NFL Hits Concussion Issue Head On

ROSEMONT, Ill. -- June 19, 2007— -- In terms of what has come to be expected at past NFL meetings, what will transpire Tuesday in the conference rooms at a hotel near O'Hare Airport figures to be markedly different than any other get-together the league has ever convened.

Just consider some of the esoteric sessions among the more than one dozen agenda items:

Does concussion lead to pugilistic dementia and Alzheimers?

The role of neuropsychological testing in return-to-play decisions.

Multiple concussions: When is enough enough?

For a full day, members of the NFL player health and safety committee, doctors and trainers from each of the 32 franchises, prominent researchers and league administrators will meet in what has been dubbed by some as a "concussion summit."

The meeting, mandated by first-year NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, comes at a time when the league is under fire and under intense scrutiny on several off-field fronts. Among them is the belief in many quarters that players who suffer multiple concussions during their NFL careers experience lifetime effects such as Alzheimers, depression, dementia and other serious ailments.

In truth, the NFL has been conducting research on concussions (or MTBI, mild traumatic brain injuries as they are often called) among its players for 14 years and spent millions on studies.

"The safety of our players is critically important to us," Goodell said at the NFL spring meeting in Nashville last month.

But a number of recent events -- the suicide of former Philadelphia safety Andre Waters at age 44 last November, the February revelation by former New England linebacker Ted Johnson that he suffers from depression and other side effects from multiple concussions, and the deaths of onetime Pittsburgh offensive linemen Justin Strzelczyk and Terry Long after long bouts of depression -- have cast more focus on the subject.

Based on anecdotal evidence, and on studies in which researchers have pored over the brain tissue of former NFL players, it appears there is reason for concern. Under Goodell, there is a heightened sense of awareness and of the potential need to better address the issue.