Battle Between NFL And Ex-Players Over Concussion Suits Begins

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Posted on 28th January 2012 by Gordon Johnson in Brain Injury

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On Thursday the National Football League offered a preview of its defense against 21 lawsuits filed by several hundred retired players in six states: These ex-players can’t seek damages for concussions, since safety issues fall under the collective bargaining agreement they had with the league.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/us-panel-mulls-whether-to-merge-nfl-player-concussion-lawsuits-against-the-football-league/2012/01/26/gIQAxawGSQ_story.html

There were numerous press reports, including one by the Associated Press, on the hearing that took place before the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation in Miami. 

At that proceeding, attorneys for the NFL and the suing ex-players argued that the cases should be consolidated for pretrial matters before Judge Anita Brody of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.  She is located in Philadelphia, where the first players lawsuits over concussions were filed.      

The panel in Miami reserved judgment on consolidating the suits.

At least 300 players, and roughly that equivalent in terms of wives and family members, have charged that the NFL for years knew, and downplayed, the fact that repeated concussions can cause long-term damage to the brain. In retirement, many of these players are getting early-onset dementia, memory loss, depression and degenerative brain disease. 

Among those who are suing are former star players such as Lem Barney, Otis Anderson and Marvin Jones. But there was only one ex-player in court in Miami last week: Rich Miano, who played for the Jets, Eagles and Falcons.

He was quite eloquent in his comments to AP. Talking about concussions when he was playing, back in the day, Miano said they were referred to as “getting a stinger” or ”getting your bell rung.”

He told AP, “It was just, ‘Get back out there.’”

The NFL, like the player plaintiffs’ attorneys, wants the suits put together. But Beth Wilkinson, the league’s lawyer, wants them consolidated so that she can get them dismissed en masse.

She argued Thursday that the retired players’ grievances shouldn’t be litigated, that the allegations raised by the players should be be resolved under the NFL-player collective bargaining agreement. Needless to say, the players feel differently. So do I.

Several of the suits have named the vendor that supplies helmets to the NFL, Riddell, as a defendent, as well. According to The Miami Herald, Riddell’s attorney wants the lawsuits that cite Riddell handled separately from the one that don’t name the helmet company. 

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/26/2610282/nfl-ex-jocks-spar-in-miami-courtroom.html

This battle, of the NFL versus its former warriors, may end up rivaling the Super Bowl in terms of drama. And it could be a long one.

 

Third Lawsuit Filed In Philadelphia Against NFL By Ex-Players Over Concussions

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Posted on 21st January 2012 by Gordon Johnson in Brain Injury

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The City of Brotherly Love is now the venue of three lawsuits filed by former pro-football players who claim their concussons lead to permanent brain injury. And a decision will soon be made about whether similar suits across the country should be consolidated there, according to the Associated Press.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505245_162-57362087/more-players-join-nfl-concussion-suits-file-in-pa/

The latest lawsuit filed in Philadelphia was brought by ex-Philadelphia Eagles players Ron Solt, Joe Panos, Rich Miano, four other players and their spouses, according to AP. 

The wire service quoted part of Wednesday’s lawsuit: ”Rather than warn players that they risked permanent brain injury if they returned to play too soon after sustaining a concussion, the NFL actively deceived players, by misrepresenting to them that concussions did not present serious, life-altering risks.”

More than 100 former players filed a similar lawsuit in Philadelphia earlier this month, and the very first complaint of this kind was brought against the National Football League in Philly last year, AP reported.

So far at least eight suits, claiming that the NFL ignored or kept secret evidence tying concussions to permanent brain injuries, have been filed in New Jersey, New York, Florida and Georgia, according to AP.

The league is seeking to consolidate the lawsuits in Philadelphia, where the very first case filed last year has been assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Anita Brody, AP reported.  

The NFL denies the allegations in the lawsuits, and claims the litigation should be thrown out because the claims are prohibited under collective bargaining agreements.      

One of the plaintiffs in the suits is former Minnestota Viking Brent Boyd, whose lawyers, according to AP, claim he is the only living player diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, CTE. It is a degenerative brain disease that has been detected in tests on brain tissue from deceased football and pro hockey players.

