Read Concussion Inc. for Free Online Page B

death the question of Duerson’s disqualification. Or they can take the high road in at least this narrowly defined area, in return for considerable public good will. On the field, they’ve instituted replay review for the sake of getting the call right. Today, off the field, the lives of disabled NFL veterans and their families require nothing less.
    28 February 2011..........
    One truth revealed by the maudlin first round of reaction to the news that Duerson probably had severe brain damage from football concussions — something postmortem study will have to confirm — is that NFL players union contract negotiations do not, in the familiar idiom, simply pit greedy billionaires against greedy millionaires. Rather, they pit billionaires who know what they’re doing against millionaires who don’t have a clue.
    That’s the only logical conclusion I can draw from the fact that Duerson, while losing his Goliath post–NFL career food distribution business, plunging into personal bankruptcy, seeing his house seized by a bank, and getting arrested for beating his wife — all telltale signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy — was being appointed by the Players Association as one of the trustees of a league fund, jointly administered by management and union, to compensate retired players with disability claims.
    Who needed a fox guarding the chicken coop when there was a hypermacho-enabling union more focused on the division of the NFL’s $9 billion revenue pie than on whether its members worked under conditions that would give them a reasonable expectation of living and functioning past age 50?
    No doubt Duerson had the best of intentions for his fellow athletes when he insisted, both on the NFL retirement board and in Senate commerce committee testimony, that ex–Minnesota Viking lineman Brent Boyd’s mental illness in his forties wasn’t proven to be football related. Duerson pointed out that his own father had Alzheimer’s disease in his late seventies or eighties, yet had never played football!
    But sincere or not, we now know more than just that Duerson’s argument was nuts. He was, too. Cognitively impaired. Of diminished capacity. Lacking responsible judgment. All from the very phenomenon about which he was instrumental in making administrative-legal rulings — a role for which, in retrospect, he was clearly incompetent.
    That’s why I say enough with the media’s Duerson pity party. If his friends and loved ones take comfort that his donated brain will contribute to public awareness of CTE, then by all means give them their soft landing.
    But the powers that be in the NFL and the NFLPA? Not so fast. Duerson was no hero. There were already dozens of confirmed cases of CTE, and undoubtedly hundreds of other unreported or ill-reported cases, by the time Duerson put a gun to his chest.
    If we’re really intent on honoring Dave Duerson, then let’s put some substance on his legacy. I have a three-point plan. We can call it the Double D Three-Point Stance.
    Reopen all rejected disability claims by retired players. Even as I write this, I’m sure lawyers are preparing new litigation arguing that the evidence of Duerson’s incompetence should invalidate the disability claim rejections. Instead of fighting a legal war of attrition over the inevitable, the league and the union should concede the morally obvious and order immediate “replay review” of these rejections.
    Double the 88 Plan’s outreach and benefits. The plan — named for Hall of Fame tight end John Mackey, who wore uniform No. 88 — grants up to $88,000 a year in reimbursement for the medical expenses of dementia victims. At Duerson’s funeral on Saturday in Chicago, his son Brock said the family would be setting up a foundation to aid players with mental illness. But hey, let’s cut out the middleman here. To date, the 88 Plan has distributed around