Marisa Wojcik:

Welcome to Noon Wednesday. I’m multimedia journalist, Marisa Wojcik, reporter for Here & Now. Joining me is one of our colleagues from The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, Dee Hall. Dee, thanks for being with us today.

Dee Hall:

Thanks a lot for having me.

Marisa Wojcik:

So, the Center came out with a big story about concussions in football. And speaking with dozens of UW-Madison football players, the public has known for years that concussions can cause degenerative brain disease known as CTE, but how does the culture of football prevent CTE from being a bigger concern to the players themselves?

Dee Hall:

I think there are a lot of reasons why players are not as, at least outwardly concerned about concussions as we might expect. First of all, you have a culture where it really requires you to throw your whole body into it. If you wanna be successful, you have to really throw yourself into it literally and physically, and so, that counteracts the, you know, advice you might get to try to protect your head. So, they’re trying to, right now, football’s trying to sort of straddle this very uneasy compromise of you still want people to play hard but you don’t want them to get brain injuries and so, to put themselves in the mental mindset to be able to throw themselves into the game, a lot of players have decided to set the concerns about concussions to the side.

Marisa Wojcik:

Would the game suffer if they didn’t throw themselves into the game as much?

Dee Hall:

It depends on who you talk to. I know in youth football, that’s part of our follow-up that we’re doing, there have been some serious considerations given to changing the game. In fact, it may be banned. Tackle football may be banned in several states. That’s a discussion that’s going on right now. So, would the game suffer? It depends on what you think about what football should be, but it’s possible that, on the youth level anyway, it may be coming to an end in some states.

Marisa Wojcik:

Now, the players themselves, some of them take it seriously and some of them don’t. Tell us a little bit about the reactions when you spoke to football players at Madison.

Dee Hall:

So, we actually got access to the UW-football team through Luke Schaetzel who was a student covering the football team and he suggested the story to us and we readily agreed because we do think it’s a very serious problem. What we found is that some, for the students that he talked to, very few of them actually, outwardly at least, took it seriously, but he did interview Chris Borland who’s a former Badger who gave up a multimillion dollar NFL contract after one year of playing because he was concerned about the effects of the continued playing was having on his brain. And so, you have people who are, maybe, a couple years distance from their college playing days who are possibly reevaluating the damage that may have been done during those years.

Marisa Wojcik:

But, so then, that wasn’t the general consensus for the other players that you talked to that are currently playing?

Dee Hall:

Right, so right now, what’s happening, there are some studies going on right here on this campus looking at messaging that the athletes are receiving. They’re looking at some stronger warnings: ones that more talk about, ones that talk about CTE. For example, right now, they’re not really warned that there’s this thing called CTE and it could have long lasting effects. So, there is some testing being done of the messaging to figure out if there’s a better way for the sports, including the NCAA and football, to warn players about the potential problems of brain injury.

Marisa Wojcik:

So, recently, Brett Favre, right here from Wisconsin, said that he’s worried he might have CTE. What came out of that interview with Megyn Kelly?

Dee Hall:

So, that was just within the past week. He talked about having short term memory loss. He said that he’s having trouble finding words, word finding problems, that he is sometimes stuttering to try to come up with his next thought or his next word. He’s only 48 years old and so, he has become more and more visible, I think, on this issue talking about his concerns over brain injury as he, you know, he left the sports several years ago and, now, he’s starting to see some effects that apparently he had not seen before.

Marisa Wojcik:

Will a big name like that bring much needed attention to the issue?

Dee Hall:

Well, it’s hard to say, you know, the NFL is a multibillion dollar business. Millions and millions of people watch Sunday football, you know, Monday football, Thursday football. It’s enormous and college football programs are multimillion-dollar programs, and so, this is a major industry in addition to the, you know, the sport that millions of people love. It’s a huge, huge industry and so, it’s not going to change easily and it’s certainly not going to go away easily.

Marisa Wojcik:

So, in his interview, he said he’s only maybe had three or four official concussions but he talked about having his “bell rung.” What does having your “bell rung” mean?

Dee Hall:

Well, that’s been a term, sort of a way that players have described a concussion without being diagnosed with concussion. They’ve called it having their “bell rung,” being “dinged,” but, according to the experts we talked to for our story, that is a concussion. If you are, you know, seeing double vision, if you are having a hard time remembering what just happened, you had a concussion. It doesn’t matter if you call it a “bell ringing” or “getting dinged.”

Marisa Wojcik:

And those concussions build, those smaller “dings” build up over time.

Dee Hall:

Yes, that’s what the research shows and the other problem with that is that you don’t need to actually have a diagnosed concussion. You can have these smaller hits, sub-concussive hits, those can also build up, so it isn’t that you have five diagnosed concussions. You can be hit, as Favre said, he thought he’d been hit thousands of times. We don’t know how many of those might have caused brain injury but, certainly, he’s concerned about that.

Marisa Wojcik:

So, Luke Schaetzel had access to the team, but why do you think UW-Madison athletics and players and coaches agreed to talk to you guys if this is kind of a sensitive issue?

Dee Hall:

Well, I mean, everybody is starting to become more aware of it and I think they felt an obligation to talk about it and the steps that they’re taking and the NCAA is taking to try to educate players about the problems, but there’s still some problems there. I mean, the nature of the sport is violent and so, there have been new rules put in place where they’re trying to minimize the chances of a brain injury or other injuries and yet, there’s only so far those measures can go as well. So, I think they’re cognizant of this as a big issue, they’re sort of in the middle of the debate. This is a high level team that plays a very high level. It’s one that is very popular and I think they understand, to some extent, their obligation to engage in this national debate.

Marisa Wojcik:

Is there enough being done locally and nationally and do you see the culture shifting?

Dee Hall:

Well, is there enough being done, that’s a matter of opinion. I know, as I mentioned before, states are thinking about banning youth football tackle for children under age 12. The NCAA does have a concussion management protocol and program. There are critics of that program. The new rules, as I mentioned. You know, high schools are also rethinking, you know, to what extent young people should be clashing in the way that they do. So, I don’t know if there’s enough being done. There are some people who believe that, you know, either football should be banned or, you know, high school and college football should be banned, you know, it’s all over the map depending on what your perspective is.

Marisa Wojcik:

But it’s not just football that has concussions correct?

Dee Hall:

No, no, I mean, there are many sports where people suffer concussions. You have ice hockey, you have rugby, recreational boxing–professional boxing, I mean, you know, there are several sports, soccer, you know, there are several sports where you can suffer a head injury.

Marisa Wojcik:

Even baseball?

Dee Hall:

Yes, if you get hit in the head with a baseball you can definitely suffer a brain injury.

Marisa Wojcik:

So, you guys are doing some follow-up work. What can we expect to see?

Dee Hall:

So, the story largely profiles a former Badger player who has suffered, who had to quit after his sophomore year, more or less. He was getting headaches up to 30 times a day. He was almost flunking out of school. He was vomiting, he was in constant pain and he had to drop out of the program and, now, he’s part of a class action lawsuit that’s being formed in the Northern District of Illinois and we’ll see where that goes from here, but there are–he is one of over 100 players who played NCAA football who is now suing for compensation for any of the medical problems that they suffer after playing football on the college level.

Marisa Wojcik:

Okay, well, thank you so much. We’ll look forward to seeing your follow-up reporting on that and to see more, visit WisconsinWatch.org and be sure to check out more from Here & Now on Wisconsin Public Television and visit wpt.org. And thanks for joining us on Noon Wednesday.