Patti's Comments: I agree but I am not surprised by this. Baseball has not handled their moment with steroids any better.
Excerpt from
MarcGunther.com: (click for entire article)
If you are looking for a case study on how not to manage a corporate crisis, you could do worse than consider the way the National Football League is dealing with the mounting controversy over head injuries and their long-term impact on the health of its players.
The league has denied the problem. It has stonewalled the press. It has ducked responsibility. It has acted arrogantly. It has come across as more concerned about the owners’ bottom line that the well-being of its players—likely because it is.
The league, it seems, has learned nothing from corporate America, where companies that are responsible and responsive, transparent and accountable do well in the long run.
I write this as an NFL fan who wrote a book about the league’s preeminent television showcase, Monday Night Football, many years ago. I’ve been following the emerging NFL head-injury scandal since blogging about it back on Super Bowl Sunday in 2007. It was clear by then–actually, long before–that the NFL didn’t take concussions seriously enough, that players were routinely sent back into games after being knocked out and, more generally, encouraged to suck it up and play hurt. My brother Noel Gunther has followed the story for years on the excellent Brainline.org website, about preventing, treating and living with traumatic brain injuries, that he runs for the public television station WETA. In fact, he tried years ago to film a story about concussions in the NFL, got permission from the Chicago Bears and its sympathetic team doctor but was then stymied by the league office–which appears to be typical of the way the NFL has responded legitimate inquiries into its conduct.
Even today–after years of accumulated evidence that concussions caused by the hard hits that are part of football have taken a long-term toll on NFL players, in the form of dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease, suicides and the like– a pamphlet that the league gives to every player about head injuries says: “Research is currently under way to determine if there are any long-term effects of concussion in N.F.L. athletes.”
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