THE FATE OF FOOTBALL: Part 1 of 4
CARROLLTON, Tex. — Tony Dorsett moves out of the passenger seat of his white SUV and cuts across his lawn from the driveway toward the front door of his home in suburban Dallas. The driver gets out and walks down the street.
He’s returning from a workout at Cowboys Fit, a health and fitness center located at “The Star,” the training facility the Cowboys moved into last year in Frisco, and having lunch at his favorite seafood restaurant in North Dallas.
Dorsett settles into a couch in his family room, picks up the remote and clicks on ESPN on the big-screen TV for background noise, looks up when the NFL news comes on. Dorsett loves talking football and has no trouble recalling details from his Hall of Fame playing career as one of the most elusive and exciting running backs in NFL history.
He can recite yard by yard his dash the length of the field on his never-to-be-broken NFL record 99-yard touchdown run in the final game of the 1982 season against the Vikings in the Metrodome. He laughs about his fullback and late friend Ron Springs failing to realize he was supposed to line up in front of him and instead remained on the sidelines, forcing the Cowboys to play with just 10 men on the field.
He can tell you what yard line Drew Pearson threw a key block and how he spiked the ball in the end zone instead of keeping it.
He just can’t tell you who dropped him off at his house no more than 10 minutes ago.
Dorsett’s long-term memory is sharp but his short-term memory has a shelf life that seems to last mere seconds.
He is suffering. He took too many hits to the head, endured too many concussions.
When asked who was driving him, he has a blank look on his face.
He is stumped.
“I don’t know,” he says.
“TD, you just got out of the car a few minutes ago,” he’s reminded.
He fiddles with his phone for clues. He thinks for a couple of minutes and it comes to him. It was a friend who volunteers to drive him around a couple of mornings a week to his workout and errands. Dorsett still drives himself some, but having the driver makes life easier.
Tony Dorsett is 63, and except for a few grey hairs, he looks closer to 43. He still has that boyish face and devilish grin. Teammates used to call him, “Hawk,” a nickname first given to him by his father for his keen sense of vision that twisted defenders into the ground. He was always the heartbeat of the locker room, the life of America’s Team’s party.
He still has lots of personality but is more subdued.
“My memory…I have good days and I have bad days and I don’t like it,” says Dorsett. “I don’t like going places I’ve been going to for 20-25 years and all of a sudden I don’t know how to get there. That’s frustrating. That’s frustrating as hell. It’s embarrassing at times. I take it with a grain of salt and keep moving on. If I get frustrated about it, obviously it’s going to make matters worse.”
He uses a daily planner to write down appointments. He asks Siri a lot of questions on his iPhone. “It is what it is,” he says. “If you play as long as I did, you are going to have something wrong with you.”
He traveled from Dallas to Los Angeles in 2013 to take part in brain testing at UCLA. Although the only definitive test for the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy must be performed posthumously, Dorsett says he was diagnosed with CTE in Los Angeles and is receiving treatment in hopes of slowing it down. He’s been to Mexico for stem cell treatment for various ailments and prays it will also have a positive impact on his memory and hold off the disease.
“They know I got it. I’ve had some trauma to my brain. CTE is diagnosed when you are dead and gone. They can see what I have is probably what it is,” he says. “I’m being proactive. I’m trying to find ways if I could cut it off at the pass. To this point, there is not a whole lot they can do about it.”
Researchers at Boston University are hopeful they are developing a test to detect CTE in the living. “I would surely like to get that test,” says Dorsett.
He regrets being a victim/participant in the culture at the time he played that all players needed to be warriors. He’s one of many former players who played in his era who feel the NFL was not forthcoming about the long-term impact of head injuries.
He said in a 2013 interview with CNN that he was short-tempered with his daughters and they “were a little bit afraid of me,” wondering whether “Daddy would be in a good or bad mood.” He said he would never do any physical harm to his kids, but their comments “cut deep, touched me and it hurt. I looked in the mirror and said: ‘Who are you?'”
“People ask me would I (play football) again?” Dorsett says to the Daily News.
Would he?
“Hell yeah, I would do it again,” he says. “But I would be a little bit smarter.
“I wouldn’t get knocked out and try to get back out there on the field again and put myself in harm’s way,” he says. “I’ve been hit a lot of times, got my bell rung and would go back out there because, for one, I wanted to go out there, and for two, I felt my team needed me. I wanted to be out there, not knowing in reality I was hurting myself in the long run.”
In a 1984 game in Philadelphia, Dorsett was knocked out cold in the first half, he said doctors thought he was “half-dead,” was checked out in the locker room and came back to rush for 99 yards in the second half.
That’s just how players rolled in the ’70s and ’80s. Even Dorsett, who at 5-10 played at just 190 pounds.
“It’s put in our brains,” he says. “I don’t know if we are brainwashed.”
