Strong Safety

The autopsy reports on Owen E. Thomas, a Penn junior and football player who hung himself last April, have come out, with surprising results. Thomas was discovered to have a condition called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a disease caused by the sort of repetitive head injury that is all too common in sports like football.

Prior to these findings, C.T.E. had not been discovered in an amateur football player. It was not considered a risk to players outside the N.F.L., though it has been linked to depression, dementia, and impulse control. Tragically, Boston University doctors believe that it probably played a role in Thompson’s suicide.

Thomas’ parents acted admirably in coming forward with the results of their son’s autopsy and opening a new dialogue on what is surely a painful subject. The discovery of C.T.E. in a college-level athlete has important implications for the sport of football and the way injuries ought to be dealt with at an amateur level. The public has a right to know that C.T.E. can affect amateur athletes as well as professionals.

Because C.T.E. is a damaging disease with life-long effects, even with the very little that is known about C.T.E.’s effects at the amateur level, the evidence given by the Thomas case requires drastic and immediate action to curb the potential damage to college and even high school athletes in the future.

We believe that the best way to begin such an effort is with education of parents and players about the risk of playing football and other rough contact sports. Many athletes are unaware that, even as college athletes with the proper pads, they can sustain the sort of repetitive damage that leads to C.T.E.

Another important step, and one that would take more time but also supply a more long-term solution to this problem, is investing in new and better helmets for players. The root cause of C.T.E. is the brain slamming against the skull, a common occurrence in a game filled with hard hits. A helmet that could minimize the force of the shock that gets transmitted down to a player’s head to a greater degree than the helmets currently available could go a long way toward alleviating this problem.

To combat the possibility of further damage done to amateur players by this disease, institutional changes need to be made at the college and even at the high school level. A simple way to do so is to mandate screening for brain damage resembling C.T.E. prior to each season to minimize the risk that players who are already hurt will worsen their condition.

Unfortunately, even such testing has serious failings. Far too frequently, coaches and team trainers are motivated by pressures that lead them to skimp in areas where an athlete’s health is concerned. This is not to say that all coaches, or even most, are guilty of ignoring their athletes’ health concerns to try and win a game. Yet the fact that a coach’s job security depends far more on how his team performs in key games than how healthy his team is at the end of the season demonstrates a conflict of interest between the coach’s job security and players’ health.

One way to minimize the effects of a conflict of interest like this is to mandate that medical personnel not associated with the team examine all head injuries and that the doctors’ orders be followed exactly, treated as law rather than suggestion.

Universities and high schools have an obligation to their athletes—many of whom attend the school because they were recruited to play a sport—to protect them from preventable damage that could plague them the rest of their lives. Strong action needs to be taken to educate players about the risk of C.T.E., protect them better on the field, and force teams to follow doctors’ orders.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

CORRECTION: September 17, 2010

An earlier version of the Sept. 17 staff editorial "Strong Safety" used the wrong surname when referring to Owen E. Thomas.