Moving in one direction, and its a difficult job because the huge he ego. They needed a commissioner to shepherd them and good old has been a less good job of although i think that he has survived all of the recent issues because he did two things coming to a longterm labels over and which allowed them to get a Television Contract that brought in billions of dollars. Next year each team will be given a season with 216 million in the bank for television alone do you think you can make a profit on Something Like that . I think so. Any idiot could make money running a Profitable Team and he was right and he did. We often hear the nfl is a taxexempt organization. Thats not true. They had a nonprofit status and they dropped the status recently and thats where the taxexempt sort of notion came from but they have paid some says but that wasnt doing them any particular good and when it became a liability they said no we wont do that anymore. It made no difference whatsoever. It was just one of those interesting talking points. What is your day job . Professor at the university where ive been for 40 some years. I teach modern american history. I teach a course history of American Sports and i teach a course with another guy. Hockey is second and then the nfl. How did you get involved in sports history class i grew up where it was important. My father was involved all of his life as a kid he played baseball and pictures. Softball when he started working and at some point in his career its probably in the 50s he changed jobs and became a salesman for the Wilson Company in the twin cities and when they came in my hopes i was shocked when i left college and left home and came back and decided i wanted to go to Sports Events and i wanted to buy a ticket i couldnt believe i was buying tickets to go to the sporting events. I had second row seats at the state young. So it was sort of a home, it was an empire of High School Ball and ball and a referee in basketball and the leagues. He and i worked for about three years together when i was an undergraduate and we were a pretty damn good team if i may say so. Weve been talking with professor richard creapeau of the new national pastime. Theres the cover. Professor, thanks for being on book tv. My pleasure. Booktv continues with a Panel Discussion on concussions and future of football from the seventh annual tucson festival of books. Panelists include steve and mark coauthors of a league of denial and battle for truth. A sports agent Lee Steinberg and author and former pro Football Player examples. Supermicro click to introduce the distinguished panel. First of all, steve is a Senior Writer with espn and with his brother markey is the coauthor of we deny a time of the nfl concussions and the battle for truth New York Times bestselling book on the nfl efforts to cover up the link between physical and brain damage. He worked as a correspondent for the Washington Post where he won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his investigative series on the role of mercenaries in the iraq war and is the author of big wave rules americas mercenaries fighting in iraq and the coauthor of the duke of havana baseball, cuba and the search for the American Dream terry at his brother, mark mark fainaruwada is an Investigative Reporter for espn and as a member is a member of espn investigations and enterprise unit which produces work for the awardwinning program outside the lines, which i know many of you have seen. Steve and mark serve as reporters and writers on a companion documentary of the same name for pbs awardwinning programs front line the league of denial. The document reader and prestigious george polk and peabody award as well as an emmy nomination. For mark along with the colleague Lance Williams they earned National Honors in 2004 and 2005 for their coverage of the scandal in baseball. In their book game of shadows the scandal became an immediate New York Times bestseller and prompted Major League Major League baseball to investigate steroid use in its sport. Do you see a pattern beginning to develop . Leigh steinburg is one of the greatest in sports history. He is the agent who had six overall number one picks in the nfl draft over a sevenyear period and a number one pick that he represented in his career is unmatched in nfl history one time half of the starting quarterbacks in the National Football league for his client. He founded his sports law practice in 1975 and has since represented over 250 professional athletes including troy aikman, steve young, bruce smith, thurman thomas, and many more. Currently president and ceo of steinberg sports and entertainment and an advocate for player safety he has hosted two National Conferences on the subject of concussions and the nfl and finally Pellom Mcdaniels iii here as a Football Player having played the Kansas City Chiefs is assistant professor of africanamerican studies at emory university, scholarly interests include africanamericans and world war i and africanamericans in the intersection of sports and civil rights. His first book examines the life and career of the 19th century africanamerican jockey and i would also like to welcome the audience watching around the country on cspan book tv. The issue of concussions in the nfl came to the forefront because of the book that steve and mark have coauthored so we will begin by asking them to issue kind of a summary statement of how this issue came to their attention into the nations attention and what the status of the debate is ended and we will invite then we will invite them to weigh in again after hosting conferences for sports administrators we would like to invite Pellom Mcdaniels to weigh in on this issues, so steve and mark i will turn it into you. Before i start, we