***
Tony Dorsett represents the NFL past, present and future.
The past: He is the NFL’s ninth all-time leading rusher with 12,739 yards — he was second behind Walter Payton when he retired after the 1988 season — who put his team ahead of his health.
The present: He’s a sad and painful example of the price of playing the game.
The future: Will his memory get worse before a cure is found for making it better?
The NFL is in trouble. Maybe not next year or in five years or even in 10 years. But concussions and CTE and early Alzheimer’s and potentially — but hopefully not — more players added to the list of Junior Seau and Dave Duerson and Andre Waters who consider suicide a better alternative than living with a brain damaged by too many football concussions.
Maybe 20 years from now the only kids playing football will come from the impoverished corners of this country who view the prospect of making it to the NFL as their only way out. The NFL has passed 47 rule changes since 2002 trying to make the game safer. There is new sophisticated injury data each year that can lead to changes to make the game safer and protect players.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell played safety and tight end at Bronxville High School in Westchester — he was shifted from quarterback — and also played on the basketball and baseball teams. He suffered one concussion in high school and it was playing baseball. A knee injury playing football prevented him from playing in college.
“There are risks in contact sports. There’s risk in football to injury,” Goodell told me last year. “You have to do what you can to manage that. That’s a personal decision ultimately. But I believe the game of football has taught me values and lessons. I would not give back a single moment of playing football because it taught me about teamwork, it taught me about perseverance, it taught me about myself. For me, football is a game, if I could have played and continued to play longer, I would have. I just wasn’t good enough, I guess.”
He attended Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, Pa. “If there is ever a regret in my life, it’s not playing college football,” he said.
Goodell has two teenage daughters. But he says if he had a son, he would not only be OK if he decided to play football, but would encourage it. He says the average life span of an NFL player is three years longer than that of the average male. The league cites a study by the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety that states the average NFL player has a life expectancy of 77.5 years old compared to 74.7 for men in the general population.
The NFL released its most recent injury statistics on Jan. 26, 2017. The data is compiled and analyzed by QuintilesIMS, an independent third-party company retained by the league.
Here are the concussions sustained for the last five years of preseason and regular-season practices and games:
2012: 261 / 2013: 229 / 2014: 206 / 2015: 275 / 2016: 246
Up and down.
Is it hopeless? This is not a contact sport. It’s a violent collision sport. Players are bigger, faster and stronger than ever and new technology in helmets and even more 15-yard penalties can’t obscure the basic truth: It’s a great game; it does teach leadership and teamwork and accountability and responsibility — but at what cost?
According to statistics provided to the Daily News by the Sports and Fitness Industry Association (SFIA), the number of kids playing tackle football across the country in what is called “core participation,” basically those on teams, has been steady the last five years after a big drop in the older age group six years ago.
Here are the numbers playing tackle football for the last six years:
Ages 6 to 12: 1 million (2011), 1.055 million (2012), 1.007 million (2013), 959,000 (2014), 965,000 (2015), 982,000 (2016)
Ages 13 to 16: 1.891 million (2011), 1.532 million (2012), 1.579 million (2013), 1.631 million (2014), 1.574 million (2015), 1.562 million (2016)
Tom Cove, the president and CEO of SFIA, said there are several factors that have contributed to the drop-off, including athletes specializing in one sport, fewer kids in rural areas and concussions.
“The concussion issue has been prominent,” says Cove. “It’s a very real issue that anyone looking at football is obligated to dive into and gain as much knowledge going forward as possible and make sure every element of the game is as safe as can be.”
It makes sense that with all the publicity about the impact of concussions that parents are forbidding their sons from playing tackle football.
“I think the game is in jeopardy,” says Ted Johnson, who won three Super Bowls in 10 years as the Patriots’ middle linebacker before he retired prior to the 2005 season. The concussions he suffered in his career literally made his head hurt.
“There are more options at the lower levels for kids to play different sports,” says Johnson. “When you hear about the impact these hits have on guys later in life, it’s too much for people to take. Maybe in some of the lower income places, I would say no. The white collar player or a player who comes from a family of privilege, those days are over.”
That may soon become reality. But not quite yet.
Scene One: Sept. 1, Allen, Tex.
It’s a beautiful night 25 miles north of downtown Dallas. The parking lot is packed at Eagle Stadium, the home of the Allen High School Eagles, a perennial powerhouse that regularly contends for the state championship. The $60 million stadium has 18,000 seats — it’s only the fifth largest high school stadium in Texas — and it’s hard to find two seats together in the general admission section on the visitor’s side of the field.
“Friday Night Lights” come to life.
“This is why football will never die,” says one fan, getting his first taste of why high school football is and will always be king in Texas.
