Note to self: Don’t leave the medical records for thousands of football players in a random backpack.
The NFL might be the most PR-conscious of all the major North American sports leagues, but sometimes it just has to grit its teeth and confess to bad, even embarrassing news.
Today is one of those times. After a Deadspin report that a trainer for the Washington Redskins was the victim of a car break-in that led to thousands of players’ medical records being stolen, the NFL admitted today that, yes, that theft was a real thing that happened.
The backpack in question contained electronic and paper player records, including information on the attendees for every NFL Scouting Combine dating back to 2004. Pro Football Talk says that there’s no indication that the thief has accessed the laptop containing the Combine files, which is “password protected but not encrypted.”
The issue here is one of medical privacy, with the NFLPA looking into potential violations of (a lot of) players’ rights in that area. It also raises this obvious question: A trainer for the Redskins had medical records for more than half the league on their laptop?
As PFT also notes, even if nothing even bigger comes of the theft, it’s another incident that shows how there is occasionally a gap between reality and the NFL’s carefully crafted narrative when it comes to matters of player health and safety. And that’s something the league would no doubt prefer to avoid at all costs.
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