Last week, the New York Times published a lengthy report on the NFL's less than stellar track record with concussions, the faulty research it conducted and relied upon, and most critically, the leagues supposed ties to the Tobacco Industry. The NFL did not like this one bit. The league immediately published a response on its own website and paid for advertising on the Times website, most prominently on the story itself. Now it has written a letter (embedded below) demanding a full retraction, claiming to have "conclusively demonstrated the falsity of both the thesis and every material aspect of this story."The NFL has long been accused of misrepresenting the dangers of head injuries in the game to the public and the players—an allegation that formed the basis of a lawsuit on behalf of NFL players that settled for $765 million and is currently being appealed by another set of players who feel it doesn't do enough to cover their injuries and expenses. In that respect, the Times is not necessarily reporting anything new but, as the story says, the deliberate misrepresentations by the league were much more widespread than previously known.According to the Times reporting, entire teams went years without reporting injuries during the time period covered by the research. The 49ers did not report a concussion in the first three years of the studies and the Cowboys did not report a single concussion…period. Meanwhile, Steve Young and Troy Aikman showed up on multiple NFL injury reports for concussions over the covered period. The Cowboys and 49ers games were counted in the study, however, thus driving down the rate of reported concussions. This a game of cat and mouse: the Times noted that the research papers stated "The Commissioner of the NFL mandated all team physicians to complete and return forms whenever they examined a player with a head injury." The NFL responded that teams weren't mandated, they were simply "strongly encouraged" and tallying all the concussions that occurred in the league was never the purpose of the study.That is the gist of the disagreement between the Times and the NFL, yet the NFL spent four of six pages going in on the Times for citing ties to the Tobacco industry. This comparison was a weird move, it's certainly been discussed by others, including players as the report notes at the outset, but…it's just not there. The Times acknowledges it's not there, but they made the decision to draw the parallel between two notorious industries who shared consultants and attorneys. It might have been better to just weave the similarities throughout the story and let the reader come to the conclusion that these two organizations were similarly greedy and unconcerned with health and safety rather than try to imply the NFL was a copy cat league off the field as well.It's obvious why the NFL is going after the Times for the Tobacco stuff—which amounts to little more than dicta in a court opinion—and that is because Big Tobacco is radioactive, and they clearly don't have a response to the faulty research. Please note that the letter [emphasis added] makes it clear that the Times failed to establish a "single fact…that supports the allegation that the NFL intentionally concealed concussion data in a manner 'parallel to tobacco research.'" Regardless, the NFL dismisses the claims entirely as old research it no longer relies on anyway. So, the NFL got huffy about some questionable and incendiary asides in a report, and simply skipped over the part where 10% of documented concussions (to say nothing of undocumented concussions) went unreported in the research used to downplay the risks of head injuries in football.In a way, the NFL did the exact same thing it accused the Times of: going for the sexy headline to distract eyeballs from an otherwise pretty widely known fact: the NFL played fast and loose with its players health for a long time.NFL letter
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