The NFL recently announced that it is giving “$1,000,000 to Boston University”:http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5id9dgMYt39gUcA1I92JRyAo7KGJgD9F6QSAG1 to “support the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy’s research into the long-term effects of repetitive brain trauma in athletes, particularly football players”. As NFL commissioner Roger Goodell noted:
bq. We obviously are very interested in the center’s research on the long-term effects of head trauma in athletes. . . It is our hope this research will lead to a better understanding of these effects and also to developing ways to help detect, prevent and treat these injuries.
Wow! $1,000,000! That’s a lot of money. In fact, that’s exactly what “Sione Pouha”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sione_Pouha, a back up defensive tackle for the NY Jets. Yes, that’s right: a league that takes in “billions of dollars in total revenue”:http://www.loc.gov/rr/business/BERA/issue3/football.html each years and features 200-300 pound grown men “tackling each other”:http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/football-tackle.jpg has decided that detecting, preventing, and treating head trauma is worth the salary of a back up tackle on the NY Jets. Glad to see the NFL has finally gotten on top of “this issue”:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aspen-baker/overcoming-stigma-dead-nf_b_543239.html!
Kind of reminds me of this: