A post mortem examination of Chris Henry, former Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver, has revealed the troubled former third round draft pick suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a form of brain damage caused by repeated blows to the head.
The Brain Injury Research Institute (BIRI) has conducted tests on a range of former athletes, and whilst nothing has been confirmed, many of these athletes developed serious behavioural problems that may have contributed to their death.
Included in the test sample was Chris Benoit, the wrestler who in bizarre circumstances executed his family in a murder suicide.He is one of many athletes to have been found to be afflicted with CTE and behave erratically prior to their death.
Such a phenomenon cast a very dark shadow over the NFL as a sport.
Whilst many Australians consider the use of pads an unflattering sign of weakness, that view disregards the speed of the collisions and the use of the head as a battering ram.
The armoured exterior of an NFL player provides them with the superhuman confidence that enables them to put their bodies in situations where they know a head first collision with either the ground or another 120kg behemoth will ensue.
Much like big tobacco and its stance on lung cancer and other diseases, the NFL has worked very hard to discredit any work that suggests that the repeated concussions suffered by the players leads to lasting brain damage.
I’m not alone in cheering on the sight of a player so committed to the ball they cling to it like a life preserver as their body twists violently in the air. I’m not alone in cheering on the vicious, but legal hit, that causes a player to lose their orientation.
But when we talk of how much a player earns or how much loyalty they owe to their team, perhaps we should give pause to consider the loyalty of his family who have to watch some of these once young proud men descend into depressive spiral that contributes to their deaths.
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