Clashing Heads, Crashing Brain

"I did a list from the five teams I played for. I have come up with 15 guys I played with or are part of Ottawa football alumni who have either died from or are suffering from degenerative brain disease -- Alzheimer's, ALS, Parkinson's or CTE [chronic traumatic encephalopathy]."
"I define profound [incidents in head bashing] as sensing I was out of my own body. In each case, I played almost the entire game feeling as though I were floating above the field and watching myself down there, in slow motion."
Bob McKeown, former Ottawa Rough Riders lineman

Mr. McKeown played for the CFL (Canadian Football League) league between 1971 and 1975. The conditions under which he played as a lineman were not different then than they are now. Head bashing, concussions, repercussions and an unwillingness to withdraw from the game are now as they were then. Only back then the morbidity of the constant traumatic head injuries were an unknown. No one, it seems, even thought to consider the physical consequences of continuing head bashing.

Now, however, scientific enquiry is firm in its conclusion that concussion, brain trauma and degenerative brain disease result from the way that football is played, an energetic, violent exercise of the human body, treating the human cranium as though it were just a ball receiving rough treatment, and that whoever sustained an injury would simply "get over it". Likely the growing awareness of boxing's violent effect on the heads and brains of professional boxers led to the origins of the first awareness of the link between sustained head injury and brain deterioration.

Photos of a normal brain (top) compared with the brain of Greg Ploetz (bottom), who played defensive tackle for the Texas Longhorns and who suffered from severe chronic traumatic encephalopathy.  Boston University Photography

Back then, Bob McKeown, former Rough Riders lineman, just sucked it up like all his teammates. Now, he is an award-winning reporter for the CBC's Fifth Estate investigative journalism program. Back when he was a young footballer, he played in high school and that was his introduction to "profound" incidents that led to a succession of concussions. College (Yale) football continued the exposure and then finally, playing for the Canadian Football League.

He has not yet become aware of any brain disease symptoms in his own experience. But, hearing about the experiences later in life of all those he knew and played with, dying at an early age from progressive degenerative brain diseases, has convinced him that he would like his own brain to be studied after his death. He is very aware that back then, when he played football and suffered some of those physically devastating blows, playing the game through a fog of disorientation, he thought his playing was vastly improved during such episodes.

Research by brain scientists associated with Boston University representing the largest study of former football players ever to have been undertaken, revealed that almost all ex NFL players whose brains were examined indicated levels of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) present (110 out of 111 examined) ranging from mild to severe. That number included seven of eight former CFL players.

Two college football players collide head-first during a 2009 game. 

Donald Page/Southcreek Global/ZUMApress/Newscom

A previous study out of the Canadian Concussion Centre in Toronto indicated somewhat lower CTE rates to be present among the brains examined post-mortem. Irrespective of which the lead investigator of the Boston research, Dr. Ann McKee, concludes along with her scientific panel that no doubt whatever can exist any longer that there is a definite link between repeated blows to the human head and the eruption of brain disease in later life.

The National Football League in 2016 realized the futility of its denials of any such links. Which led them to make a $1-billion settlement with former players in hopes of compensating for issues relating to brain health. But while the NFL has made that admission and committed to a payout to those involved, the CFL has as yet done no such thing. Retired CFL players like their NHL counterparts filed a class-action damage suit, a claim on hold awaiting a jurisdictional decision.

Jacksonville Jaguars wide receiver Lamaar Thomas (center) is hit in the head by Tampa Bay Buccaneers linebacker Brandon Magee as cornerback Kip Edwards helps make the tackle a 2014 preseason game. Magee was penalized for the hit.

Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP