Cowboys Owner Says Not Enough Data to Link CTE to Football
Posted on: March 24, 2016 NFL Concussion Lawsuits
On the heels of an NFL executive admitting that there is a link between football and degenerative brain disorders, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys made some comments that seemed to disagree with that assessment. Jerry Jones came out recently and said that he didn’t believe there was enough research or data to link the degenerative brain disease CTE to football. When pressed by a reporter to clarify his view, Jones stated “There’s no data that in any way creates a knowledge. There’s no way that you could have made a comment that there is an association and some type of assertion.”
I’m a little confused by Jones’ logic here. A great deal of research has been done regarding the effect that repeated head trauma has on the brain, and the data is overwhelming. Researchers at the Department of Affairs and Boston University reported finding CTE in the brains of 96 percent of the deceased former NFL players that they examined. This study was performed on the brains of more than ninety deceased former NFL players so it was not a small sample size. Apparently these numbers are not compelling enough for Jones to see the link. Or, perhaps after making statements like “We have millions of people that have played this game, have millions of people that are at various ages right now that have no issues at all. None at all,” he just doesn’t want to see one.
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