really weve really want to thank you for having us here for second time at the festival and its amazing how big its gotten. We are grateful to be here but i will give you a quick synopsis. Getting into the story actually there have been a lot of good reporting done on the issue of concussions and that the prior to us jumping into the story in 2011. Our colleagues at espn have done fantastic work on the issue, Alan Schwartz and others. But i think one of the fundamental issues that havent been addressed about this is what did they know and when did they know it and how did it address a problem that was becoming a Huge Public Health crisis not only at the nfl level that the youth level and for us the pressure on the nfl was rationing up considerably in 2010 the commissioner was called before congress and hammered by representative henry waxman and the question was asked if the commissioner is there a connection between football and brand image and thereve been a number of stories out to raise the specter and still does to this day would just fall off the question and we are going to let the medical people decide to which representative waxman must not only dismissive but also divisive and i think a lot of people were because for them the question had been answered and to this day that seems to be the position and for us, our book was an opportunity to reflect back to the beginning of this issue that began to percolate in the nfl in the early and large part because leigh and a few other folks so we wanted to get at the core of taking a look at the denial and ultimately what the book represented for us was presenting what what had been would have ended two decades of denial which they went after scientists raising the question thats often ostracized them and minimize their statements into the and at the same time essentially taking over a medical journal and publishing the paper after paper after paper in the journal suggesting that there really was no problem playing football and there was no connection that essentially the nfl players have different brains than the rest of us and were susceptible getting the kind of concussions that cause brain damage and that was the message that percolated from than 30 years and the book is an effort to do that and what came out was a highlevel publicity accompanied by a documentary that generated additional focus and this issue and to the point now there is an ongoing dialogue and i will in iowa with steve talk about where we are now. I think one of the things when we started to get into this was we had a real opportunity to talk to a lot of Football Players and get their thoughts on what was going on. So on the one hand you had the nfl its power and resources trying to deny that this was actually a problem and yet we were going from player to player to player seeing the incredible devastation that had been brought and they be and baby leaf was directly attributable to their career in the Football League so you had this obvious tension where people were feeling left out and abandoned. I think like Many Mental Health problems that wasnt something that simply affected the players but it affected everyone around them and so we try to in a granular way lay out what this looks like and so when we began the book we knew we wanted to start with the center for the Pittsburgh Center for the Pittsburgh Steelers during the 1970s and what whats what we did is just essentially, cold what had happened to webster and what happened is he has gone from being being this person who was extremely conservative, stable, a hero in the community, somebody that is a great teammate was a great teammate and family man to someone that was completely unrecognizable to his friends and family. He went from somebody who was financially conservative to spending every die and his family had. He ended up living in his truck almost as a transient shuttling between pittsburgh and sometimes essentially living on the road, sometimes sleeping on the train and bus stations. He had incredible physical problems as a result of his career in the nfl even beyond his obvious Mental Health issues and he would go to these sort of extremes to try to deal with them. His teeth started started going out for falling out for examples he would literally superglue them back into his mouth. He had incredible trouble sleeping. He couldnt sleep in a bad city would try to sleep in a chair and when that didnt work he tried to sleep in his truck and when that didnt work, he had purchased several mail order stun guns and used his sons were his friends would literally taste or him to sleep. So it gave you an idea of sort of what the magnitude of what these issues were. And i think that what would be so over time as the book came out and we were able to dramatize some of these issues you saw the tension that exists and continues today and on the one hand that is what this is a major Public Health problem in our country that affects thousands of kids and parents and players all the way up to the nfl and then you have not only is the nfl as an incredibly powerful lucrative and even if you have a physical means to our culture. The nfl is still incredibly popular well over 100 Million People watched the most recent super bowl. Our employee or espn is a 15. 