Lawsuits Flying Against NFL By Ex-Players Over Concussions

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Posted on 25th December 2011 by Gordon Johnson in Brain Injury

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The National Football League has a real situation on its hands: Last week a batch of lawsuits were filed against it by retired players who allege they sustained long-term brain damage from concussions during their careers on the gridiron.

Last week was also the week when the NFL mandated that there will be an independently certified athletic trainer, whose job it is to keep an eye out for concussion-related injuries, present at every game.

Was this NFL move just coincidental to the suits, or directly related to them, we wonder.

Several ex-player suits were filed in Atlanta early last week, and the other was filed in Miami last Thursday. The latest lawsuit was lodged by former Miami Dolphins Patrick Surtain, Oronde Gadsden and 19 other players, according to the Associated Press.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/nfl/story/2011-12-23/concussions-lawsuit/52194476/1

That suit alleges that the NFL hid evidence that tied concussions to long-term brain injury. Essentially, the players alleged that the league downplayed the dangerousness of their concussions ”with the intent of inducing NFL players, including plaintiffs, to return to play as soon as physically possible after having suffered a football-related concussion and to promote an aggressive style of football that would attract viewers,” accordingt to AP’s quote from the lawsuit.

The litigation noted that  in the wake of scientific evidence about the long-term impact of concussions, the NFL formed a committee in 1994 to study the issue. But, according to the lawsuit, this supposedly independent committee in 2003 found that concussions didn’t create long-term harm to the brain.

In 2010, the lawsuit rather pointedly noted, the NFL canned the heads of that research committee, and the new chiefs of the committee described the original research was flawed and “infected,” AP reported.

In Atlanta last Wednesday several suits were filed on behalf of  former Green Bay Packer Dorsey Levens, Jamal Lewis, Fulton Kuykendall and Ryan E. Stewart.

http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/sports/136070433.html#

Those suits charged that the NFL “has done eveything in its power to hide the issue and mislead players” about the effects of concussions going back to the 1920s, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Levens’ lawsuit said that he sustained multiple concussions during his eight-year tenure with the Packers. The retired player, who now resides in Atlanta, also played for the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Eagles.

According to the Journal Sentinel, the suit says, “Levens was not warned by defendants of the risk of long-term injury due to football-related concussions or that the league-managed equipment did not protect him from such injury. This was a substanial factor in causing his current injuries.”

Now Levens has brain injuries and symptoms such as headaches and memory loss, according to his suit.

The NFL issued a statement in response to that first batch of suits. It was denial, as usual. The Journal Sentinel printed it.

“The NFL has long made player safety a priority and continues to do so. Any allegation that the NFL intentionally sought to mislead players has no merit. It stands in contrast to the league’s actions to better protect players and advance the science and medical understanding of the management and treatment of concussions.”

Indeed.

On the topic of lawsuits, we like what AOL FanHouse columnist David Steele had to say. First of all, he pointed out that there were actually three groups of recently filed suits against the NFL regarding concussions. One was filed in Miami earlier this month by 12 plaintiffs, including the New Orleans Saints Kyle Turkey and Patrick Surtain. According to Steele, that lawsuit charges that the NFL gave them an anti-inflammatory drug that “magnified the severityy of concussions.”

http://aol.sportingnews.com/nfl/story/2011-12-24/concussion-lawsuits-could-be-tip-of-crisis-for-nfl

“Two lawsuits filed this week by retired players suffering the effects of concussions from their playing days remind everybody that the league still has to answer for itself over its years of neglect,” Steele wrote.

He then referenced the Dec. 8 incident when Pittsburgh Steeler James Harrison did a helmet-to-helmet hit on Colt McCoy of the Cleveland Browns. Harrison was suspended, but the Browns’ handling of McCoy’s had injury was less than exemplary.

Here is what Steele had to say about all this:

<em>Harrison deserved the suspension he received, as a repeat offender and as someone who flouted a clear-cut rule when he hit McCoy helmet-to-helmet late in that Steelers-Browns game.

The Browns, though, deserved punishment for somehow having everybody in their employ, on the field and up in the coaches’ booth, overlook that McCoy, their starting quarterback, was stretched out and motionless on the field after a hit that, literally, halted the game. Not only has McCoy yet to recover, he could not even make the trip to Baltimore for Saturday’s game.

Instead of punishing the Browns — holding them accountable under the league’s own guidelines — the NFL passed the buck. With the union leaning hard on it, the league added an independent trainer, to be approved by league and union, to each game to avoid another oversight.

The NFL responded to a player’s reckless disregard for his and an opponent’s safety with punishment. It responded to a team’s reckless disregard by changing the rules.

It reeked of a double standard. It sends a dangerously conflicted message. It drives yet another wedge between players like Harrison and the league — and between Harrison and his fellow players who are perceived to be punished differently, a perception that does nothing but negatively affect how those players act every time a chance to make the safe, rational decision presents itself.</em>

Steele, rather accurately, wrote that the culture of the game  is a huge obstacle when it comes to concussions.

“The lawsuits and the Harrison-McCoy play from two Thursdays ago illuminate the troubling fact that the culture that created this ongoing concussion problem isn’t changing anytime soon,” Steele wrote. “Players will still not only fight to keep playing at the expense of their own health, and they’ll keep disregarding what they claim to know about the risks in order to keep playing exactly as they always have.”

Let’s hope Steele isn’t right about that.

NFL Dropped The Ball And Failed San Diego’s Kris Dielman, Who Suffered Seizure After Concussion

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Posted on 5th November 2011 by Gordon Johnson in Brain Injury

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The National Football League is giving lip service to the notion that it is taking concussions seriously, but head injuries are still falling through the cracks. Take the case of San Diego’s Kris Dielman.

On Oct. 23 Dielman was hurt when there was “about 12 minutes left in the game” against the New York Jets,  The New York Times reported.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/sports/football/nfl-officials-get-new-directive-on-concussions.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=concussions&st=cse

It was obvious that he had sustained a head injury. He was having problems maintaining his balance while out on the gridiron. Yet he was not immediately pulled out of the game. He finished playing it, and was not assessed for a concussion until afterward.

Guess what? Dielman had a seizure on the flight back to California from New York.

In light of what happened to Dielman, the NFL last week put out a directive advising game officials to carefully look for symptoms of concussions in pro players, according to The Times.

An NFL spokesman told The Times, “Our game officials will receive concussion-awareness training and will reman alert to possible concussions during games.”

Isn’t “concussion-awareness” what the NFL and newspapers across the country have been talking about for at least the past two years?

Who dropped the ball here? Who failed Dielman?

NFL Claims Its New Concussion Study Will Be More Scientific Than Prior Research

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Posted on 22nd October 2011 by Gordon Johnson in Brain Injury

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The National Football League’s next study of the long-term impact of concussions on players will be more expansive than its first effort, which was lambasted by Congress and independent physicians, according to The New York Times. In fact, one of the doctors leading the new research initiative joined the chorus of critics of the prior research.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/sports/football/nfl-plans-more-scientific-study-of-concussions.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=mitchel%20s.%20berger&st=cse

The Times, in a story headlined “NFL Plans Broader Concussion Research,” got its information from Dr. Mitchel S. Berger, a leader of the NFL committee and subcommittee on brain injuries. Berger is chairman of the neurological surgery department of the University of California San Francisco, and made his remarks at the 2011 Congress of Neurological Surgeons in Washington earlier this month.

Berger said that the NFL’s subcommittee on brain and spine injury has been conducting conference calls with the players’ union and is aiming to have a presentation ready for NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell soon, according to The Times.

The prior NFL research was led by Dr. Ira Casson, and Berger seems to echo what a Congressional committee believed about Casson’s work.

“There’s really nothing we can do with that data in terms of how it was collected and assessed,” Berger was quoted saying by The Times.

The new study will encompass 1,400 people aged 45 to 59, according to The Times. They will be divided into three groups: retired NFL players; those who only played college football; and a control group of non-athletes.

Berger explained that baseline tests for the three groups will be done, followed by exams every three years.

In addition, there will be a parallel study with three groups in the same categories as the subjects 45 to 59, but they will be older, 60 to 75, The Times reported. That parallel study will involve 400 subjects.

Goodell also addressed the surgeons’ convention, saying that nothing was more important to the league than the safety of its players. 