The players are so big, so fast and so talented that if they were wearing Texas and Oklahoma jerseys, it would be easy to mistake this as the latest installment of the Red River Rivalry, complete with replays flashing on the scoreboard and the largest high school marching band in the country.
Football — high school, college and pro — is alive and well in Texas. It’s hard to imagine Eagle Stadium ever being dark on a Friday night in the fall. But other than Ohio and Florida where, just like Texas, high school football is a way of life and part of the fabric of the communities, the concussion risk could soon push the best athletes away from the game.
Scene Two: Aug. 4, McKinley High School Auditorium, Canton, Ohio
There is an annual Friday morning event for returning Hall of Famers and the members of the new class on Hall of Fame weekend. It immediately precedes the Gold Jacket luncheon across the parking lot from the high school in the main HOF building. The induction ceremony is Saturday night.
The greats of the game gather for a team picture at the end of the event at the high school. Many look like they can still play, such as the speedy Darrell Green, the cornerback with Washington once known as the fastest man in football, and Marcus Allen, a slippery running back for the Raiders and Chiefs.
In the first row of the picture on the folding chairs to the very left is Paul Hornung, the former Packers great running back from the Lombardi era. Next to him sat Green, then to Green’s left was Earl Campbell, then Jim Brown and Gale Sayers. In the row standing directly behind them is Dorsett.
There are a lot of yards and heartache in that picture.
Hornung has a cane by his side. Last year, he sued the helmet manufacturer Riddell, claiming he was not protected properly during his career. The lawsuit said he suffered multiple concussions and that he’s been diagnosed with dementia.
Campbell would be helped from his seat to get to his wheelchair with the aid of a metal walker when the event was over. He’s had both knees replaced and undergone five back surgeries and has overcome an addiction to painkillers. Known as the Tyler Rose, Campbell was as physical a running back as ever had played in the NFL. He paid the price but so far has not had to deal with any issues resulting from head trauma. Even with his physical limitations, he has no regrets.
“There is nothing like being a Hall of Famer,” he says. “One thing you can count on is once a year being able to see people, men, who did what you did as a profession. We all have that in common. It’s a big honor. I would do it over again, one, two, three. Everything I did in my life, I’d do it again.”
Brown also walks with a cane but otherwise looks great for 81 years old.
Sayers’ battle with dementia has advanced so far that on the 40-year anniversary of his induction into Canton this summer, his grandson pinch hit for him at the Friday morning event and made the speech presenting the shoes and the game ball from Sayers’ six TD performance against the 49ers in 1965, his rookie season. He was the youngest ever HOF inductee at just 34 years old in 1977. Sayers is now 74 and was diagnosed with dementia four years ago.
Hornung, Campbell, Brown, Sayers and Dorsett were all running backs.
“We’re probably in more collisions than the average football player,” says Dorsett.
“All of us know the inherent dangers of playing football,” says Allen. “I think if you were to ask people if they would do it again, I think most of them would say yes. No one thinks they are going to end up with injuries that will impact their lives later on.”
Allen recalls “one really bad” concussion in the NFL and one in college at USC. “I saw stars all the time,” he says. “I saw the constellation all the time. That’s just part of playing. I don’t know if that is going to impact me later.”
Allen had a way of faking out the trainers and doctors in order to stay on the field after a big hit. The NFL has become much stricter now with their concussion protocol, but back when Allen played from 1982-97, if a player could recite his name and count a couple of fingers on the sideline, he was good to go.
“If they asked me if I was alright, I would start cursing at them,” he says. “Because I never cursed, they believed me. I had the currency after all those years. I would say, “I know what f—ing time it is. Two fingers? What year is it? I know what f—ing year it is. They believed me. I was so emphatic, they said. ‘Oh, he’s fine,’ so they let me back in the game.”
Allen has no memory loss issues. He doesn’t have headaches. He is fine. And at the age of 57, he looks great. But what will happen at 67 or 77?
Many of the Hall of Famers were aware of the Boston University study that was released 10 days before they arrived in Canton that showed more than 99% (110 out of 111) of brains of former NFL players examined showed CTE. The study overall included research on 202 deceased American football players, from all levels of play (high school, college, semi-pro, Canadian Football League and NFL) who donated their brains for research. Of that total, CTE was diagnosed in 87% (177) of those players’ brains.
It’s important to note that many of the brains were donated by families of players who had suffered concussions in their career or were exhibiting troubling behavior.
“A family is much more likely to donate if they’re concerned about their loved one — if they’re exhibiting symptoms or signs that are concerning them, or if they died accidentally or especially if they committed suicide,” Ann McKee, a BU neuropathologist, told the Washington Post. “It skews for accidental death, suicide and individuals with disabling or discomforting symptoms.”
Allen saw the numbers 110 out of 111 jump right off the page.
“I think it worries people, of course,” he says. “I think you can’t help but be concerned, but you try not to live like that. You just look forward.”
