Troy Aikman, former NFL QB suffered multiple concussions
Who will be the NFL's equivalent of Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Raphael Palmeiro?
When Major League Baseball was the subject of a Congressional hearing in 2005, we got Sosa resorting to a translator to answer questions. We also listened to slugger Mark McGwire repeatedly use the phrase: "I'm not here to discuss the past".
And now it will be the NFL's turn at the whipping post of Congress. Not a week passed between the league releasing a summary of results from its commissioned study on concussions and the call of Congressman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) for hearings.
Conyers wants to look into the impact of head trauma on NFL players and according to a report in the New York Times, "what can be done to limit them and compensate the players and their families.”
It's the word "compensate" that strikes a chord with the league. For years it refused to acknowledge the growing evidence that their former players' brains were damaged as a result of repeated concussions. With that acknowledgment would come enormous financial liability for the resulting long-term care of their fallen warriors.
The league repeatedly said that it needed to conduct its own study to help it determine the extent of a problem or if one existed at all.
Meanwhile, in real time on the field, its concussions policy related to players' return to the game in which they were injured was changing in favor of caution.
After release of the data that showed in some cases that former players as young as 30 were 19 times more likely than the average man, to be given a diagnosis of a memory disorder or dementia it had to know the time had come to face this issue.
So who will give us the sound bites we cherish from the "See No Evil" chorus of former and current baseball players when faced with questions about illegal steroid use in the game?
NFL medical personnel will have to answer tough questions about why it seems that knee and ankle injuries keep players out of physical contact longer than concussions.
Some critics of the hearings will undoubtedly use the excuse that players assume the risk of such injury when they sign up to play.
And that is correct. Except, the treatment for the injury is what is in question, not the fact that one happens. The brain isn't a bone that can heal after an operation or a ligament that can be transplanted from one part of the body to the other.
Just ask the wives of former players who live with dementia or the widows of those that have committed suicide or died prematurely after years of dementia.
Photo credit: Associated Press/Evan Agostini, taken October 6, 2009 in New York
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