The news about Aaron Hernandez's CTE diagnosis will not be the end of the NFL or American Football as we know it. There is too much money invested in football for an illness that currently can only be diagnosed posthumously to eradicate it. But the severity of Hernandez's condition will have lasting effects on the sport and the people who volunteer to play the sport. The severity of those effects will be determined by how the NFL reacts to the news about Hernandez in the steps they take to address this problem that has now become more palatable to those people playing football at all levels. Before we go further, there must be three axioms that we all need to agree to before going further in this article.
Axiom #1: Hernandez's CTE does not absolve him of the crime he committed. Fortunately for the NFL, most discussions that have occurred about this topic have devolved into
vociferous outrage over Hernandez's family suing the NFL because people think the lawsuit mitigates Hernandez's accountability for murdering Odin Lloyd. Even if the courts knew that Hernandez had CTE during the trial, that would not have been enough to overcome the two things needed to hold someone accountable for a crime which are
actus reus (Hernandez killed someone) and
mens rea (Hernandez knew what he was doing was wrong). There was sufficient evidence to show that Hernandez tried to cover up his crime, which shows that he knew what he did was wrong. CTE is not to blame for this murder, Aaron Hernandez is to blame for this murder. Are we all OK with this? Good. Because Hernandez's CTE is the focal point of this article.
Axiom #2: All speculation about players having CTE is SPECULATION. I have no evidence of any player currently having CTE, and any suggestion of this is merely to evoke critical thought about player behavior and what the NFL should do about addressing the CTE issue.
Axiom #3: All information presented about CTE in this article has been done through personal research, and is not intended to be presented as absolute fact.
If you cannot agree to these statements I suggest you stop reading immediately as you will only become more incensed. For those of you who do agree, here we go.
The diagnosis of Aaron Hernandez's CTE is startling and it presents the NFL with a whole host of new problems, the most pertinent being the severity of Hernandez's CTE diagnosis relative to his age.
Some reports state that Hernandez had Stage 3 (out of 4) CTE, and that the progression of his brain deterioration was that of something doctors see in 60 year old patients. This should make all current NFL players perk up and start doing some math. Hernandez was 27 at the time of his suicide, but remember that the last down of football he played was in 2012
when he was 23 years old after only playing three years in the NFL. This is not someone like Junior Seau, Ray Easterling, Dave Deurson, or Andre Waters who had long careers and committed suicide 10-20 years after they retired. Hernandez was right around the
average age for a current NFL player when he committed suicide, and well under the average age when he left football. The details about CTE are still being learned, but what seems to be unanimous is that CTE is a degenerative condition that progresses as the person gets older. If Aaron Hernandez was at Stage 3 by age 27, that means that he probably showed the beginning symptoms of CTE while he was playing in his early 20's. This could mean (again PURE SPECULATION) that some current players in their early 20's are showing signs of this disease, and it could progress to Stage 3 before they are 30 years old. This is not to say that all players with CTE commit suicide or murder, but current players have to see that Hernandez was one step away from
Stage 4 symptoms which include full blow dementia, parkinsons, trouble walking, paranoia, loss of executive dysfunction, and language difficulties. The rate at which CTE progresses in unknown, and the question of how some players get it and others do not is still being researched, but Hernandez's case will put some doubt into younger players' minds about the nature of their health, and it raises the second problem that the NFL will now have to face.
The NFL will now have to face the question "is this player exhibiting signs of CTE" every time they become violent off the field or show erratic behavior. Since CTE has become more of a mainstream topic this question has been asked of player conduct off the field, but it has been dismissed as being a ridiculous notion due to the players being too young. "
Players in their mid 20's do not have CTE, and their behavior is a manifestation of playing a violent game". This has been the explanation for this kind of behavior, and it has been tacitly accepted by all areas of society. The
Jovan Belcher incident and the
death of Chris Henry should have brought this argument into question, but now Hernandez's diagnosis makes it even harder to peddle that statement as an answer to the question "is this player exhibiting signs of CTE". If Hernandez could have Stage 3 CTE at 27, then could it be (again PURE SPECULATION) that certain players' actions can be explained by symptoms of early CTE that include depression, minor losses of mental control and self regulation, impulsiveness, short term memory problems, and aggressiveness. Examples of erractic/violent behavior of football players off the field can be seen in recent incidents involving
Su'a Cravens,
Lawrence Timmons,
Randy Gregory,
Greg Hardy, Adam Jones's numerous incidents, Ray Rice, and countless others. And let's not forget all the incidents that are occurring with college players. Are these incidents just the byproduct of these players playing a violent game, or could these be manifestations of early onset CTE? We will never know for sure, but Hernandez's case opens up a new road of justification for the latter, and the NFL needs a plan to address this for the future if it is to head off lawsuits and a possible dwindling of its labor force.