2 billion contract to broadcast monday night football and they have that contract for a reason. It makes a lot of money so that tension is at the heart of where i think we are now and its going to be really fascinating to hear what he has to say about this and where we are going because i dont think anybody knows where this is going to end. Again you hosted a couple of conferences. Anybody that wants to come throughout and sports agents, scientists, what kind of reaction did you get at those conferences and from your clients and players what came out of it and what did you learn about the issue from having done that . Spinnaker want to thank the festival of books. To be surrounded by other people who love books that, what an amazing thing and mindboggling presentation. And incidentally my book is the agent my 40 year career making deals and changing the game. I had to Practice Profile players look for role models who would retrace their roots to the High School Collegiate and professional community. In 1989, i had the store starting quick fix in the nfl and i watched troy aikman get hit in phoenix and knocked to the ground and blood was coming out of his hand key looked for a while like she had died and a petrified it petrified me. Then there was a night in 1995. Dallas had beaten the San Francisco 49ers for the rights to play and the whole city was washed with separation. He suffered a concussion soap we went up to his room and he was sitting there in that hospital room and team looked at me and said where can i where am i . Did we win the game, did we play, yes. What does that mean . It means we are going to the super bowl. And his face brightened. Five minutes later he looked at me and said where am i. Why am i here. Did we win the game. I almost thought he was joking. This went on ten minutes later the same sequence and i finally wrote down on a piece of paper answers to his concussion might questions and it terrified me and i felt a crisis of conscience because my work with athletes was designed to enhance their lives and lead them to a second career and fulfillment than in fulfillment of then how was a conscionable for me to enable players to do an activity that would lead to dementia, chronic traumatic encephalopathy into the rest of it but we didnt know anything. We were told by doctors over and over again, and i would go to the conferences that they are no longterm consequences from concussion and one hits doesnt lead to another in close proximity dont do anything. So we held a concussion conference where we brought the leading technologists from across the country, helmet manufacturers try to approach it in different ways. We have steve young and troy aikman and true blood cell and a whole other series of players there. And ironically derek who was one of the players there now has dementia. So not much changed and we did it again in 2005 and then we had robert and the whole series of neurologists. They told us it was an exponentially high risk of alzheimers, parkinsons, premature senility, encephalopathy and depression. So i called it a ticking time bomb and an undiagnosed hope academic and i now believe every time time in offensive lineman hits a defense of alignment at the inception of a football play it produces a lowlevel sub concussion hit. A little bit of change. So you can have an offense of lineman walkout after playing high school, college and pro football with 10,000 subcode facilitates none of which have been diagnosed, none of which he is aware of the aggregate will almost certainly do much worse brain damage and three knockout blows and so whats changed . We do baseline testing, we have better diagnostic. But the bottom line is that it isnt healthy to rattle your brain mike trade and i said 50 of the mothers actually if they knew at this concussion crisis leads to committee were told their kids you can play any sport is not tackled will. And the socioeconomic suffered forward change. It would be impoverished people who knew they were going to get brain damage. So ive been working on how much we read we have helmets that protect against school fracture that there is a compression system we have been working on all sorts of ways ultimately Stem Cell Research and thing not for these two gentlemen because it was only year after year. And harriet who studied at the university of guadalajara and was a rheumatologist was to the commissioner had to do the studies and research. I am not a doctor but i dont think that rheumatology is the brain. [laughter] and what this fellow told players over and over again theres no risk to concussion, no longterm effects. One doesnt lead to another and thats what he told the players, so when you are attempted in this tuesday they know the risks, no they didnt know the risks. They were lied to. You have to do this against the cultural post and ill do. We would have known sooner out of this if they had been honest and understood what it was they were suffering from. After that would come a courier and the new season after that. Then the athletes turned on their head. Its this place that you get athletic denial and young men deny a and its difficult. Some of my athletes have been happy with the way that ive spoken out. You played in the National Football league. Take us inside. How violent is it and were you ever aware of the potential danger from concussion . I will make it more complex. I am a historian and someone who thinks very deeply about different issues aside the idea of concussions. Leigh brings up the impoverished communities and that the baltimorebased ball, basketball, are there ways out of poverty not just for the individual to the communities and families and so this issue is going to have an impact on people who. So the nfl like other professional sports are billiondollar industries and we all acknowledge that and recognize that and so from the standpoint we understand that its escalated and its ground because the popularity has grown people have more disposable income and they follow their favorite athlete and if you are a kid you want to be with them so the marketing of the nfl has made this not an impossible kind of question that we are up against much more than just educating them about the future of their bodies and their minds if they