Do more to protect players. And we are establishing the position of a chief medical officer. This individual who we expect to have in place very soon, will oversee our medicalrelated policies. Over the past year a series of investigative reports revealed the extent to which the nfl had tried to deny the link between football and brain damage. Questions about the sports safety and its future are looming over this weekends super bowl. Half of all americans now say they dont want their children playing football. Scott shafer is here to discuss those questions with a former 49er a High School Football coach, and an Investigative Reporter with espn. Joining me now to discuss footballs concussion crisis are espn sportswriter mark fainaruwada. Hes coauthor of league of denial denial, which exposed the nfls efforts to deny the longterm impacts of concussions. Dwight hicks, a former allpro defensive player who helped the San Francisco 49ers win two super bowls. Dwight is starring in a new play at the berkeley rep called xs and os a football love story. And patrick walsh, head football coach at serra high school. He forfeited a consolation game last month rather than risk injuries to his players. Gentlemen, welcome all of you. Thank you. Mark, let me begin with you. The nfl said this week that concussions were down 25 this week this year compared to last year. Does that mean, do you think, that the nfls doing a better job of protecting its players . Well, ill say this at the start. I think my brother and i, we did the Work Together at espn, you know, we did a story a couple years ago looking at the leagues sort of data on concussions and their claims of reductions two years ago. And at that point i think it was almost impossible to make sense of the numbers that they were throwing out. There was such a mishmash of the way teams were reporting these injuries. There was a mishmash in the terminology. The league itself was giving us entirely different numbers. One week we got one set of numbers. Another week we got another set. So i take what they say with a grain of salt based on that kind of history. And then the difficulty in sort of reporting these kinds of injuries as well. And then we see injuries happening on the field that people wonder about that are not reported was that a concussion or not. Russell wilson roethlisberger. I think everybody has to have some context to what those numbers actually mean. And commissioner goodell, Roger Goodell announced the league is going to be hiring a new medical officer, a chief medical officer. Based on what you know what do you make of that . Well its an interesting thing because to this point their main medical guys been this guy elliott tullman. And elliott tullman is at the core of our book and the reporting on the leagues denial for years. And i think people were always struck that elliott tullman despite being at the sort of roof of the nfls denial of this issue for decades was still a major player in the medical sort of field around the nfl. So the league now stating publicly that theyre going to go i guess in a different direction. I assume he would replace tullman or she or whoevers there. There will be a lot of scrutiny on whoever that is. Absolutely. Dwight hicks, youve got a super bowl ring that youre wearing today. You played a number of season in the pros. Is it possible to make pro football safe . In some respects yes and in others no. Football is a very violent game. Very competitive game. And its getting faster. The guys are getting bigger. And i dont think that the equipment that theyre using is keeping up with that. And i think a lot of attention should be toward that. Better helmet technology. I think more than anything people look at the big impacts and its more the subconcussive hits that are really doing the damage. The ones that dont really take you out of a game necessarily. Absolutely. I can remember playing in new england one year. I played half the game, or more than that, 3 4 of the game, and i was like on automatic pilot. And the thing about that is i looked at the game to see where that could have happened and i didnt see anything that caused it. And it could have happened the game before and just a slight jolt then triggered something in that game and i was on automatic pilot. I did not see a neurologist. That monday i came back and just kept going. But now they have more information. So hopefully i would like to think that the nfl is going to really start to address some of these issues. Patrick walsh, what are you saying at the Little League level in terms of how all this concern over concussions has trickled down in terms of coaching, training, parents, and the players of course . Well, you know, health and safety of our players is on our minds every single day. And really the thing about concussions is theyre the most insidious injury. And we have a doctor come in every single year to educate our team. Most of the time the people who see the concussive effects are the players themselves in a hude. So those kids need to be trained to alert the Coaching Staff and the medical staff on the sideline that something indeed has happened in the game. Because the kids in that time arent necessarily making a decision you know when you break your arm its very clear that an injury has happened. When you have a concussion and you know, to dwights point here, i got a concussion against Fairfield High School when i was at de la salle, and i dont remember the second half. But you played. Oh, i played, and actually played well. I remember looking back saying what happened in that second half . Its like, well we won the game. Thats he thing. Its insidious. Yeah. So you recently made a lot of news. You forfeited a consolation game a kind of meaningless game because you were concerned about your players safety didnt want to risk injury for a meaningless game. What was your thinking in that . Well, a lot went into that. It was a culmination of a twoweek period of playing consolation football games, and just basically on the morning of december 5th which was the morning of the game through all the events throughout the two weeks that we played in these events, which no longer exists anymore was basically sitting there that morning and asking myself was it worth it to put that team that i had at that time on the field that night, and consciously i just couldnt do it. I couldnt look those parents in the eye, couldnt look those kids in the eye, and put them on the bus. It was very difficult. What did the kids say . They felt relieved, i believe. I had parents thanking me. You know, it was a very, very very traumatic time. I delivered the message to the team in tears in our chapel. It was a very difficult decision because every fiber in my being is a competitor. Ive never forfeited anything in my entire life. But i was thinking about these kids. And really what was the turning point for me was what if i had to go visit a kid in the hospital that night. Which ive had to do. What if i had to tell a parent they got a concussion . What if i had to tell a kid that . That was a turning point. But you could say that about any game. Absolutely. The playoffs we were talking earlier dwight the playoffs, the definition of a playoff is a series of contests that leads to a championship. And thats where things got interesting, if you will to say the least because the consolation bracket no longer led to a championship. So it was challenging for everybody involved. Yeah. Mark . I was going to say, one of the things that struck me as i looked at what patrick did and the power of it and it was a courageous act given sort of the mentality around football and the sort of belief of like were just going to play, this is what we do. But i started looking around the country at i mean i think whats instructive about what these guys are going through is yes these were consolation games but when you look at the length of the season now thats happening in High School Football youre talking about i was looking at in the state of texas for example, huge football in texas right . The two largest teams that played for the championship this year played a 16game season. They played an nfl season. Basically to reach the championship. With a twoweek break over a fourmonth period. These are high school kids. And this is sort of the extent where were going. The situation patrick found himself in was extreme because he had consolation games but this is happening in states around the country. Dwight, youre in a play that really focuses on concussions and the impact on players, families coaches. And like any actor i would imagine there are nights when you sort of fumble for your lines a little bit. But does it maybe once in a while. Theater. Of course. Its live. But does it take on additional significance for you given the topic and the fact you might be concerned personally about some of those Early Warning signs . Yes, it is very dear to me because i dont know whats going to happen in the future. I played the game. You played it on the highest level. There is some kind of residual effect you get from playing this game. But the game has given me a lot. We didnt know as far as when i played what we know now about head trauma and how much rest that we need after suffering a concussion. There are some there is some information saying that they knew in 1937. I think this is what our play is addressing. And for the nfl to skate along a tightrope and say that theres no correlation, i think we have to be more admit that there is a problem and lets do something about it instead of denying it. Mark, whats the biggest fear for the nfl . I mean, clearly theyre taking some steps. Theyre being dragged really into taking some steps to protect players. But theyre also concerned about the Little League and moms and dads being concerned about this whole issue and maybe not wanting their kids to play football. Whats at stake . I think whats most instructive to look at with the league and the way theyve dealt with it is how theyve marketed the whole issue. The league has gone from marketing itself as all about violence. For years the league jut marketed violence. That was what brought everybody in. And as they begin to have to confront this issue, which became unavoidable as you saw parents beginning to pull away from letting their kids play pop warner. We reported on a decline of 10 over the past two years. The league has shifted the way its marketing itself and you see itself marketing the safety. So its set up these mom clinics right . Which i think some people look at as a positive thing because theyre instructing mothers and patients parents and the dangers of the sport. Others look at it as a Marketing Tool by the league to try to sell the idea that the sport can be safe. And as dwight said its a violent