The plan the NFL should adopt needs to address two issues. The first is participation in the sport. Depending on the source, youth football is either
in decline or it is slightly increasing but
high school football numbers are in decline. There are probably truths on both sides, but the more cases of CTE showing up in players around age 25 start to accumulate, the more doubt begins to sink in to the minds of the "NFL farm system". College Football. If players in college right now are concerned that they could have advanced CTE symptoms before they end their rookie contract it may dissuade some of them from pursuing that goal. The NFL should increase the amount rookies are allowed to be paid in order to add incentive for them to come to the sport, and soften the idea that some could have CTE by age 25. The NFL also needs to think about those making the league minimum. Right now the league minimum ranges from $465,000 to $1,000,000 dollars, but for the players making that much money is that worth it to risk their long term health? The NFL and NFLPA need to realize that this CTE issue will not go away, and to keep players wanting to join the sport out of college and stay in the sport as long as they can they need to increase the league minimum. Increasing these two areas of salary will give players short term peace of mind about making a decent living in the face of CTE, but it will only partially address the long term problem CTE will have on the NFL.
Lawsuits against the NFL regarding CTE have come, gone, and come again, and they will not stop if the NFL does not have a long term solution. With CTE thrust into the public sphere because of the NFL, some health organizations have taken it upon themselves to try and develop tests
that can screen for CTE while the player is alive, but none have been able to do it reliably. If the NFL were smart they would put as much money into this research as possible. Now, you are asking yourselves, isn't this, on some level, admitting that football causes CTE? Maybe. But admitting that CTE is an issue is less risky than pretending it is not, and if the NFL can sponsor research that comes up with a reliable test it will do two things. First, it will be a good faith gesture that shows the NFL is not some money making ogre that does not care about the well being of its players. The NFL would fund research that could develop a test that will help its players and other segments of the population like
military veterans. Second, let's assume the NFL's funding bears fruit and a reliable test is found that has the ability to test for CTE in living players. The NFL would have the ability to ameliorate future lawsuits by giving the players a choice to get tested or not. Those who choose not to get tested will have a tough time suing the NFL later if they continue to take risks when the NFL allowed them to know if they had CTE while they were players. If a player decides to get tested, and CTE is found, then the NFL can have the players sign a waiver before testing saying that the NFL is not responsible for any previous CTE conditions that are found because it cannot be determined when those conditions were acquired. This also mitigates culpability for any future symptoms after the test is administered because it may be hard to determine whether those symptoms were manifestation of symptoms that were discovered before or after the test. This may open up more people to get tested, but the NFL needs to start proactively trying to get ahead of some of these future lawsuits by admitting on some level that this is a problem and that they are taking steps to increase player safety.
Whatever you think the merits of Hernandez's Family's lawsuit against the NFL are, the fact is that the NFL needs to begin to address this issue on many levels. Hernandez is now at least the third confirmed case in the last ten years, along with Jovan Belcher and Chris Henry, of an NFL player in their mid 20's who suffered from CTE and whose life ended in a violent and tragic manner. The longer the NFL waits to proactively address this problem, and the more cases of younger players having CTE start to pile up, the higher the risk the NFL runs of irreparably damaging the empire it has built. But like D'Angelo Barksdale once said, "The king stay the king", and the NFL will continue to rule over all other American professional sports leagues even with this CTE issue. It is just a matter of how big of a kingdom do they want to have.
