Could Brain Injury Lawsuits Sideline the NFL?

Oakland QB Carr Gets Brained 435x580

The NFL (National Football League) is a hugely powerful entity, more media company than athletic league. (See our September 17, 2014 Technology Bloopers blog entry.) It has been coming increasingly under fire because of a swell of publicity about the brain injuries that are causing early dementia and death among former players. On November 9, 2014 that swell became a tsunami. The cover story in November 9’s New York Times Magazine deals with the big bucks lawsuits from players with brain injuries (if you miss the definition, C.T.E. stands for Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, a progressive degenerative disease caused by blows to the head from football, boxing and other contact sports or explosions). If there ever were a photo that highlights the cause of such injuries the one above this blog entry would be it. Oakland Raiders quarterback Derek Carr is 6′ 3″ tall and weighs 214 lb., so he is considerably larger than the average American man, but he looks like a small child next to Denver Broncos defensive end Malik Jackson, who is 6′ 5″ tall and weighs 290 lb. That kind of size disparity is one key reason that there are so many injuries … and so many NFL players that suffer increasingly from dementia as they age. We scanned this photo from the first page of the Sports Section of the print edition of the San Jose Mercury News.