From The Vault Of Art Shay: Chris Nowinski's Head Games

Serious photographers will catch the photographic pun I used on lecturer Chris- a faux-academic mortar board headpiece suitable for a Harvard lecturer of any kind, much less an anti-head injury zealot whose own head has been thumped on wrestling floorboards many a time.

Chris likes to dwell on the troubling statistics that parents face when trying to decide whether to let their kids go out for football: Inadequate head gear such as that worn by Green Bay\'s Bart Starr as he was clopped in the head by by a long ago Bear.\r\n\r\n

A Bear and a Packer complaining to each other about where their noggins hurt. \r\n\r\n

With wrestling promoter Billy Corgan behind him, Chris tells Mrs. Alissa Webb of his own journey into research—to help the parents of the 3 million kids a year who don football jerseys by advocating for stronger helmets, better diagnoses, better conditioning.\r\n\r\n

He tells an inquiring M.D. of the work of one of his crusaders, Dr.Ann McKee. With Chris\'s help, they secured the brains of 13 former NFL and college football players and, in his book, writes, \"every single one was diagnosed by Dr. McKee with CTE—Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease. He wrily comments that seven of these players are now known not only for their football exploits, they are now remembered for dying by suicide, gun accidents caused by impaired memories or drug overdoses and, in one case, being thrown through a windshield during an 88 miles per hour police chase. Chris testified before a Congressional committee.

Listeners were held rapt by Nowinski\'s modest assertion that the NFL Youth Football and had been spurred to commit $150 million to the development of safer football at youth and high school levels starting in 1998 when the problem of head trauma in sports began to be noticed. Research has since linked early trauma with later anomalies such as loss of short term memory, impulse control, impaired judgment, aggression, confusion, depression and eventually, progressive dementia.\r\n\r\n

Chris Nowinski continues to consult with his team of cutting edge doctors to make contact sports safer for children, with manufacturers to beef up their head gear, with congress, to get their heads working on this mess. A typical American mess: The players are greedy, delay in reaction to the problem while trying to make money now and the underlying false feeling that youth and ambition will prevail.