Last week there was an interesting documentary about the NFL and CTE. What is CTE? CTE is chronic traumatic encephalopathy and it is very serious, especially this day in age. It deals with trauma to the head and concussions. If you have ever seen an NFL game or played football before you would know that the head takes a lot of hits during the process the one single game, much less a whole career. This is a huge story and it is only going to get bigger in the coming years.
In this documentary it focused on some retired players and what they went through after they got done playing football. The scary thing is, it wasn’t just about NFL players. High school players and college football players and even pee wee football players were discussed. It is pretty sad when you realize what some of these people are going through after their football careers.
One player that was at the forefront of the documentary was the long time Steeler center Mike Webster. After his career he had a hard time even remembering his family and his family said it just wasn’t the same. When he died they examined his brain and found that he had CTE. But the NFL really didn’t want to hear anything about it. The NFL to me is starting to look like a very corrupt and manipulative organization. It seems like they would have done whatever they could to keep CTE quiet? Why is that? I think it is because they know that if people come out and say that they have CTE there could be a lot of lawsuits. There is also the fact that the more people hear about this issue the more likely the NFL is going to be putting up with extreme scrutiny. It is pretty scary. Football players are tough, but a line has to drawn. It is not worth anyone’s life over.