sport. The sport is rooted in its violent. Hard to separate. And thats what people love about it. Theres a new state law now that limits the number of days a week that kids can have contact practices. Is that a solution . What impact is that going to have . Well its 90 minutes two 90minute full contact practices a week. I think its very prudent. And i think we cant be tone deaf in this society right now as football coaches in high school and below. We have to listen to whats happening out there. And weve got to put the kids first. And i believe in this legislation. I believe that the game can be practiced without pads on. I believe the way you can tackle with shoulder leveragetype tackling and different types of techniques and tackling bags instead of people and these sort of things are things we are conscious of and we need to be more conscious of as we move forward. I love this game. This game has changed my life. I know it has for you. And i see how this game impacts kids and gets into their souls. And we need to save this game. So if a parent comes to you i know you have two young sons. Do you want them to play football . What do you tell a parent when they ask you . Yeah, great question. I have the three denial rule. And really what that tests is desire. Kids that dont have a strong desire to play this game theyre playing for the wrong reasons, have a tendency to be the most injured. It takes a really distinct motivation to play this game. So i tell them, first time my kids come to me and say patrick dad. Can i play . Im going to say no youre not ready. Second time youre not ready. Third time, dad, please they beg me to play, then ill let them play at any age. Were going to leave it there. Patrick walsh, dwight hicks, mark fainaruwada. Thank you very much for this important discussion. Thank you very much. Thank you. Were now going to discuss one of the bay areas toughest problems homelessness. Despite decades of effort and billions of dollars, thousands of people are still living on the streets. San francisco is about to open a Onestop Service center aimed at helping the chronically homeless. The mayors point man on homelessness, bevan duftys here to discuss the new program. Welcome. Thank you. Well, how will this Onestop Center work and how is it different from initiatives in other cities . Well, lets just think about the fact you can see a police officer, lets say, talking to a homeless individual who might have a shopping cart or a tent and possessions or an outreach worker. That individuals not going to be able to go to shelter. The three big things that prevent people from accessing our shelter system is possessions, partners or pets. And so what we are really trying to do at the Navigation Center is reach out to the longterm homeless whove been in encampments in and around our neighborhoods and the street and take away all the reasons why shelter might not work. The Navigation Center is only going to be for stays of three to ten days. Well only have 75 people there at any given time. But well make it simple that people can bring their dogs, their possessions well be able to let them store them and go through their things so basically allowing a whole encampment to move in. Absolutely. Were going to have six bungalows for sleeping and a couple for services and a meal bungalow. And so well be able to take an encampment of 10 12, 14 people and bring them together. Its something we did a year and a half ago when a fence was put up at 5th and king under the freeway and we moved 30 people together a church. And we recognized that that community had strength. Theyd been looking out for one another, taking care of one another, and bringing them together made it so much easier. What will be the metric for success here . Thats a great question. Our city controller whos our City Services auditor is working not to look retrospectively two years from now but on a realtime basis. Theyre helping us ask for the metrics, the questions what success is going to look like. Obviously, its going to be helping people whove been on the street a long time, moving these encampments getting people inside getting them to access treatment, housing. The mayor is leading this initiative. Hes gone to the private sector to have them contribute and participate in it. The mayors also said were going to ramp up the leasing of 500 singleroom occupancy hotels known as sros, housing placements for people. Its a very exciting time for us because were going to do Something Different and people are ready for a change. And theyre all important efforts yet still the problem persists. 500 units of housing doesnt even really begin to address all of the housing that youll need. And in fact the city currently spends about 170 million per year on serving the homeless. And thats about 500,000 a day. Thats more than the department of children youth and their families. And yet no dent has been made. Why is that . Well, we have housed over 9,000 people over the past ten years. And one of the programs were proud of is called homeward bound. Over the past 7 1 2 years weve enabled 8,600 people to return to family, friends and loved ones, and we contact them. We assure that they will be taken care of. We get them a trailways ticket and a meal voucher. And only 24 of that 8,600 have come back into our system. So we cant solve the nations homelessness problem. And the 170 million that we spend thats a safety net for people that are poor and low income. Weve made a lot of gains. But i think the street population has been one of the mostn Navigation Center is really ind the think a new answer very different than anything weve seen. And the numbers you mentioned, there have been some gains made in certain segments of the population, but the reality is that the numbers havent changed much. I mean, according to the mayors own office, the Homeless Population in 2009 was 6,514. In 2013 it was 6,436. It hasnt changed much. I mean, its stayed pretty much the same. Lets talk where it has changed. Veterans. So president obama set the goal of ending chronic veterans homelessness by the end of this year and ending veterans homelessness next year. The federal governments giving us resources. And weve reduced veterans homelessness in two years by 35 . Our numbers have not changed. Our most recent number was 6,436. Santa claras gone up 8 . Los angeles has gone up 15 . And new york has gone up 13 in homelessness. Everybody knows that the recession has hit us. But the mayor stepped forward and look what happened to unemployment. It went from a 9. 4 unemployment to 4. 4 . All of my people that i work for, certainly theyre not accessing jobs as others are, but were moving in the right direction, and youre seeing, google gave 2 million through the mayor to Homeless Services a month ago, and i think thats whats going to change things in San Francisco. Are you hoping that more hightech companies will step up . Absolutely. I think they want to help and they recognize that they have a part. They can help on the ground. They can provide technology and volunteers. And ive seen that happen more and more. But i think that the resources they realize the city cant solve this problem on our own. And i think san franciscans are tired of seeing people pushed around by the police or street cleaners. You cant arrest your way out of homelessness. Bevan, when you walk the streets of San Francisco, how do you react to the homeless . Do you give money to panhandlers . I do. I do. And i start a conversation. I give them my business card. And i try and see i try and connect to the humanity of people that are on the street. It may not work for everyone. And not everyone who panhandles is homeless. Youre not concerned the money will be used for drugs or alcohol . That is a concern by a lot of people. They want to have compassion but they dont know where that moneys going. Zblifnt sat in a room where ive talked about homelessness in this job where people dont generate income for drugs or alcohol. Lets just be honest. People are people. I dont judge people. I think the issue is that weve made it hard, theres not enough Affordable Housing in San Francisco. Sometimes the rules of our programs, as i described not being able to have possessions with you, not being a male and a female cant Stay Together in our shelter system. What couple is going to allow that, to be separated like that . I think weve really figured out what hasnt worked, and thats what the Navigation Centers going to do. And i think the private sector may get excited if they see us gaining ground. Final question for you just real quickly. The city conducted its Homeless Count last night. The results wont be known until later this year. But are you hopeful about the Homeless Count . Should people have reason to be hopeful . I think what people want to see is a change on the street. I think people want to see that that person with three shopping carts and a dog is not going to just get cited by the police or get pushed. Thats what the change is going to be. The numbers will be the numbers. But i think the reality is we want people to know that were here to keep faith and were going to do something radically different and the mayors committed to making this change. All right, bevan. Much luck to you. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you very much. Q5dh every winter thousands of northern elephant steals storm the beaches of ano nuevo state park a jagged stretch of coastline 60 miles south of San Francisco. A century ago the massive Marine Mammals were on the verge of extinction. But after mexico and the United States enacted hunting bans the seal population began to recover. Now new technologies are giving scientists a way to track that recovery. Scott shafer spoke with uc santa cruz biology professor dan costa about what researchers are learning. Dan costa, this is a perfect time of the year to go down to ano nuevo and watch the elephant seals. Why should people go . Its an opportunity to see one i mean, i always think of ano nuevo and elephant seals as one of the seven wonders of the world. Theres very few places in the world that you can go to such a you know to a major metropolis and see these animals breeding on the beach. Theyre the largest seal. Theyre doing everything right in front of you. They give birth to a pup. The males fight for dominance on the rookery. And then they mate with the females. And you can just go see it. Just take half a day, a full day, go down there and see it all happening. And these are big animals. How big . Give us a comparison. Theyre almost 5,000 pounds. So theyre the size of a small car. And the females are about a little over 1,000 pounds. The males are about 4,000 5,000 pounds. So these are big animals. Theyre the biggest seal. Theyre quite large. Theyre pretty