persist the sports in this particular race of it has to be acknowledged theres something here to the culture that will make this a difficult task. From the standpoint of someone who played college and professional football i think the ways that we are groomed as athletes not just to suffer through pain or injury but to have a Common Objective if the teams objective is to win you want to be supportive of that teams intention and teammates and so if you have sprained an ankle were done something to your knee want to suck it up and that is how weve been conditioned and youre supposed to represent your manliness even at the age of ten so that is a social conditioning we have to also address and understand what does it mean if you are 10yearsold and your coach is telling you to suck it up and her parents were on the sideline telling you to do the same thing so from that standpoint we do have to address these issues. From a former athlete who played in the nfl, when you are trying to secure the position on the roster and you know you cannot find your way to the sideline because of an injury you are going to continue to play with. So from leighs standpoint, the idea of your health and future and life and livelihood, all those factors play a role and you make the decision to speak up and say i cant go. When you think about the rookie behind you aching six figures every year that the difficult decision to make and so you suck it up and maintain the facade of being a tough guy and continue on your way. Its something that i enjoy playing. I enjoy sundays but i didnt enjoy Training Camp. I still when i go back and visit i went back to oregon state and id forgotten i was on the sidelines for the first time in 15 years and id forgotten to charge you get from being in that space. If youve been there before coming you know how it feels because theres certain ideas you want people to think about because you were in that space and you were able to perform. Thinking in terms of whats happened with concussions and my tenure in the nfl. Theres several good friends, he was a contemporary of mine and a teammate of mine and atlanta who committed suicide and mike webster was a weight training assistance coach. So i know the names of these guys and you could imagine in my household with my children and my wife we think about these things and we have to because as stated including a Training Camp but we are looking at is potentially the man sitting appeared in front of you has whatever it is that we are trying to understand and how it will escalate up something if it will but its not that everyone has the same results as these other men who passed away. Finally, the last thing i want to say is one of the we were talking earlier today and view products troy aikman and i didnt think about this until that moment in 1988 oregon state played against them in the rose bowl. We were down. They didnt win a lot of games. Believe me, i was there. To play at the rose bowl against someone like troy aikman running back, there was a roster of future nfl Football Players and so we got wired to play this game where every play was important and i beat the offense of tackle bad and i got past them and i ran right through troy aikman the way youre supposed to. [laughter] the way that we are taught to play the game. You make the play. You dont run up and handed touch the guy and say youre it. You make the play and make sure that hes down. He was out. I hate him so hard he was out and i didnt think about that until now because we had a highlight film. Think about nfl greatest hits years ago. We have a film that represented at that play as a turnaround for the game and potentially for the oregon state football team. So imagine being responsible for that play and now reflecting on it thinking about the person that was on the ground. So not everyone i think will be able to do that because if its part of the game, you dont necessarily think about the individuals who are playing against. Youre doing your job area but when you know the people like inode troy, you it is a difficult thing to read this its because you know potentially you had a hand in what they are experiencing today. A question for each of you. There was a group of people that have asked this issue became prominent came to be known as the dissenters who were willing to take on the nfl and one of the dissenters made the comment if only half the mothers in america understood what was at stake for their boys they wouldnt let them play football. That was what, ten or 12 years ago when that statement was made. Have you seen in terms of the numbers of kids playing the game and the system in the nfl have you seen the impact in that area . The scene that was described there is one in our book where the pathologist discovered this and Football Players through the autopsy on on mike webster was presenting data to the longtime ssierra logical specialist for the Pittsburgh Steelers and that guy in the middle of his meeting paused and said do you really understand what youre doing and he said yes i think i get it. Then he just sort of moved on and the doctor said not to ask no one to ask you again do you really understand what youre doing and he said i think so. He said why dont you tell me and he said 10 of the mothers in america if they be needed for thoughtful causes brain damage thats the end of football and i think what we are seeing now, mark and i did a story about a year or so ago about bob warner and the participation rates and a dropped something in the order of 10 over the three years since this issue went before congress and really became a Public Health issue, and i think probably everybody in this room has had a conversation with somebody who their own kid or what they be the the potential impact