NFL and Dementia: Is the game worth it?

With all of the brain injuries that NFL players endure, is playing the game worth it?

The ties between playing in the NFL and dementia are becoming frightening.

It’s risk that every person who plays football takes – traumatic brain injury (TBI) that can cause loss of cognitive skills, memory loss, and even long-term dementia. It’s a particularly high risk in the NFL, where the players are bigger, stronger and faster than any football league on the planet.

When you strap on the helmet and turn your body into a guided missile hell-bent on colliding with another human being doing the exact same thing, there will be consequences, and the human brain can only take so many hits.

So, is it worth it?

Aug 24, 2014; Glendale, AZ, USA; Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver James Wright (86) is helped up by medical staff and suffering an injury in the second half against the Arizona Cardinals at University of Phoenix Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Matt Kartozian-USA TODAY Sports /

Is it worth making a career out of playing a game that is no more than a ground acquisition battle, marked by violent collision after violent collision?

Much of the answer to that question depends on a person’s definition of worth, but the recent revelations about chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and its links to concussions suffered during the course of years in the game of football raise some serious questions as to the overall safety of the game.

CTE is a degenerative brain disease which can currently only be definitively diagnosed in autopsies of individuals with a history of multiple concussions and other forms of head injury. The disease is most commonly found in athletes participating in contact sports such as football, hockey and professional wrestling who have experienced repetitive head and brain trauma.

According to doctors, people suffering from CTE may show symptoms of dementia – including but not limited to memory loss, aggression, confusion and severe depression. Many of these symptoms don’t appear until many years after the trauma.

Recent data that was produced shows that 3-in-10 NFL retirees is likely to suffer from some form of CTE long after they’ve played their final game, and that the symptoms are beginning to show up in much younger patients than before, per a story from ESPN.com.

Beloved former players such as Junior Seau, Jovan Belcher, Shane Dronett, and Ray Easterling, among others, took their own lives while suffering from advanced stages of CTE. A group of former players who have suffered from concussions and brain injury have sued the league, which is currently involved in a settlement agreement with the players.

But back to the question at hand…is it worth it?

If you enter into a career as a firefighter, you know that the chances of you dying in a fire are significantly higher than the average person, but many feel the service that the job provides is worth the risk. The same can be said for police officers, who take the risk of being shot or killed in an accident on a daily basis.

“Players will first be diagnosed with qualifying diagnoses at a younger age than the general population” – Segal Group report

The pay? Marginal at best, but those jobs provide a service, and should you survive until retirement, you stand a better than average chance of being able to enjoy that retirement with your family.

An NFL player takes the daily risk of sever brain trauma with every snap. And while they may be able to play through even several concussions, the ramifications of what those blows to the head can cause later in life make the question of the high salary earned versus the quality of life after retirement a real issue.

What good is millions of dollars in the bank if you’ve become an invalid at the age of 50?

Safety precautions being instituted by the league have all the effectiveness of throwing water on a grease fire. The nature of the sport in whole lends itself to head injuries, regardless of how the NFL tries teaching players to tackle “properly”. Perhaps if the league would stop allowing equipment to basically be turned into weapons of cerebral destruction, some steps to alleviating this problem could actually begin.

The problem for the NFL isn’t in the now, it’s in the future. Where generations of parents who are being exposed to all this new information are keeping their children from playing football, or even supporting football leagues at all.

If you’re the parent of an athletic child, and you hear a statistic that former NFL players between 50 and 59 years old develop Alzheimer’s disease and dementia at rates 14 to 23 times higher than the general population of the same age range, you probably start shopping for a baseball glove or some basketball shoes.

From the earlier-mentioned ESPN report, the Segal Group, who is preparing documents for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the NFL, made the following statement regarding their studies on the likelihood of NFL players suffering from CTE:

"“These results validate that our assumptions are reasonable and conservative because when compared to prevalence rates among the general population, they are significantly higher. Moreover, as anticipated, the model determines that players will first be diagnosed with qualifying diagnoses at a younger age than the general population, which is consistent with plaintiffs’ allegations.”The Segal Group estimates that 3,488 former players will make nearly 6,700 claims for payments related to brain injuries caused by playing football, according to the documents. Of those 3,488 claims, 94 percent would be for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease or moderate dementia, but the NFL’s documents show that many, if not the majority of, players will be ineligible for compensation before reaching age 80."

That does not sound like the quality of life that a retired NFL player would be interested in having, and a big reason why the league may find itself in some serious shortages of quality players in coming generations.

Yes, the rewards are great for those who manage to survive a career free of head injuries, but as players have become even more physically gifted and size and strength become paramount to success, the odds of being in that group of players without head trauma are being drastically reduced.

If the league doesn’t take more direct action (beyond penalty flags and fines) to ensure that players are not only protected physically, but emotionally after retirement, they may find many more potential players saying, “It’s just not worth it.”

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