docile, actually. I mean, you see them sitting on the beach, they really dont care about people much. Except when theyre mating right . Except when theyre mating. So the males fight and the females really protect their pup. But they dont really care that much about the people. So you can go youre not allowed to go very close to them. But you can go and see them. And they really dont care about what the people are doing. Theyre really into what theyre there for. Yeah. Youve been studying elephant seals for over three decades now. Yeah. How has technology changed what youre able to do and the way you go about it . This device measures what the animals doing. It measures its diving pattern, how deep it dives how long it dives. It transmits that information via satellite. So theres a satellite that will recover the information. This measures the temperature of the water and the salinity of the water. And this measures chlorophyll which is phytoplankton. This tag tells us what the animals doing but it also tells us about the environment. It tells us in the ocean the things that determine the habitat are things like salinity, temperature, and phytoplankton. And is it going to come back with ano nuevo with that still on . Hopefully. These are expensive tags. This is about 8,000 worth of electronics. If it doesnt come back, all that information is relayed via satellite. So. And how do you get it on the animal . Do you have to sedate them . Yeah. Theyre very docile animals, but they really would object to us walking up to them and taking blood samples and the like. This is one thats already been deployed on the animal. You can see it uses fiveminute epoxy. And you put a little neopreen patch on here. We glue it to the animals head and when we cover it we cut through that neoprene patch and pull the tag off. And what has having this enabled you to learn about their migration patterns, what they eat, where they are, what theyre doing . Its phenomenal. When we first thought about putting tags out and some of the tags we used were nowhere near as sophisticated as this, we didnt have any idea where they went. In fact, we couldnt figure out why when wed do Aerial Surveys or boat surveys we didnt see many animals. And the reason we didnt see them is because they leave this area. They go way out to the International Dateline way up to the gulf of alaska. And when theyre at sea they spend 80 to 90 of their time underwater. These animals are diving routinely 20 25 minutes with only about two or three minutes at the surface. And this is a real comeback story too because 100 years ago or so elephant seals were nearly extinct. There were very few left. And now there are tens of thousands . In 1900 there were probably less than 50 elephant seals. There was an expedition in the 1890s that went to Guadalupe Island and found 12 animals. And back then if you saw an animal you thought was extinct youd shoot it to put it in a museum. Fortunately not all the animals were on the beach that day. So we estimate there was less than 25 or so. It could be that all the animals we have today have one father. Wow. Theres about 210,000 northern elephant seals. So thats an amazing recovery. Thats a lot of mating. A lot of mating. A lot of mating. They were endangered because they were hunted for their oil. Everybody thinks about whaling and going after whale oil. They also went after elephant seals. And a lot of the whaling ships when they got near to being full would stop at an elephant seal colony. And az said these animals are docile. So theyd whack them over the head and render the oil. They were hunted for their oil. And of course nowadays Climate Change is a huge concern for all marine life. Is it affecting elephant seals in a particular way including their migration pattern . Thats one of the things were really interested in. Weve been following weve been putting a lot of tags out. 20 tags every cycle on elephant seal females for the last ten years. And our goal is to be able to see if these patterns are changing. As the Climate Changes how are elephant seals going to respond . Our first gut reaction is that elephant seals are covering such a large swath of the ocean that theyll probably be able to change as the ocean changes. So if the primary habitat moves a little further north the elephant seals will possibly move a little further north. All right. So hopeful. Not threatened by other things and not being hunted anymore. Not being hunted. And very few theres no fishery for these deep ocean squid and fishes that elephant seals feed on. So their Food Resource is also pretty safe at least for the time being. All right. A little bit of Good Environmental news. Elephant seals are a great story that there is hope and an animal that was literally teetering on the brink of extinction is lum almost fully recovered. Dan costa, professor of engology and evolutionary biology at uc santa cruz. Thanks for coming in. Youre welcome. The elephant seals will be at ano nuevo until march. Reservations for guided tours are required. You can find out more on our website at kqed. Org newsroom. And a program note. Next week the mayors of San Francisco, san jose, and oakland will join us to discuss the most pressing issues facing their cities. If you have a question youd like us to ask the mayors, please send it to kqednewsroom kqed. Org. Thanks so much for joining us. Im thuy vu. Have a great night. Support is