What is CTE?
Recently, former NFL player, Phillip Adams, recently passed away after fatally shooting five people before taking his own life. After hearing this, three letters right away popped up in my head, C.T.E. CTE, which is short for “Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy” is a brain disease that’s caused by repeated head trauma. In other words, concussions. Many professional athletes and even those that only played sports at a young age may have this disease and it affects those in many ways. How? Why is it such a big problem? And why is it not talked about? To some, the answers to these questions may seem simple, but it’s still a topic that is still looking for more answers.
How Has It Affected The NFL?
When people hear about CTE, they think of the players in the past like Aaron Hernandez or Junior Seau who both showed signs early of CTE. Evidence has actually shown it goes further than that. In fact, according to an article made by the Washington Post back in 2017, The University of Boston studied 111 donated brains by former football players, 110 of those brains had signs of CTE. It has also been determined that ever since the research began to take off back in 2013, 88% of former football players regardless if they stopped playing at age 10 or age 40 have all shown symptoms of CTE. This has been more common than you think but, why have you not heard much about it? Well let’s get to that!
Lawsuits vs The NFL
Lawsuits vs the NFL over concussions have taken place all the way back since the early to mid 90’s. Things didn’t really take off until 2010 when Sean Morey, who was co-chair of the NFL Player Association’s Concussion and Traumatic Brain Injury brought to light that he found at least 50% of concussions have gone unreported. Many lawsuits came out that went over the NFL hiding reports of head injuries but things didn’t take off really until 2011. A Lawsuit worth $765 Million Dollars called, “The NFL Players Concussion Litigation” was filed in 2011 backed by 22,000 NFL Veteran players and coaches. The Judge of the case later ruled back in 2016 that the $765 Million wouldn’t be enough to cover all the medical expenses for players and upped the price to $1 Billion that the NFL must have to place in reserve for the players, this and the final settlement were closed on January 7, 2017.
What The NFL Has Done
To this day there are still lawsuits placed against the NFL but we can’t ignore the measures the NFL has (or hasn’t) taken. Year by year the NFL introduces new rules and to combat head injuries such as fining players for helmet to helmet hits and penalizing a team for a player launching at another. The NFL has taken some measures to help stop CTE but more must be done. With more and more cases getting brought to light let’s see what else comes about the NFL and their fight vs CTE.