The NFL’s television ratings have been down the last two years. Was it the 2016 presidential election? The controversy over players kneeling for the national anthem? Or is the violence of the game a turnoff?
“People feel guilty when they watch the games. It’s losing some of its appeal in that regard,” says Johnson. “They know about potential dangers. The struggles post-football is more documented. People are getting a peek behind the curtain.”
The NFL settled the concussion lawsuit brought by former players with $1 billion to be paid out over 65 years. The basis of the lawsuit is that the league knew of the long-term dangers of head injuries and didn’t inform the players. The NFL anticipates that 6,000 out of the 20,000 retired players will someday suffer from Alzheimer’s or moderate dementia.
***
Johnson has been to eight drug rehab treatment centers, lost his family, lost his money. He attributes it to the 6-to-10 diagnosed concussions he suffered playing football and estimates that by taking on blockers and making tackles, “I got concussed multiple times a week,” and many were not diagnosed over the last few years of his career.
How many undetected concussions did he have?
“Hundreds,” he says.
He says the “last frontier” for the NFL is head injuries. The brain trauma he sustained led him to a dark period in his life after he retired in 2005.
“I got addicted to drugs, amphetamines, because of concussions,” he says. “My head hurt, cognitively I wasn’t feeling as good as I used to feel before. I sought out relief. One way I found relief was with prescription drugs. Adderall, amphetamines, it helped clear my brain, take away some of the headaches.”
He was spending a bank account-crippling amount of money on Adderall, getting prescriptions from several doctors at the same time and going to different pharmacies in the Boston area to get them filled and getting away with it because he bypassed using his insurance. He far exceeded the recommended dosage. He started with cocaine, which also drained him financially.
He’s been in and out of rehab centers for many years.
“I’ve been clean since July 4,” he says.
He’s now living in Houston and hosts a popular afternoon drive-time radio show on an all-sports station. His kids live in Boston. His relationship with the Patriots is strained because he challenged the Patriot Way.
In 2007, he revealed that he believes Bill Belichick abused him in training camp in 2002. The Patriots were the defending Super Bowls champs. Johnson was the glue in the middle of the defense. He suffered a concussion in the first preseason game against the Giants.
Four days later, he was at practice assuming he would be assigned a red non-contact pinny to slip over his jersey. He was given a blue pinny. Full contact. He figured Belichick was trying to make him prove how tough he was.
“There’s no frickin’ way I am putting on that jersey,” Johnson barked at the trainer.
But he put it on. He was afraid if he didn’t Belichick might give his job away.
The offense’s first play was a run up the middle. The fullback hammered Johnson. He suffered another concussion and said he was never the same again. He played that season and two more and then spoke up.
Ted Johnson, the hard-nosed football player from Southern California, helped begin the conversation about concussions. He will be 45 next month and is no longer worried about Belichick and practice. He deals with many of the problems that handcuff concussion sufferers: Depression, anxiety, anger, impulse issues, sleep issues. He says he has never considered suicide.
“There’s a lot of guys suffering in silence,” he says. “It’s like when guys come back from war. It’s a shame-based deal. It’s embarrassing not to be cognitively as sharp as you once were. There are so many guys out there that we need to identify, and find hope for these guys. They don’t ask for help. It totally goes against the nature of the sport, which is to be a gladiator and overcome everything.”
Johnson, of course, can’t help but think about CTE.
“I’m worried about it,” he says.
He pauses before voicing what’s balled up inside him.
“I assume I have it,” he says sadly.
***
The national anthem controversy will eventually be resolved when the owners come up with programs in conjunction with the players that address the social concerns first voiced by Colin Kaepernick last year. There is a potentially contentious negotiation with the NFL Players Association leading up to the expiration of the collective bargaining agreement after the 2020 season that could lead to a work stoppage. That will be addressed at the appropriate time.
The NFL can only hope Ezekiel Elliott’s potential six-game suspension provides enough of a deterrent — in addition to counseling services — to help prevent its players from physically abusing women. The declining television ratings will have an economic impact on the NFL and it could be cyclical or a product of cord cutting or fans losing interest.
But there is nothing that can be negotiated or made better with the passage of time to prevent concussions and head trauma and long-term health issues caused by brain injuries. The league will continue to spends hundreds of millions on research to try and make the game safer, in turn guaranteeing its future, but for now, there are too many stories like Dorsett’s and Sayers’ and Seau’s and Johnson’s.
In the next three parts of this comprehensive Daily News series, Christian Red will take a look at the doctors studying CTE and its ramifications and their quest for a test for the living followed by Kevin Armstrong’s must-read on the youth of America and the dilemma parents face letting their sons play football. We end the series with Evan Grossman’s look at the attempts to make football safer in new training techniques and improved equipment.