is and should you let your kids play and i think a number of them are making the decision that no, the risk is too great. I think the risk to me what does it mean long term and does it mean the system for the nfl is going to dissipate to the extent that its going to affect the league and i dont think we are nearly at the point. My personal opinion is that its going to be decades before we really know and its ultimately going to be the science that decides this question that if the prevalence and the great of cte among Football Players is a huge number, thats obviously going to have a seismic effect on the sport, but we are not nearly there yet. One thing that is interesting, i agree with him not just because hes my brother, we often dont agree that i think its true we are all sort of in the future but before we know the nfl isnt waiting for the answer in one fashion and if you look at the way i think it is constructed instructed around the issue around kids to look at the way the nfl is marketing this issue over time. For years it was all about the violence of the sport. That was basically it. You could go back and he would see these films is all about the hardest possible hits you could see they had been down on the field and was just visceral, you felt it. Now its shifted and it seems to be torn because the violence is what compels a lot of people to love the sport, and im one of those people that enjoys and steve is, too and while its true the violence is an appealing piece of it, it is grappling with this issue now in that its begun to do is market itself towards mothers and we addressed this in the buck and weve done some followup reporting on it where theyve practically gone after mothers. Theyve brought them into the nfl headquarters and to try to sort it educates them about how the sport can be safer and they created a whole program called headsup football run by its nfl youth arm basically which is designed to suggest theres a way to play the sport without the head involved. Thats the idea supposedly and that we need to go back to a way that was played in a safer manner. And when you talk to as needed to former players do hear a lot of them are pretty skeptical because the suggestion if you watch the way that its played and the speed and the level its played no matter where actually, the suggestion you can figure out a way to navigate seems ludicrous. Thats where they are seeing the decrease in the participation rates at the level and you see the shift in a marketing standpoint. The book is called need of denial that there is but there is another arena going on perhaps among the players. Would you comment on what reaction you get when you carry this news about the potential dangers of concussions and from the players standpoint, do the players want to know this, are you willing to receive and i own this information into the implications . If i could say a word about the question you asked, first of all this is not just a pro football issue it is a collision sports issue. Its a college and high school issue. Its a hockey issue, its a field hockey issue and girls that had the ball in soccer in some studies have been shown to have lower test scores. When it comes to kids the second thing i would say is the brain is still information at nine, ten, 11, 12 you could actually retard the development of the brain if you get it wrong enough times so when you talk about the youth football theres the question whether they should be playing. I love football, too and i spent 40 years working with the biggest starters but understand this. The seven top rated shows for weeks in the season on the nielsen rating intelligence were the nfl lifetime football. Never happened before. This country is so nfl crazed but football in america which is a pregame show out rated the form of entertainment, so pro football is not only the most popular sport for 21 of the most Popular Television show. 40 Million People a week play fantasy football. The estimates are 20 of the computers in use during the last season and businesses used to play fantasy football. [laughter] so, youre talking about an obsession we all have with football and after nfl football, second, College Football. So we could go all through the changes they made. The other thing i would want to say its because of concussions settlement hasnt been approved totally, we dont really know what the nfl would do if they werent worried about the lability that would come from them instituting new things and show that they actually knew a long time ago. So we will see a. I need to get all the older players to get brain scans where you can charge the blood flow. As the best and the best thing we know is hyperbaric oxygen pitch in the first hour starts to read roe v. Rees and its been shown after 40 hours which is a whole lot to actually start to reroute the brain and heal it damaged brain. The players havent changed all. I could call up a player that got a concussion and explain everything to them and Rogers Berger got a concussion and i would say the risk of you getting a second concussion in the game on us a sea rest is much higher, right . You understand that two the two of them in close proximity is the perfect storm, the reason that steve young had to retire. You get this, do you get that one game is not going to make a difference in your season . Then i went to his mother and his father, because they are my best allies it is us against coming and he played. He played and i havent seen very much change at all that i will tell you this. When you see Patrick Willis retired after eight years in his game, we are going to start seeing this manifest while players are playing they are going to start having a symptomatology in the 1012 year career. Its not going to take 20 years. To