Injustice League (traumatic brain injury, domestic violence and the nfl)

Injustice League

As the world pauses for Super Bowl Sunday, the Ms. Blog can’t help but also mention some non-sporting issues facing the National Football League: particularly domestic violence and its relationship to players’ traumatic head injuries. Here, an excerpt from the upcoming issue of Ms. magazine.



Paul Oliver married his college sweetheart, Chelsea, who he met when they were both top athletes at the University of Georgia. Chelsea’s game was volleyball, Paul’s football. They had two beautiful sons. On September 24, 2013, Paul, who went on to play free safety for the San Diego Chargers, stood in front of his wife and children and said, “This is how miserable I am.” He then flashed a crooked smiled and killed himself with a gunshot to the head. He was 29 years old.
. . . .

Following his death, a pathologist examined Oliver’s brain and determined that he was suffering from “an advanced form” of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease that has been found in football players with a history of repetitive brain trauma. Now Chelsea is suing the National Football League in a wrongful death suit, saying that the untreated concussions Paul endured as a National Football League (NFL) player irrevocably damaged his brain. She is also bringing to the surface something that NFL executives do not want to touch: the possible links between CTE and spousal abuse.

. . . . . .

Since Goodell became league commissioner in 2006, there have been 56 domestic violence arrests, but players have been suspended only a combined total of 13 games for such acts. Now the league has developed new protocols that call for a six-game ban for a first offense and lifetime ban for a second. The NFL has also established an owner-dominated nine-person committee (two women) to review all personal conduct infractions, with Arizona Cardinals boss Michael Bidwell, a former prosecutor, heading it up.

. . . .
Researchers at Boston University’s Sports Legacy Institute, the foremost concussion center in the country, agree there is more than a coincidental connection between the emerging stories about head injuries and domestic violence. They have found, after doing autopsies on dozens of brains of dead NFL players, that CTE often comes with lesions on the anterior temporal lobe of the brain, the area that governs impulse control.

. . . .

http://msmagazine.com/blog/2015/01/30/injustice-league/