Concussions Will Lead To The Death Of The NFL and Football as We Know It

Part 1: The Media Because of our current dependence on social media, nothing these days happens with out a constant media following being attached to it. The media has an incredible power in that it can take a large subject matter, simplify it, and then show it to millions of people in a few short seconds. The NFL is a media intensive business that relays on the technology to run its most basic elements. The constant 24/7 media coverage as allowed the NFL to become the most watched, highest paid sport in the Untied States and gross over 10 billion dollars a year. We all know news reports love a villain or a shockingly horrific story, because it sells a whole lot better than Johnny saved a cat from a tree. So what happens when that constant media turns on you? Most would make the point that one only has to survive the quick blast that our news reports are but if the content is to strong to bad to look away and ignore it anymore and the right people see if than the damage can be catastrophic. The NFLs Achilles heel is that it must constantly adhere to its followers: no followers, no money, no NFL. Images of players getting knocked out, stumbling around and taken away in stretchers because of massive hits to some might just be considered part of the game, after all footballs a violent sport. But when players commit suicide, have huge health defects far to early and are dying at age 50 and there is a link between those hits and the consequences now being seen, then it takes on a new life of its own. The cringe factor as I have come to call it, is the natural and knee jerk reaction when something is to overwhelming that one has to look away or cringe in disapproval or shock. Here"s a short list to get the general idea: 1)http://www.nfl.com... 2) http://www.nfl.com... These kinds of replays are bad news for the NFL and the sport of football in general as these kind of hits will be remembered for their viciousness and the long term health concerns. We have already seen what bad press can do to major trends and hobbies, smoking and not wearing seatbelts were common practice and accepted for millions of people not to long ago. But after heavy opposition due to the health concerns each posed to people both saw radical change and reduction. Big companies are also quick to cut ties with anything that might pose a threat to its image. Nike for example cut ties with Lance Armstrong, Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson, Mike Vick, Tiger Woods, Barry Bond and Oscar Pistorius all for different degrees that Nike felt there image might be hurt by the questionable actions of there athletes. If the information and research continues to trend negatively as concussions in football lead to very extreme health complications for athletes later in life then don"t be surprised if advertisers, investors and Networks slowly shy away from football out of concerns with being associated with a potentially dangerous and reckless organization. Part 2: Liability Suits The NFL in my estimations made out like bandits when they agreed in 2015 a roughly 1 billion dollar settlement with retired football players after 4,500 ex-players sued the NFL for hiding the dangers of concussion related trauma. The settlement will cover around 20,000 ex-players. While a billion is a large number, considering the NFL hauls in 10 billion a year and as part of the settlement had to admit no guilt to the hiding concussion claims seems like a pretty good deal for the NFL. My prediction for the future is that as more information comes out and if it revels even more conclusively that football is directly related to health complication then future plaintiffs will look to see it threw the court system. If players start winning judgments it will put great pressure on the insurance industry. Anyone who has delt with insurance companies can tell you without hesitation that getting coverage for a healthy 20 year old is a hell of a lot easer than trying to get it for an 80yr old with cancer. The change here is that insurance companies afraid that they are going to get stuck with the bill of the numerous cases to come might instead look at the NFL as the 80yr old and start declining coverage for college and high school teams. If that happens then coaches, team trainers and referees are now possibly fully liable for a player"s health. It"s estimated that 15% of football players experience a mild traumatic brain injury during the course of a season. That"s 15% of your team that if something goes wrong you could be looking at a 2 million dollar lawsuit that you have no coverage for and you didn"t think you could be found liable for. Part 3: Parents don"t let kids play Potentially the biggest threat to the NFL"s future is parents not allowing their kids, the hall of famers, MVP"s and champions of tomorrow, to play out of fear of injury. Parents should be worried about the injuries their kids could receive from playing football, they should be very worried as there are 90,000 brain injuries a year among precollege athletes. A number that is also believed to be 50% less then it actually is based of chronic lying about concussion number to make them seem less relevant. The human brain undergoes some of its most important development while I child is in there teenage years, but because of all this development it leaves the teenage brain very venerable. A 2002 study found that teens who played football were 3 times more likely to get a concision then the 2nd highest sport (soccer), 10 time more likely to exhibit multiple abnormal responses to head injury including loss of consciousness and persistent amnesia. A 2004 study found that football players with 2 or more concussions were 7.7 times more likely to experience a major drop in memory performance. When compared to similar students without a history of concussions athletes with 2 plus concussions were found to have significantly lower GPA"s. A 2009 study commissioned by the NFL found former players ages 30-49 were being diagnosed with severe memory related diseases at 19 times the rate of the general public. Perhaps even more disturbing is autopsy analysis led by Ann Mackee at Boston University found that of 15 former players, 14 of them were found to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE. She also studied only one teens brain but found that the 18yr old had already irreversible signs of CTE in parts of the frontal cortex, this is thought to be the earliest evidence of CTE every recorded. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy symptoms include dementia, such as memory loss, aggression, confusion and depression, which generally appear years or many decades after the trauma. Parents will always look out for what"s best for there kids and I don"t think it"s a stretch to evaluate football as a potentially to dangerous sport. It could simply take one set of parents to hold there kids out of football for the rest of the town to fallow suit and thus creating a domino effect spreading from friend group to town to county to city and so on. Some will look at the millions of dollars NFL players make and that in ways justifies the risk these players are taking. But for the 99% of kids who play football they will never see a dime, as their careers will end as student athletes. These student athletes, who are playing for the love of the game, are taking an un-proportional hit in damage done and numbers affected. These are also the kids who are going to need all there brain cells in tact as they will peruse careers in other fields then athletics. Chris Borland, age 24, broke the trend when he became the first significant NFL player to call it quits in his prime because he felt the risk was not worth the reward. "I just want to live a long and healthy life, and I don"t want to have any Neurological diseases or die younger."