Indeed, this Friday marks the release of Concussion, a movie based on the experience of Dr. Bennet Omalu, the Nigerian-born medical examiner whose examination of the brain of former Pittsburgh Steeler Mike Webster set off the ill-labeled "concussion crisis" that now haunts not only the NFL, but every level at which football is played, and other sports as well.
I have no advance knowledge of the film itself that anybody else can't obtain. (No, this blog has not earned me admittance to a Hollywood premiere or any advance screening. Shame, I know.) It's not hard to guess the basic outlines of the movie, however, if you've either read the book League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions, and the Battle for Truth, by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru, which features Omalu's work prominently as part of its narrative. If books aren't your thing, you could also watch the PBS Frontline episode based on the book and featuring interviews with many of its principals, including Omalu. If you are dubious about ordering DVDs, the doc airs again this month, with part 2 of an expanded version airing tonight on many PBS stations. (It does air on the local station tonight ... at 3:00 a.m. I wonder if this is a pattern in other football-besotted towns.) Or after tonight you could probably stream it from PBS.org.
The Fainaru brothers are good at what they do, and the book and/or documentary are worth your time independent of the coming Hollywood treatment. But it's the Hollywood story that confronts us this weekend. Hopefully I'll see it some time this weekend, when family and/or church obligations allow, and have some hopefully useful comments on it. But trying to guess or anticipate what happens allows for a comment or two
1) It is Hollywood, folks. There is a documentary on concussions in the NFL, and it's noted above. This will not be a documentary. Some amount of representational storytelling will happen. Based on some commentary I've heard, some of that "representational storytelling" will involve Dave Duerson, the former Chicago Bears linebacker whose suicide, shooting himself in the chest apparently in order to preserve his brain for examination, marked perhaps the most publicly striking moment in the ongoing crisis before the suicide of Junior Seau. The movie appears to include a scene in which Duerson attempts to prevent Omalu from reporting his findings at a medical conference. This didn't happen. However, Duerson was an early key figure in debunking any connection between football and CTE, even testifying to a senate subcommittee in defense of an NFL committee's denial of disability benefits to former players, a stance which still angers a number of former players affected by that denial. (For now I'm leaving aside the columnist's apparent eagerness to be judge and jury of how affected former players really were or weren't by CTE when committing suicide.) Players like Brent Boyd take no particular pleasure in Duerson's being claimed by the malady whose existence he denied (not unlike a climate change denier being drowned when his home washes away due to rising seas, I suppose). At any rate, while the particular incident between Duerson and Omalu didn't happen, Duerson's bitter denial of these effects is not inaccurate, and any attempt to defend him against being "smeared" by the movie rings hollow.
2). It is Hollywood, folks. While the movie can't get away with too much Hollywooding, it has several aims besides toppling the NFL or sounding the alarm over concussions. It wants to make money. It wants to win awards. Will Smith definitely wants that Oscar. These are basic cautions any moviegoer should exercise when watching a "fact-based" movie. That said, expect pushback from the NFL and organizations allied with it.
Also in the run-up to the film's release, some of its principal charaters are emerging in the media. Omalu himself showed up with an opinion peace in the New York Times with the radical suggestion that kids shouldn't play tackle football, period. Reaction, ranging from panicked to outraged, followed. Dr. Julian Bailes, a doctor who was an early guide to Omalu (and is played by Alec Baldwin in the film), showed up on the ESPN Radio program Mike & Mike in the Morning. Bailes's principal motivation seemed to be to defend football as a sport, particularly football for children and adults. The very same platitudes the NFL always repeats ("football has never been safer" for example) come right out of Bailes's mouth, as well as the extremely deceptive claim that "they knew the risks" in reference to children and youth in football, including his own sons. (To be fair, the Mikes -- Greenberg and Golic -- don't really let up on their questions in the face of his mindless platitudes, doing a reasonably good job of playing the role of concerned parents.) Perhaps the most horrifying thing to comes out of his mouth is the suggestion that high-school players who die as a result of on-field brain injury would probably have died of something else or other anyway. At any rate, his own compromised nature is at least admitted up front when he acknowledges serving as a volunteer adviser to the national Pop Warner football program for kids.
That looks really bad now, in light of a court ruling allowing a lawsuit against Pop Warner football by the family of a youth who was paralyzed as a result of a head-on hit they allege was instructed by his coaches. Paralysis isn't concussion, but the charge that a coach was directing players to hit head-first demonstrates the degree to which no football organization has the ability (or, frankly, willingness) to monitor its coaches and their teaching of proper techniques. That kind of thing is left up to you, the parent of a would-be youth football player, who is expected to know these things (even though they're not always being very forthcoming about those things).
What is striking is the difference between Bailes, who played himself and has two sons who played, and Omalu, who had about as little knowledge of football as it is possible to have when Mike Webster showed up on his examination table. Omalu, who I'm assuming will be portrayed as more saintly than he is in the movie, said what he saw. Bailes, suddenly seeing his sport threatened, begins to distance himself from what he has already seen.
This kind of thing doesn't augur a lot of hope for non-medical professionals who grew up with fierce attachment to football, whether they played or not, and are now faced with the moral quandry of justifying the game that probably holds primary allegiance in their lives (and no, I am not exaggerating; even if I've only been a pastor less than a year I have no illusions about how the church does in comparison. If you've seen one of the movie trailers you've heard the line about how the NFL owns the day of the week the church used to own; the only thing remarkable about the line is its utterly non-controversial nature) in the face of its obvious life-debilitatig damage to a major portion of its players.
How do you react to a condition that you can't see happening, that is (even the NFL expects) likely to tear down the lives of about a third of its players?
At any rate I'll go see the film as soon as I can, and I hope you will too, and be motivated to dig deeper.
Will Smith bids for a statue and hopefully pushes the discussion along in the process.
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