David Baker, the executive director of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, has always been clear about his mission: to celebrate the exploits of players and coaches on the field and the N.F.L. executives who helped build the league.
The rest of it — the messy private lives, the criminal activity, the treatment of players and on and on — please look away.
This “see no evil” standard has allowed Baker and the Hall of Fame to tiptoe past significant and uncomfortable realities that are inextricably linked to the league, especially when it comes to player health and safety. This was certainly the case in 2015 when Junior Seau, the celebrated linebacker, entered the Hall of Fame with no mention that three years before, he had shot himself and was found to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the brain-degenerating disease.
“We’re not the N.F.L., but the Pro Football Hall of Fame,” Baker said in an interview before the induction that summer. “Our mission is to honor the heroes of the game, and Junior is a hero of the game. We’re going to celebrate his life, not the death and other issues.”
Those other issues, as Baker put it, were back in question on Wednesday when the Hall of Fame announced that Paul Tagliabue, the league’s commissioner from 1989 to 2006, would be among 15 new entrants.
The “blue ribbon” panel — made up of sports journalism and entertainment figures as well as historians, league executives and coaches — that selected Tagliabue said that the “N.F.L. grew to unparalleled heights” during his 17-year reign, when he presided over labor peace, the construction of new stadiums, expansion overseas and the launch of a television network.
But what was conspicuously absent was the biggest blemish on Tagliabue’s tenure: his active dismissal of concerns about head injuries and their impact on the long-term health of N.F.L. players.
In 1994, he established the Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee to study the impact of concussions and head hits. The committee, which was led not by an expert in head trauma but by a rheumatologist, spent years declaring that players had nothing to worry about. As has been well documented, it produced junk science to prove it. When reporters began asking questions about players in cognitive decline, Tagliabue dismissed it as a “pack journalism issue.”
Tagliabue’s stonewalling ended up plunging the league into perhaps its deepest existential crisis.
Year after year, players have stepped forward to publicize their decline, making the league’s denials look like a cover-up. Some players like Seau were so distraught that when they decided to end their lives, they deliberately shot themselves in the chest so their brains could be studied. Thousands of retired players went to court to accuse the league of hiding the risks of head hits from them, leading to a settlement that has already cost the N.F.L. more than $700 million. Some players are retiring from the league because they say the risk of cognitive impairment is not worth it.
The N.F.L.’s concussion crisis has also engulfed the N.C.A.A., high schools and youth leagues, which are spending more to train coaches, to employ doctors to patrol the sideline and to buy liability insurance to protect themselves from lawsuits. With youth participation in football in decline, the N.F.L. has funneled tens of millions of dollars to U.S.A. Football, which has tried to reassure parents, mothers in particular, that it is safe to let their sons play football.
Tagliabue, of course, wasn’t alone in dismissing concerns about the impact of concussions. On most big issues, he (and other commissioners) take direction from team owners, who no doubt want to keep growing their businesses.
“The N.F.L. has a lot to answer for on concussions, and they are paying the price for it,” said Warren Zola, a sports lawyer who teaches at the Boston College Carroll School of Management. “Is there enough to pin that on one person? You had all these owners who were printing money and didn’t want to do anything to slow that train down.”
At a basic level, all Halls of Fame often take an amoral stance to off-field behavior. But some sports like baseball have drawn a line on some issues. Pete Rose, the sport’s career hits leader, remains a pariah in Cooperstown for betting on baseball games. The career home run king, Barry Bonds, is among the many stars tainted by steroids who have been snubbed by writers who elect Baseball Hall of Famers.
Still, the N.F.L. appears particularly adept at skipping over lines in the sand.
Some of the league’s first owners were bootleggers and gamblers who owned racetracks and betting syndicates, so perhaps it was not entirely surprising that Alex Karras, the Detroit Lions defensive tackle, was also among the 15 new entrants. Karras was suspended for the 1963 season because he bet on N.F.L. games and associated with gamblers and “known hoodlums.” Green Bay Packers running back Paul Hornung was suspended along with Karras, and he entered the Hall of Fame in 1986.
In 2018, the Hall of Fame elected Ray Lewis, who was indicted on two murder charges in connection with stabbing deaths outside an Atlanta nightclub in 2000. The murder and assault charges were dropped after he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of obstructing justice and agreed to testify against two co-defendants.
Two years ago, Tagliabue, a longtime lawyer for the league before he became commissioner, admitted that he would like to take back his “pack journalism issue” comment. His mea culpa, though, was far from an admission that he should have taken the issue of brain health more sincerely.
“Obviously, I do regret those remarks,” he said. “My language was intemperate, and it led to serious misunderstanding.”
When it comes to Tagliabue’s candidacy, though, there seems to have been little misunderstanding among Hall of Fame voters about what mattered more: the growth of the league.
Source: Football - nytimes.com