a growing understanding of the risks of concussion. Well, i think a active players are being inundated with information and with information on summer executive information and very clearly there is a possibility that you are altering your life and the more hits you sustain entity received confessions, if youre in a position where that is par for the course, you are going to do damage to yourself here that is for current players. They are paying attention and an information circulated from parents or loved ones, there should be a genuine concern. From former players, guys i play with in kansas city and atlanta, there are these losses i am learning that they are coming together to see the teams. Kansas city in particular, there is a question about how much was known when a number of guys had several concussions. Their families were concerned eventually they too would experience what weve seen with junior and shane and mike webster. The older players are now more concerned about the potential outcome of this. The current players are aware of it, but i have not cleared necessarily the percentage that are moving toward either pushing for regulation are pushing to retire early. Leah and i had a great time talking in the green room and the idea of patrick world because of his feet and injuries. Theres Something Else we have to understand because theyre so much money available in the nfl right now. If you played out to contracts you dont have to play again unless you really want to. Especially if you have a life plan. If you figure youll spend five years in the nfl and retire with 27, 28. I will get my mba or law degree and practice law in the business. Ive got seed money for the least of the first 25 years after im done playing. And then i started business. You have them strategically thinking about their play. The careers will shorten that they have so much money they can move on. But the injuries that they will incur over the fiveyear period, over the time. Or they are in the trenches, over when they are kickoff return. I had to concussions when i played it when i kickoff return waiting for the kickoff return to pick the ball up that he dropped. I am looking back at him, waiting for him to pick it up so i can turn to the wedge and turning automatically having the guy in front of me. Got my bell rung. It still ran down the field but on the sideline was loopy. But stayed in the game. You have these scenarios but again trained to answer your question that because the amount of money its a very lucrative occupation that if you make the choice to pursue it, you can pay them only can play five years and i am now. We want to invite questions from all of you. We want you to work your way to the microphone so her audience and disband the tv can hear the question. Give us your name and go ahead and director question. Yes, my name is tony nagurski. The thing about money, its all about money for the players, for the league, for just about everybody. It appears to me that the game has changed the way it is being played and it started in the 70s and 80s i think. It is just a totally different pace and none is what i think the concussion problems started increasing exponentially. My father played in the 30s and 40s. You know they played with helmets at that time. It to the question so we can get as many as possible. Have you seen this happen . Has the game change the way they play it up to the six years versus later on . It is a Traffic Accident on every play because when you have those bodies moving in space and time that are bigger, stronger, faster. When you have linebackers who weigh 270pound and they run a 54, that is human beings. As a Traffic Accident on every play. I sat next to a field right when i gave the presenting speech for warren moon at the hall of fame. He gave rayfield got into the hall of fame, too. He gave a brilliant speech. It was wonderful. Rayfield right has dementia. I would add to that, you gave a great day. 1975 mergers, monday night football. Nowadays a commodity, commercialized endeavor on television audience. So with that was an exciting if it wasnt her that to be exciting, you are playing to your audience in a way as well. Having time constraints and the opportunity to sell your wares to a national audience, that accelerates the importance of football and for kids like me who watched as a kid to be like the guys on television. If you are in the 90s with the nfl and you are a kid is playing pop warner, you want to make a hit like the receiver who caught the ball blindly and knocked him out. And so what we are seen in television are these ways in which our young student athletes emulate their heroes and that is one of the things we have to recognize. Over here, sir. Thank you. I than wise. A lot of negatives and positives. We have the Space Program that we lost a lot of astronauts but we got communications and other products. Military we lost a lot of people but because the interstate system and the internet. Do you see is that football is doing bringing more focus on the als and dementia and alzheimer and in fact causing more research leading to more cheers and more benefits . There is a huge race going on now to see who can be the First Company to develop a helmet and again protects against skull fracture. A helmet that attenuates the energy field so it disappeared will also be used for motorcycles, bicycles, every single thing. The research being done to provide like a nasal spray that stops the brain from swelling. And all of this will have the same effect at getting to hang out at the Space Program. There is a neurobiologist at my university who is working on his posttraumatic brain injuries and they are looking at a site progesterone treatments to hear the brain. We are talking about healing the