By. Jessica Holman, JHBL Staff Member
The National Football League, or NFL, and the sport of football in general are multibillion dollar organizations, and they have a major battle on their hands: the battle between their players and CTE.[1] CTE stands for chronic traumatic encephalopathy and is likely caused by repeated blows to the head.[2] It is a degenerative disease, which means that it worsens with every sequential blow that the head endures.[3] In America, people begin to play football at very young ages and can continue to play well into their forties, like the legendary Tom Brady.[4] This is all assuming that the players can continue playing, have control over their bodies, and teams are willing to contract with them for that long.
Though research is still being done on CTE, it is believed to be the cause of many people with the condition’s suicidal thoughts or actions, violence, lack of impulse control, mood disorders, and increased aggression.[5] The study of this condition is hindered by the fact that, up until rather recently, CTE could not be treated, let alone diagnosed, without opening the skull of the patient to physically see their brain.[6] Through research, scientists and doctors have drawn many connections between different sports and the condition, as well as learned more about how CTE develops in someone’s brain.[7] Before much research was done, CTE was thought to only affect the sport of wrestling, but recently, numerous cases have been found among the hockey and football communities as well.[8] Unfortunately, many players have been severely affected by this condition to the point of taking their own lives, such as Junior Seau, Dave Duerson, and Aaron Hernandez.[9] Many players and their families have elected for their brains to be donated to science in order for there to be research done on them, and treatments developed to combat CTE.
The NFL has publicly stated that CTE is a major issue for them and their players, present, past and future.[10] Before finally making that statement, the NFL remained silent about this issue plaguing their sport and players until they could not be quiet anymore because there were many deaths of players from suicide.[11] Recently, the league has announced that they will be investing millions of dollars into research, and up to date preventative measures such as, rubberized turf, better helmets, increased penalization of head shots and updated concussion protocols.[12] One thing that the NFL has yet to deal with in the public eye, is how, and if, the compensation for these players, in light of recent discoveries, is going to change at all.
NFL multi-year contracts are famous for giving their players hefty sums of money for an extremely short seventeen game season. Within these multi-year contracts are stipulations that allow for teams to cut their players if they do not pass a yearly physical examination before the beginning of the season.[13] This is imposing a sort of assumption of the risk onto the players.[14] If they want to play in the NFL, players need to sign a contract with a professional NFL team, whose contract is governed by the Collective Bargaining Agreement that was updated in 2020.[15] The teams are allowed to and encouraged to submit their athletes to physical tests before the season starts, according to the Collective Bargaining Agreement.[16] When players do not pass these physical examinations, including baseline concussion and brain function testing, the team can dismiss the players with no repercussions, especially if they claim the injury was “out of football” related. [17]
This sort of assumption of the risk for players is dangerous both physically and mentally. There is already an increase in the number of players leaving the league early.[18] Both to enjoy life and to avoid having the rest of their lives ruined from the large bodily toll of continued participation in football.[19] In the coming years, we will see a major shift in the collective bargaining agreement and other contract negotiations between the players and the owners of these NFL teams, focusing on the likelihood that they will have to stop playing earlier in their lives. This standard of players assuming the risk of getting CTE and other traumatic brain injuries that lower their quality of life will change due to pressure from the players and ultimately the biggest force in all of this, the fans. At this point, CTE stands for contracts terminated early as players are fighting a losing battle with their own bodies, and sometimes losing their lives as a result.
Jessica Holman is a second -year student at Suffolk University Law School. She graduated in 2020 from Syracuse University. She is very interested in working in the field of intellectual property upon graduating from law school. Currently, Jessica is a law clerk at the office of Aceto, Bonner & Cole P.C. in Boston, Massachusetts.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are the views of the author alone and do not represent the views of JHBL or Suffolk University Law School.
Sources
[1] See Christina Gough, Value of the National Football League franchises 2021, Statista (Sep. 7, 2021), https://www.statista.com/statistics/193534/franchise-value-of-national-football-league-teams-in-2010/.
[2] See Dave Zirin, Will the NFL Survive the New Science of Brain Damage?, the nation (Mar. 18, 2021), https://www.thenation.com/article/society/cte-football-nfl/.
[3] See Will the NFL Survive (Mar. 18, 2021) (studies show strong link between CTE development and repeated head trauma, but not exact timing).
[4] See id. (questioning whether sixteen year old athletes who have CTE should stop playing in the future)
[5] See Frequently Asked Questions About CTE, BU Research CTE Center, https://www.bu.edu/cte/about/frequently-asked-questions/#:~:text=The%20symptoms%20of%20CTE%20include,end%20of%20active%20athletic%20involvement (Last visited on Nov. 4, 2021); Joseph C. Maroon et al, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in Contact Sports: A Systematic Review of All Reported Pathological Cases, Plos One (Feb. 11, 2015), https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0117338#sec005.
[6] See Frequently Asked Questions About CTE (Last visited on Nov. 4, 2021).
[7] See id.
[8] Big NFL contracts, big risks: Our View, USA Today (Apr. 27, 2016), https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/04/27/nfl-draft-brain-concussions-cte-editorials-debates/83612142/.
[9] Id. (“Have found CTE in 88 of 92 of the deceased players studied”).
[10] Id.
[11] See The NFL Tried to Intimidate Scientists Studying the Link between Pro Football and Traumatic Brain Injury, Union of Concerned Scientists, https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/nfl-tried-intimidate-scientists-studying-link-between-pro-football-and-traumatic-brain (Oct. 11, 20217) (“Four weeks into the 2002 pro-football season, the soon to be biggest problem for the National Football League was standing in a Pittsburgh autopsy room, looking down at the body of one … offensive lineman”).
[12] See Big NFL contracts (Apr. 27,2016).
[13] Mikayla Paolini, NFL Takes a Page from the Big Tobacco Playbook: Assumption of Risk in the CTE Crisis, 68 Emory L. J 607, 631 (2019)
[14] See id.
[15] NFLPA, Collective Bargaining Agreement 2020, 144 (2020).
[16] Id.
[17] Id.
[18] Big NFL contracts, big risks: Our View, USA Today (Apr. 27, 2016), https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/04/27/nfl-draft-brain-concussions-cte-editorials-debates/83612142/.
[19] Id.