League of Denial

“But rarely has the urge to escape—and the fear of being sent back—so completely shaped an athlete as it did Mike Webster.”

In laying out a biographical picture of Webster, the authors describe his troubled childhood of poverty and abuse. Webster’s deep commitment to succeed in the NFL was driven by the fear of having to return home. 

“Webster lived by one central tenet: Never come off the field.”

The authors describe both an example of Webster’s toughness and a reality that is alluded to a number of times: that one of the keys to succeeding in the NFL is not to get hurt and risk losing one’s job. 

“To that point, the sports medical community had viewed a concussion as an invisible injury. You couldn’t x-ray it or scope it or put a cast on it, so how serious could it be?”

The authors begin Chapter 2 with an anecdote from 1991 concerning concussed quarterback Bubby Brister, who was allowed to return to play. Steelers coach Chuck Noll wanted Brister back on the field despite the injury, and because concussion research was so lacking at the time, the decision was not given much consideration. 

“He had come to view the Hall as a sick ward inhabited by former players discarded by the league, their bodies and minds left to wither and rot, just as his were.” 

In the years after his retirement, Webster knew that the mental and physical problems he was having were caused by football. He grew extremely embittered over how the League had failed to care for him and others after their careers were over. Because of these feelings, Webster’s enshrinement in the Hall of Fame was one that he did not celebrate as other players did. 

“It was a huge problem: Players often left the game so battered that they were unable to qualify for health insurance. But the league refused to provide it.” 

In explaining the dilemma that exists for many retired NFL players, the authors refer to the push for lifetime health insurance made by Frank Woschitz of the NFLPA. Woschitz, a longtime official with the player’s union, had just completed a health survey on retired players that he hoped would persuade the League to give the players lifetime health insurance. 

“As the grisly episodes were recounted, one phenomenon was not lost on the fans and the media: The current generation of players was noticeably bigger, stronger, and faster than the one that preceded it.” 

The 1994 NFL season became known as the “Season of the Concussion” because so many players were suffering serious head injuries in games. Many fans began to wonder why concussions were now so much more prevalent and severe than they had been in the past. The obvious reason was that players were much bigger, stronger, and faster than they ever had been and thus were delivering much more damage with hits.  

“His care has been delivered by doctors working for two masters—1st the Pittsburgh Steelers and second, Michael L. Webster. Those doctors repeatedly allowed or encouraged Webster to play hurt, essentially refusing to save him from himself to advance the interests of the team.” 

When Webster finally got the proper medical and legal team to aid him in winning a disability claim against the NFL, forensic psychiatrist Jonathan Himmelhoch offered this opinion concerning the medical treatment that Webster had received throughout his career.

“Webster regularly threatened to become the first player to quit the Hall of Fame to protest the plight of the retired players, many of whom he believed also had brain damage.” 

In Chapter 5, the authors cover Webster’s attempts to win a case for full disability payments from the League. Before Webster acquired the proper medical and legal representation behind him in the case, he became more and more embittered toward the league because of the difficulty that he and other players had in securing benefits. 

“[Football] is not a contact sport, it’s a collision sport.” 

The famous quote from legendary Green Bay Packers head coach Vince Lombardi is referenced by the authors relating to research that was taking place using crash-test dummies to try to recreate the force that actual players are struck with during NFL games. 

“It would have been almost impossible to locate a human being within a 200-mile radius of Pittsburgh who was more ignorant of the sport.” 

As the authors introduce Bennet Omalu, the Nigerian-born forensic neuropathologist who discovered CTE in Webster’s brain, they stress how unique he was for the job because he knew nothing about football.

“NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue had created a research arm that exactly mirrored his skepticism about the so-called concussion crisis.” 

The NFL had created its Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee in 1994, but its members were primarily team doctors who not only had a vested interest in denying the science but also had been sending concussed players back into games for years. When the MTBI committee began publishing its research, it concluded with certainty that there was no link between football and brain damage. 

“The publication of the Webster study set up competing narratives in the same medical journal: One said that NFL players didn’t get brain damage from football, and the other said they did.” 

Neurosurgery, the journal that had published all of the MTBI committee’s research, agreed to publish Omalu’s study on Webster’s brain in 2005. This decision created a contradiction for the journal because Omalu’s research specifically showed that Webster had developed brain damage from football—exactly the opposite finding of the MTBI’ committee’s research. 

“In the years to come, Pittsburgh brain researchers would sit back in wonder at the string of events that turned their city into ‘Ground Zero’ for the NFL’s concussion crisis.” 