brain. So you have these different opportunities, whether or not were talking about admission or something so therefore these protocols will be available in the sideline. Said to have an opportunity to test these types of protocols would be important for football, boxing, hockey, soccer. So i think you are correct. If there is an opportunity that we have to stop gap right now and the stopgap is do we admit this is going to have longterm effect. If you will, what can we do to heal the brain . It doesnt matter in this one sentence. As hundreds of millions, williams of dollars to be made up of preventing concussion, healing concussion. I consult for a few companies that are there. The first person who gets their kicks concussion, alzheimers. There are Six Companies on stem cells that are fda approved. I went and visited one in a told me they are three to five years away from being able to insert the stem cells and restore it. Yes, because theres profit look, if we can send a man to mars, we can make a helmet that protects people at all . Engineers, profit motives. Good evening, gentlemen. This is question is for mr. Steinberg. As an attorney sports agent coming to the latest research is her expected him a more understood, do you anticipate the guaranteed money of contracts increasing going forth to help players with those liabilities and help you develop us that the liabilities. The players agree in a massive to accept a settlement offer for them and for the future in a lot of ways of 975 million. 975 billion might have been closer to actually dealing with the incredible pain and the rest of it. In terms of so why did the players not do this . Well, the older players have grief right now and they want the money. So it is the same reason that the players took 55 of the gross, which we were making in the last cba and voluntarily agreed to take 47 in the third cba. We are not talking about players not to feel im not the advance guard of the bolshevik workers party. They are not labor act to this. They have short played careers to think about now when all the rest of it. The guarantees are going up in football because we have a salary gap. They are starting to guarantees and salaries for the first time. In the last couple of years only to signing bonus is guaranteed in the football contract. The years of play free skill or injury were not guaranteed. Baseball and basketball were guarantees that they can cut players at any time for any reason. We are getting a few more guarantees. Kiana fallon. I watch for College Football than i do the nfl. I have to admit that. I do see them doing concussion checks and im wondering if you feel that is very effective in preventing further injury in the game. I mean, theyre certainly more awareness around this issue in the nfl has put in place an increased level of eyes in the sky, basically people watching out for this. Well see circumstances where guys come off the field and maybe players are even more attentive although the players just one of play. I know in College Football if that test they do is positive, they dont come back on the field until they are tested further. That is true in the nfl. If theres a suggestion suggestion of the players suffered a concussion from a to go to the sidelines and there is a sideline test. One of the questions raised is whether you can diagnose concussions in six minutes which is what the trainers try to do. I think that is where the challenge is really increased. Especially challenging. Ive always said i think the hardest job beyond playing the game, the trainers have the hardest job because they are serving to impossible roles. They are responsible for the team and getting the players back on the field as fast as they can because they are paid by the teams and at the same time they are trainers responsible for the health and welfare of the players and thats an impossible job to deal with. That dynamic is at play in dealing with the issue. I go to conferences and speak around the country and they have new technologies and Companies Rate they are. They are trying like mad to get a better way to diagnose a sideline concussion and realtime fastenal that. The freemarket system is allowing that to happen. Remember unless you are laid out flat on your back and you dont get a quick, it is almost hard to see if youre on the sidelines what just happened. So we are detecting this out of this. My name is melanie lamour and i will admit my interest in football comes more from the league of denial and my nephew is fair my nephew as they are playing High School Football so this might be a naive question. But if theyre able to detect concussion now, why cant the nfl say we will not let a player come on before a certain amount of time since the players are going to take care of interest into that. That is supposedly was supposed to happen. Theres a protocol when a player is diagnosed with a concussion. He goes through a series of tests to determine whether his levels are back to a place hes essentially able to perform again. Theres caught a baseline testing whether test the players at the beginning of the year and he is the baseline to determine whether theyre qualified to go back into play. Players have talked about cheating the test. They will start a season and basically tanks attached in some cases to get a lower score so when they come back and do the baseline may pass. They want to play in the short life span to play. It is interesting there is now a technology where hamas sensors can be implanted in the players helmets to detect the number of hits occurring in the amount of g4s been generated. These sensors have been used by some colleges like North Carolina for a decade now and theyve accumulated enorm
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