The NFL's tobacco morality

So the news on the NFL-and-brain-trauma front has been a little slow of late, at least since Chris Borland decided he didn't need an NFL career more than he needed a functional brain for the rest of his life. In the last couple of days a story has come out, though, that -- while disturbing itself -- contains one quote that is in itself extremely revealing and disturbing, at least about how the NFL still doesn't get it even as it digs a spare billion out of its seat cushions to buy off bad publicity.

Awards in the long-awaited settlement of the "concussion lawsuit" against the NFL will be delayed until some time this fall. About ninety former players have lodged appeals against the settlement, and awards will not happen until most or all of those appeals have been heard and settled. In the meantime, a number of former players now showing signs of dementia, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, or Lou Gehrig's disease will have to wait a bit longer for cash awards to be disbursed.

Sad enough, although the appeals process needs to be heard out fully. But what gets particularly disturbing is the pretzel logic that seems to have governed one key omission from this settlement.

You'll notice, if you've followed this story or if you've read League of Denial, something missing from the list of conditions former players are suffering while awaiting this legal action. There is no mention of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, the condition uncovered in a legion of deceased former players (many of whom committed suicide) not only with NFL experience, but also a number of former players whose football experience did not extend beyond college or even high school in some cases.

This is where the NFL starts sounding more and more like its predecessor in crime, the tobacco industry. The first sign of "tobacco logic," an anonymous quote attributed only to "negotiators," claim that "the science on CTE is still evolving." (Actually here the NFL actually sounds like the climate denial industry, to be honest.) Unless the NFL is going to claim that these numerous players had boxing careers on the side, it's going to be a serious stretch to claim that the relationship between football and CTE will somehow "evolve" to be nonexistent. That the judge in the case seems to have fallen for this shady bit of sub-logic is disturbing enough.

The real bizarrerie, though, comes a shade later in the article. Those same "negotiators" go on to claim, concerning CTE, that "many of the behavioral and mood conditions claimed to be associated with CTE are prevalent with the general public."

Say what?

Because people who didn't play football have memory lapses, claims about CTE are invalid? Seriously, if someone really said this, their name and address need to be published purely for harassment purposes. The sheer immorality of this statement is mind-blowing. It is as if the tobacco industry, back in the day, had suggested that because some people who didn't smoke got cancer, tobacco can't possibly be blamed for any cancer in anyone.

The logical leap behind this claim becomes even stranger when one remembers that the conditions covered in the settlement -- Alzheimer's, Lou Gehrig's, Parkinson's, dementia and the like -- are also experienced by many people who never set foot on a gridiron in their lives. Why, then, is the NFL so willing to fork over the dough to cover diseases that need not have any relation to football?

Because this is nothing more than a public relations dodge. And shame on Judge Anita Brody for going along with it.

Why are they so adamant about excluding CTE? My surmise: to "give in" on CTE, more than any of these other diseases, exposes football, as it currently stands, as a fundamentally unsafe sport. Remember that CTE is not expressly about the effects of concussions on players (although concussions certainly don't help); rather, CTE -- chronic traumatic encephalopathy -- is traced to the regular, almost routine sub-concussive hits a player experiences. The kind of hits a player, particularly a lineman or linebacker or defensive back, might experience on any routine play. Even I wouldn't claim that the NFL thinks concussions are a good thing (they'd dislike them if only because of the player-hours lost because of them). But the looming possibility that the basic nature of the game itself has such devastating and traumatic effects on players' brains would potentially be an existential threat to the game. Therefore, no matter how base or amoral the league looks, it is never going to give on the CTE issue until it is forced to do so.

In the end this is hush money. And because these players suffering the above maladies are in many cases desperate for the financial assistance, they have little option but to take it.

Please don't try to impress me with the amount of the settlement, around one billion dollars. The NFL takes in about nine billion dollars a year. The above line about squeezing out change from the sofa cushions isn't as much of a stretch as it should be. And as the NFL has stated as its goal annual revenue of $25 billion, a disbursement of one billion over many years just doesn't have the same impact.

This blog attempts to approach sports from a Christian ethical viewpoint, if not in a terribly rigorous or scholarly way. Frankly, though, I'm really trying to think of any religious or moral ethical system that can look at the NFL at this point and find its ethical compass to be anything but grotesque. It is a horrible stretch to look at the NFL's record on the health concerns attached to the modern game, not just those around brain trauma (consider, as I must eventually, the NFL's track record on painkiller abuse); how is it at all reconcilable with a claim of a league that cares one whit for the welfare of its players?

Again, a thousand player suicides will not budge the NFL. Nor will a thousand lawsuits, a thousand player wives cold-cocked in elevators or shot to death by husbands who then shoot themselves, or a thousand confirmed cases of CTE. The NFL knows, having weathered what it has already, that it is too big and to strong to be bothered by any of those things.

The only thing that can ever have any hope of changing the NFL is the disappearance of those billions of dollars of revenue.

This would mean that advertisers are no longer falling all over themselves to be associated with the NFL.

This would mean that television outlets are no longer salivating to throw wildly exorbitant contracts at the NFL.

This would mean that fantasy-league operators aren't forking over dollars for permission to invoke the NFL and use player names and stats.

This would mean that merchandise with NFL logos and trademarks is no longer flying off shelves at a dizzying rate.

In other words, this would mean that people are no longer watching or spending money on the NFL.

And that's up to...well, people.

I reiterate that this book is worth your time to read. Beyond the stories of some of the earliest cases of CTE and the sometimes-byzantine work of tracing the condition, it puts to rest any notion that the NFL is at all concerned with anything other than what Roger Goodell has sometimes called "protecting the shield."