Both of the first two former NFL players found to have CTE were former Steelers who played together in the 1980s, and both were autopsied in Pittsburgh. Likewise, almost all of initial research into concussions originated from the doctors’ connections to the Steelers. Joe Maroon, a doctor for the Steelers, teamed with Pittsburgh-area neuropsychologist Mark Lovell to develop the ImPACT concussion test. Additionally, both Julian Bailes and Kevin Guskiewicz worked with the Steelers at various times and conducted their seminal research in Pittsburgh. 

“If only 10 percent of mothers in America begin to conceive of football as a dangerous game, that is the end of football.” 

When Julian Bailes invited Joe Maroon along to examine Omalu’s research, Maroon’s skepticism seemed to change upon viewing the research himself. Maroon asked Omalu if he understood the impact of what he was doing, to which Omalu responded “yes,” but Maroon continued to ask the question, implying that Omalu did not actually understand the full impact. Omalu finally gave up and asked Maroon what the impact was, to which Maroon responded with this quote. 

“Carson was well positioned as a spokesman for the cause of former players, a distinguished, imposing man still built like granite. He combined the sensitivity of a Manhattan psychoanalyst with the naked violence of the pit.” 

The authors are referring to Hall of Fame linebacker Harry Carson. After retiring, Carson himself began suffering from dementia-like symptoms, which he is certain came from his football career. Carson has been one of the more outspoken members of the Hall of Fame concerning how former players have been taken care of by the League. 

“No one had yet put it together that Dave Duerson—defender of the NFL, denier of football-related brain damage—was also losing his mind.” 

Duerson, a player representative for the union as a player and still a voting member of the disability panel, was an ardent defender of the League and openly lamented the rule changes that outlawed helmet-to-helmet hits. In defending the League, Duerson got into a shouting match with other witnesses in the halls of Congress after the 2007 hearing, an act that shocked many because it was so much out of character. 

“I have never seen this disease in the general population, only in these athletes. It’s a crisis and anyone who doesn’t recognize the severity of the problem is in tremendous denial.”

This was the response that Ann McKee had after joining Chris Nowinski and the Boston University group and discovering her first cases of CTE. A neuropathologist, McKee was taking over Omalu’s role with the BU group, and her amazement with what she was finding in the brains of former players was similar to that expressed by the scientists who came before her. 

“Don’t you think the league would be better off legally, and that our youth might be a little better off in terms of knowledge, if you guys just embraced that there is research that suggests this and admitted to it?” 

At the House Judiciary Committee hearing in 2009, Representative Linda Sanchez compared the NFL’s pattern of denial to that of Big Tobacco in denying that a link between smoking and cancer existed. She followed that up by suggesting to Goodell and the NFL that it might be best to acknowledge the link between football and brain damage. 

“The NFL has had its four stages of grief: denial, more denial, some level of recognition, and now research.” 

At the House Judiciary Committee in 2009, New York Representative Anthony Weiner told the NFL’s new brain researchers that the work put out by the League’s MTBI committee was “infected” and the new group needed to “mop up.” 

“I really do think there’s something going on in my brain in the back left side. Get it to the NFL. Please.” 

Dave Duerson, who only two years earlier defended the NFL and questioned rule changes designed to avoid concussions, committed suicide in 2011 by shooting himself in the chest to preserve his brain for research. Duerson left a five-page note suggesting that he, too, might be suffering from brain damage and wanted to be sure that his brain was studied. He also sent his wife a text message before his death explaining the exact location that he thought was affected. 

“I’m really wondering where this stops. I’m really wondering if every single football player doesn’t have this.” 

Including Dave Duerson, the number of deceased players’ brains that had been examined by Ann McKee was 25. The number of those brains that she found to have CTE was 24. The quote reflects her amazement at the percentage that she had discovered. 

“Now, for the first time in its history, the NFL needed a new image, one that instead of glorifying the violence deflected attention from the fact that it was driving men mad.” 

When the concussion crisis finally became a reality for the NFL in 2011 and 2012 and the League finally began to take some sort of action, one of its goals was a public relations campaign that attempted to prove that its product was still safe. This was done by moving away from media segments that glorified “big hits,” reaching out to “mommy bloggers,” and producing promotional media that emphasized speed and finesse rather than hitting. 

“As concern about the health effects of football spread, attracting more and more prominent scientists, Seau in death was instantly transformed into a rare and valuable research commodity, his brain the most coveted specimen to come along since the connection between football and brain damage became known.”

A number of former NFL players who were found to have CTE died by suicide. While all of those were shocking, none measured to the shock that came when news broke that Junior Seau, one of the greatest linebackers in NFL history, had taken his own life. Seau’s death also set off a ghoulish race to secure his brain for research, with the Omalu/Bailes group, the Boston University group, and the NFL all vying for permission.