Bob Costas: Football ‘destroys people’s brains’

Famous NBC sportscaster Bob Costas addressed the NFL’s future during a panel at the University of Maryland, declaring that the game’s entire existence is in jeopardy.

‘The issue that is most substantial, the existential issue, is the nature of football itself,’ Costas said at the Shirley Povich Symposium, which is named for the late Washington Post sportswriter. ‘The reality is that this game destroys people’s brains.’

Costas anchored NFL broadcasts for years and works for a network that currently has a media deal with the league, but that did not deter him from addressing chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) – the long-term degenerative condition that afflicted a number of deceased football stars such.

‘You cannot change the basic nature of the game,’ Costas said, according to The Washington Post. ‘I certainly would not let, if I had an athletically gifted 12- or 13-year-old son, I would not let him play football.’

CTE was first researched in the early 2000s by coroner Bennet Omalu, and the NFL has responded by strengthening its concussion protocol over the years.

Earlier this year, the NFL signed a $1 billion settlement with former players who are suffering neurocognitive disorders connected to football.

Despite the obvious risk of serious injury that football presents, President Donald Trump has criticized the league’s attempts to make the game safer, such as prohibiting helmet-to-helmet hits.

‘Because you know, today if you hit too hard — 15 yards!’ Trump said during an October speech. ‘Throw him out of the game. They had that last week, I watched for a couple of minutes. Two guys, just really, beautiful tackle. Boom! 15 yards. The referee goes on television, his wife’s so proud of him. They’re ruining the game! They’re ruining the game.

Costas rejected that line of thinking.

‘There is this crazy notion that you hear on talk radio and some right-wing sites that this is just another left-wing conspiracy to undermine something that is quintessentially American,’ he said. ‘There’s a word for things like that, there’s many words. One of them is bulls***, because that’s what that is.’

Research by the Boston University CTE Center and VA-BU-CLF Brain Bank, led by Dr Ann McKee, has revolutionized understanding of the clinical, pathological and molecular features of CTE in contact sport athletes exposed to repetitive head impact and blast injury.

In August, Dr McKee’s team diagnosed CTE in 110 out of 111 former NFL players as part of the biggest ever case series on the disease.

Specifically, their ongoing investigation has analyzed NFL stars Junior Seau, Dave Duerson, and Andre Waters – all of whom committed suicide and had CTE.

Seau and Duerson both shot themselves in the chest with the expressed intention of donating their brains to scientists to examine them for disease.

As expected, tests subsequently showed that both men and Waters, who were all over the age of 40, had CTE.

Junior Seau (left) and Dave Duerson (right) both shot themselves in the chest with the expressed intention of donating their brains to scientists to examine them for disease

NBC sportscaster Bob Costas checking the tv monitor before an NFL football game circa 1985

Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez (left), the late football star who killed himself in his prison cell after been convicted of murder, was found to have advanced CTE.  Former journeyman quarterback Ken Stabler (right) died in 2015. It was discovered he suffered from Stage 3 CTE

Many other deceased players, such as journeyman quarterback Ken Stabler, Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster, have also been found to have had signs of CTE. 

In September, the same team diagnosed CTE in the brain of former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, the late football star who killed himself in his prison cell after been convicted of murder. Hernandez was just in his mid-20s and had a severe pathology.

Aside from the diagnoses, the BU team has also made headway with tests for the disease. In late September, they identified a biomarker in cerebrospinal fluid which appears to be as accurate as posthumous brain scans for making a CTE diagnosis. It could distinguish between CTE and symptomatically similar Alzheimer’s disease.

However, for now, researchers say they are still in desperate need of more football players and military veterans to pledge their brains posthumously to research, since postmortem examinations are currently the only way to adequately investigate the disease.

‘The study of postmortem human brain is the fastest way to advance our understanding of CTE,’ said Dr. McKee, who also is Chief of Neuropathology at VA Boston Healthcare System.

‘Brain donation provides unique insights into disease that accelerate our development of biomarkers to detect CTE during life, and will lead to effective strategies to treat CTE.’

This is Hernandez’s brain scan: It shows the classic features of CTE. There is severe deposition of tau protein in the frontal lobes of the brain (top row). The bottom row shows microscopic deposition of tau protein in nerve cells around small blood vessels, a unique feature of CTE

Hernandez killed himself in April at 27 while serving life in prison for murder. The scientists who analyzed his brain have confirmed it was the worst case of CTE they have ever seen