Let’s hope he’s telling the truth.          

Retired Players Sue NFL Over Denials Of Long-Term Concussion Brain Damage

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Posted on 21st July 2011 by Gordon Johnson in Brain Injury

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Retired pro football players, who allege that the National Football League ignored mounting evidence of the long-term brain damage caused by concussion, are playing hard ball with the league.

This week those 75 retired NFL players filed suit in Superior Court in Los Angeles against the NFL and Riddell, which manufactures helmets, according to The New York Times. The plaintiffs include Ottis Anderson, who had playd for the Giants, and Vernon Dean, who had played with the Washington Redskins. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/21/sports/football/retired-players-sue-nfl-over-treatment-of-concussions.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=NFL%20suit&st=cse

The lawsuit is trying to hold the NFL liable for over the years downplaying growing evidence that head injuries cumulatively lead to permanent brain damage. It wasn’t until 2010 that the league warned players about the long-term effects of concussions, which mean retired players never got any warning. And many of them are paying the price now.

The suit alleges that the NFL didn’t “regulate practices, games, equipment and medical care so as to minimize the long-term risks associated with concussive brain injuries.” As a result, these veteran players contend that they now suffer from memory loss, headaches and other side effects from their years of playing.

NFL officials have no one to blame but themselves for this litigation. The NFL created a committee on concussions in 1994, and it aggressively supported the position that concussions didn’t cause lasting brain damage. 

Nonetheless, the NFL told The Times that it will “vigorously” fight the lawsuit.

As The Times pointed out, the players have filed their suit while the NFL is close to reaching a new contract with players. Part of that new deal has clauses that aim to limit the chance of brain damage during off-season workouts.

The NFL has already made changes to protect players from the long-term damage of concussions. But it wasn’t exactly a noble action. The league didn’t aggressively make changes until after a Congressional committee in 2009 put a national spotlight on the NFL’s mishandling of concussions. 

For example, nowadays a player believed to have sustained a concussion is  benched for the rest of the day, and can’t return to the field until he gets clearance from an independent medical expert.

The suing players are seeking unspecified damages for injuries that they incurred while playing in the 1980′s. It may be hard to prove that the NFL should have been warning these players about the impact of concussions back then.

But it seems that the NFL should pay a price for not just ignoring reports about the dangers of concussion, but publishing studies that claimed that mild brain injury didn’t pose a long-term threat to players. 

  

       

 

Former Player Shelton Sues NFL Disability Plan

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Posted on 1st December 2010 by Gordon Johnson in Brain Injury

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Former Carolina Panthers running back Eric Shelton, claiming the National Football League is hypocritically just paying lip service to taking helmet-to-helmet hits seriously, has filed suit against the league’s disability plan.

The New York Times wrote about the lawsuit Tuesday in a story headlined “Ex-Player Is Suing Over Pay For Injury.” 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/sports/football/30helmets.html?scp=1&sq=eric%20shelton&st=cse

In his lawsuit Shelton, 27, said he was withheld benefits he was due for a neck and spine injury he got during a helmet-to-helmet collision while he was at a Washington Redskins training camp. The ex-player maintained that his neck damage was permanent.

However, he only received benefits for degenerative impairments that show up more than six to 12 months after the original injury, “rather than the maximum benefit for injuries that cause immediate, permanent, harm,” The Times reported.

The NFL has basically acknowledged the dangers of, and tried to crack down, on helmet-to-helmet hits. But Shelton told The Times that the NFL is being two-faced when it puts up posters about the helmet hits and fines players for doing them, and yet on the other hand says injuries sustained in such hits are degenerative, not permanent.     

You can bet that Shelton’s lawsuit will be closely watched. Now that the NFL has owned up to the dangers of helmet-to-helmet hits, after years of denial, it may have more liabiliy in hundreds of workers’ comp cases pending in California.

The NFL disability plan argues that Shelton isn’t entitled to the top-drawer disability payment because he has worked a job, at Walgreens briefly, his permanent disability did not surface within six to 12 months, according to The Times.

By being relegated to the degenerative, not permanent injury, category, Shelton’s benefits were halved from a potential $220,000 annually, The Times reported.   

