PBS Silences the NFL
League of Denial suppresses scientific evidence that the league’s “concussion crisis” is hyped.
The two-hour League of Denial: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis really puts the BS in PBS.
By opening with Faces of Death–style morgue photos of Steelers great Mike Webster, and relying on the tearful testimony of widows and children of deceased NFL players, Frontline’s ostensibly scientific documentary telegraphs that it aims for the heart rather than the head.
The conspiracy theory masquerading as a documentary posits that the NFL suppressed and denied evidence that football causes chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the degenerative condition found in the brains of Webster, Dave Duerson, and other deceased players. Yet, the best scientists studying the issue, as evidenced by the consensus statement from last year’s International Conference on Concussion in Sport, also deny that science has established a link between football and CTE.
Are they part of the NFL’s conspiracy, too?
Boston University neurologist Robert Stern tells us that playing football is “the equivalent of driving a car 35 miles an hour into a brick wall — a thousand or 1,500 times a year.” Only it’s not. More than 100 Americans die every day from car accidents. Nobody in the 94-year history of the NFL has died from a collision — or moves at 35 mph or administers hits as unyielding as a brick wall. The juxtaposition is demagoguery, not science.
