Ex-Team Executive Sounds an Alarm on N.F.L. Head Trauma

[Bozita]

Source: NYTimes

October 28, 2009
Ex-Team Executive Sounds an Alarm on N.F.L. Head Trauma

By ALAN SCHWARZ


TAMPA, Fla. — Gay Culverhouse used to be the woman in the men’s locker room. Twenty years later, she’s their friend in the emergency room.

Sitting at a restaurant here Friday, only a few miles from where she once served as president of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, she reconnected with a few company retirees. There was Richard Wood, the fearsome linebacker known as Batman whose searing migraine headaches and tendency to get lost while driving in his own neighborhood leave him scared for his future. Across the table was Scot Brantley, an even harder hitter through the 1980s whose short-term memory is gone. Then there was Brandi Winans, former wife of the former Buccaneers lineman Jeff Winans, who slipped into such inexplicable depression, fogginess and fury several years ago that their marriage splintered.

Culverhouse looked at disability forms, listened to stories, offered counsel and expressed regret. She has done the same via telephone this year for another half-dozen former Buccaneers with increasing cognitive problems in their 40s or 50s. Having followed story after story detailing how N.F.L. retirees are experiencing various forms of dementia at several times the national rate, and listening to the N.F.L. and its doctors cast doubt that football played any role in their problems, she has emerged after 15 years to reconnect with her players and sound an alarm.

Culverhouse has blood cancer and renal failure and has been told she has six months to live. She will testify before the House Judiciary Committee at its hearing on football brain injuries on Wednesday to, as she put it, “tell the truth about what’s going on while I still have the chance.”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/sports/football/28football.html?hp

[GreenTea]

1. Who cares, as long as they play and we win! There's always hundreds more to take their place.

Remember now, it's not a game so much as it is a business, come on, lighten up...there's risk involved in every job, but with this job the money is fantastic and there will always be more than enough players who will want these jobs, we're just keeping it rolling for the fans...so everyone makes out great, where's the harm?

Because what it's really all about is...."Just win, Baby"! YEAH!! :bounce:

[IndianaGreen]

2. They are our version of the gladiators

[old mark]

3. Eagle's Westbrook suffered a concussion in Monday Night's game,

appeared to lose consciousness for a short time. He is being examined today. He has just returned this season from knee and ankle surgeries last summer.

mark

rec.

[Bozita]

5. Saw an Iowa receiver get one on Saturday.

He hit the ground and didn't move ... except for the involuntary tremors in his right arm.

The Michigan State hitter was celebrating the helmet-to-helmet high speed collision. Disgusting!

[Bozita]

6. video

at the 4:40 mark

[dysfunctional press]

4. as long as boxing remains legal...

why should football be dragged over the coals, in terms of what it does to some participants in later life?

[TrogL]

7. Logical fallacy

Two wrongs don't make a right.

[dysfunctional press]

9. but if it's okay for boxing, why isn't it okay for football?

these kinds of injuries have been known about in boxers for a LONG time. the evidence regarding football players is relatively new.
nothing was ever done about it in regard to boxing, so why get all up in arms about it in football, like it's some horrible new sports phenomenon?

[dysfunctional press]

8. oops

wrong place