Head Games Christopher Nowinski, The Drummond Publishing Group (page 3 of 4) Page 3 of 4

Then I found the study that connected the dots.10 A doctor named Wayne Langburt sent a survey to high school football players (not trainers) in Pennsylvania after the 1999 season. Langburt asked how often they had experienced concussion symptoms that season. He made the survey anonymous, because he knew that players would hesitate to admit how many concussions they’d had if they thought their answers could be traced back to them. He also removed the term concussion from the survey and relied on a generic definition instead. He knew that many high school kids misunderstand what a concussion is, falsely believing it requires loss of consciousness. The results were shocking. The share of players who claimed to have suffered a concussion the previous season was not 4 percent, or even 14 percent, but was 47 percent! And these players didn’t suffer just one concussion. Those who received concussions claimed an average of 3.4 each season.

That’s a lot of potential Kurt Thyreens and Jacob Snakenbergs.

I tried to make a comeback a few weeks after my last concussion. I was scheduled to wrestle four matches over a long weekend. After the first match, my head felt considerably worse than it had just hours before. The deterioration of my health continued after the second match, so much so that by the time I woke up on the third day, something was so obviously wrong with me that the WWE refused to let me perform in the third show that afternoon. That night I met my girlfriend at the time, Jessie, at my hotel in Indianapolis and went to sleep.

At some point during the night I woke up and realized I wasn’t in the bed anymore. As I became aware of my surroundings, I found myself facedown on the floor, surrounded by shards of glass. I looked to my right. The nightstand was broken, and its glass surface was shattered. The lamp and the alarm clock that had been on the nightstand were on the ground. Jessie was yelling my name. “Chris! Chris!” “What?” I answered. “Are you okay?” Feeling no pain, and having no idea of what she’d just witnessed, I yelled back, “Why?”

I’d been having a nightmare. My screaming had woken her up, and when she opened her eyes she saw me standing on the bed, clawing at the wall as if I were trying to climb it. I was sweating, and all my muscles were engaged. Jessie tried yelling my name to wake me up. Then she tried pulling me back down in the bed, but she wasn’t strong enough. After a few seconds of standing there, I apparently yelled, “Oh no, Jessie!” jumped off the bed, and crashed headfirst into the wall as if I were trying to catch something. I bounced off the wall and into the nightstand. After about ten seconds on the ground, I woke up.

I personally don’t remember any of this. I only remember dreaming that Jessie was falling, and that I had tried to “save” her. When she told me what she’d seen, I was officially freaked out. I turned on the TV and stared at it until sunrise.

Don’t get me wrong. I think the NFL is fully aware of the problem of head injuries in football. They have to be, because a degenerative brain disease caused by playing football has been identified as a contributing factor in the premature death of at least one of its greatest players. In 2002, NFL Hall of Fame center Mike Webster died from a heart attack at age 50. Playing for the Pittsburgh Steelers for sixteen years, the undersized Webster was known for his ferociousness on the field. Yet he struggled severely after his playing career ended. He was unemployed, debt ridden, occasionally homeless, and even charged with forging prescriptions for Ritalin. He was fired from his job as an assistant strength and conditioning coach for the Kansas City Chiefs because he couldn’t fulfill the responsibilities of the job. In 1999, he was diagnosed as being “punch drunk.” An autopsy confirmed that he had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a neurodegenerative condition that was usually reserved for boxers.

In response to research revealing links between head injuries and neurological problems such as Alzheimer’s disease, depression, and cognitive impairment, the Center for the Study of Retired Athletes at the University of North Carolina has surveyed thousands of former NFL players on their experiences with concussions. When the data was processed, it was discovered that the players’ risk of suffering from these neurological illnesses was proportionate to how many concussions they’d had. Players who had suffered three concussions in their lifetime had more than three times the rate of clinically diagnosed depression and five times the rate of mild cognitive impairment, also known as pre-Alzheimer’s disease.14 15 Twenty percent of the group with at least three concussions was depressed, and 17 percent had significant memory impairment. Overall, former NFL players had a 37 percent greater chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease than an average person who didn’t butt heads for a living.

In 2005, Terry Long, Mike Webster’s former offensive line mate with the Pittsburgh Steelers, died at age 45 from what was later determined to be suicide. He had drunk antifreeze. Toward the end of his life, Long exhibited some of the same symptoms as Webster had: erratic behavior, poor decision making, and depression. At the time of his death, he was under investigation for setting fire to his failing chicken-processing factory for the insurance money. The neuropathologist that performed his autopsy found structural brain damage similar to Mike Webster’s. He believes Long’s neurological deterioration was also football related.

Former NFL players appear to be in bad shape. The list of players forced to retire from multiple concussions grows every year, and now includes Troy Aikman, Steve Young, Wayne Chrebet, Ted Johnson, Al Toon, Chris Miller, Stan Humphries, Bill Romanowski, Merril Hoge, Frank Wycheck, Bob Christian, Dustin Johnson, Ed McCaffrey, and others. Based on this new trend, I was curious if the NFL—the corporation—was doing anything about it. What I found was surprising.

I was excited to learn that in 1992, the NFL formed a subcommittee to study mild traumatic brain injury.

This excerpt is provided as a courtesy to BrainLine by The Drummond Publishing Group. Any commercial or noncommercial duplication, including in electronic form, is strictly prohibited by the publisher and by applicable law. www.chrisnowinski.com.

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