Nfl Concussion Debate History

Zachariah Greaves

April 17, 2016

ENG/480

NFL Concussion Debate History

        The NFL has had a long fight over concussions and how to prevent or lessen them.  There have been law suits, rule changes, and even attempts at making better-protecting helmets and pads.  However, there has been a long history of debates on this subject, and they date back as far as 1937.  Concussions are a major problem within the NFL, and history shows that the league has done a lot of dancing around the subject.  There have been a few major decisions and debates that have contributed to the publicity that the league has been getting in regards to the concussion argument.  The history of this debate is a long and important one, and it only sharpens the problem that the NFL is facing with this topic.

        In 1937, the Coaches Association declared that players who suffer a concussion should immediately be taken out of a game (Petchesky).  This was a major step in the right direction for football to help lessen the number of concussions that the players receive.  If a player suffers a concussion during a game, no matter if it is the fourth or the first quarter, that player should not be allowed back into the game at all.  The NFL did not always follow these guidelines.  A lot of players would come back into the game, and they would eventually suffer a second concussion, and a lot of times no one would even know about it.  In 1952, a study warned that a player who suffered three concussions should leave football forever (Petchesky).  Of course, the NFL did not abide by this at all.  Several players suffered more than five concussions throughout their careers before even saying anything about it.  The NFL seemed completely oblivious to how dangerous concussions can really be, and it took the league many years to finally acknowledge how serious of a condition they really are.

        Finally, in 1994, the NFL acknowledged the danger of concussions for the first time, and the league formed the Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee, or MTBI committee (Petchesky).  However, the co-chairman was Elliot Pellman, who happened to be the commissioner Paul Tagliabue’s personal physician.  He lied and said that he had a degree from Stony Brook, but he actually only attended medical in Guadalajara, Mexico (Petchesky).  The committee was definitely questionable, and all of their data from hundreds of players mysteriously disappears.  Elliot Pellman quickly lost his credibility after he tried to speed up quarterback Boomer Esiason’s concussion return.  In December of 1994, Paul Tagliabue dismissed the problem of concussions completely (Ezell).  This did not sit well with a lot of agents, especially quarterback agents.  In 1997, the American Academy of Neurology produced its own guidelines regarding a player’s return from a concussions.  However, the NFL rejected the guidelines (Petchesky).  Things would begin to get real for the NFL in the later years to come.