 

 

 

After Career-Ending Concussion, Former New York Jet Starts Over As A Financial Adviser

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Posted on 29th November 2010 by Gordon Johnson in Brain Injury

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Former New York Jet Wayne Chrebet stopped keeping track of his concussions when they hit double digits. And then one ended his pro football career.   

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704700204575642812360573640.html?mod=WSJ_NY_Sports_LEFTTopStories

The Wall Street Journal Monday offered an inspiring profile of Chrebet, who is now a financial adviser with Morgan Stanley in Red Bank, N.J. The story painted Chrebet as an underdog, ”a small guy from a small school,” who played well for the Jets and put himself in “the path of 225-pound behemoths.”  

He suffered at least six documented concussions, and many undocumented ones. ”A lot, a lot, a lot,” Chrebet told The Journal.

But in November 2005, Chrebret had his career-ending concussion. In a game against the San Diego Chargers, Chrebret was tackled. His helmet crashed on the turf. Chrebet told The Journal that he remembered “a flash of white light, a few muddled voices, then nothing else.”

Today Chrebet doesn’t remember getting tackled, coming off the field or getting home. He woke up with a headache and asked his wife what was up. “She told him he was done,” The Journal said.

Chrebet had been retired: The Jets’ team doctor didn’t want to take responsibility for him.  

 He had enough money not to have to work a 9-to-5 job, but Chrebet was bored. He tried several new careers, including being a restaurateur and owning racehorses. Then he decided to pursue his interest in finance, and got his brokerage and securities licenses.

With all the news that’s come out about the long-term damage concussions cause, let’s hope Chrebet’s life ends well. 

He told The Journal that he has some of the side effects of post-concussion syndrome, “but declined to elaborate.” And in the past, Chrebet has admitted that he has migraines and short-term memory loss.

Hopefully, those countless concussions will not eventually take a terrible toll on Chrebet.  Or better yet, we’ll know how to cure those who suffered such brain damage. 

    

New York Giants ‘Clarify’ Concussion History Of Tight End Kevin Boss

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Posted on 13th September 2010 by Gordon Johnson in Brain Injury

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It looks like some NFL teams will do anything to keep a player on the field — including apparently not being forthcoming  about whether a player sustained a concussion.

The New York Giants organization should be a bit ashamed about their comments — and lack of transparency – last year about tight end Kevin Boss, when it denied that he had sustained a concussion.

The issue came up this week because Boss sustained a concussion playing Sunday against the Panthers, when he was hit as he jumped up to catch a pass. He said he never lost consciousness, but was “woozy for a second.”  

 http://www.nj.com/giants/index.ssf/2010/09/william_beatty_requires_foot_s.html

In the story, there was “a Giants’ clarification” regarding Boss’ concussion history with the team. It was a clarification of misinformation, by omisson, from the team itself.    

On Monday Giants Coach Tom Coughlin ‘fessed up, admitting that Boss had gotten a concussion last season. Yet Boss, who also had a concussion in 2008, ”endured multiple hard hits to the head last year but never missed a game because of a concussion,” according to The Ledger. 

Last year, “The team was adamant Boss did not suffer a concussion after getting hit hard (and illegally) in games against Arizona and San Diego. In fact, the Giants’  communications staff released a statement about Boss’ lack of concussion after those hits following a Daily News article in December suggested the Giants weren’t handling Boss with utmost care,” The Ledger reported Monday.

The Giants Monday finally came forth and “clarified” that Boss did in fact sustain a concussion last season, in a Thanksgiving game against the Broncos.  Boss continued to play in that game, and was only diagnosed with a concussion after it was over, the Giants claim. 

“By the time the Giants returned to practice the following week, Boss had been cleared to participate and was therefore not listed in the team’s injury report,” The Ledger reported.

And I guess it would have been asking too much for the Giants to have made Boss’ concussion public back then. 

And what was he doing playing again last season, after getting a concussion, when he’d sustained a concussion in 2008? The impact of concussions is cumulative. The Giants should have been extra careful about his safety last year, especially after the National Football League has come under fire last fall during congressional hearings on football and concussions. 

And now that the Giants have finally gone public about the truth about Boss’ concussion history, that admission “could complicate Boss’ return to the field,” The Ledger said.

It should.

      

 

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