[MUSIC] The NFL can say, oh now we have uncapped the $765 million that we had allowed for settling this class, but when you really drill down deeply, each individual is still going to be capped. >> Right, each individual is capped and you can imagine, even though it's a little bit harder to predict how much will be needed, they spend a lot of money to get that number right. So, uncapped doesn't mean it's going to end up at $3 or $4 billion. It's probably almost impossible it could get to that number. So it's a concession but it's not, perhaps, enough of a concession as other things could have been. >> Let's just jump to another friend of SLI. Just did a big benefit for you in Chicago. Jimmy McMan, famous Superbowl quarterback, who has a lot of these issues. He's pioneering yet another class action law suit against the league. This one goes to you gave me medication, you're the team doctor, you the league allowed for over-medicating me when I shouldn't have been returned to play. How does that tie in with some of these CTE related issues, if at all? >> That's a great question Professor Carfania. And it is unknown, but I would speculate, this is probably definitely happening. It is the idea that the players were given pain killers. Even some without prescription while they were playing. Painkillers mask the pain they suffer. Sometimes the only way you know you are concussed is because you have a headache or some sort of symptom related to pain like that. And if the drugs took that away, you wouldn't recognize whom you working cost and what we believe is, if you continue to play through a concussion, you make the damage much worse, you may make it more likely that you have longer term problems. So probably what happened there is they they medicated people through concussions and that caused more severe brain damage, and so there is some relationship there although it's basically impossible to perfectly tease out. But the reality is, we shouldn't be doping up these football players because they need to know when they're injured so they can get off the field. >> Chris, how do you react to a defense that's often times raised, you waived your rights, you assumed the risk. You allowed the team doc, to put you back in the game when maybe you were woozy. You lived it. You said yourself as a WWE, put me in coach, I'm okay. So many of these athletes say, I don't want to admit I've been injured, or it might be the end of my career. What's your gut on that, go, no go, about the defense of you assumed the risk and thereby, waived your rights? >> Yeah, I don't buy the you assume your risk. There's nothing really empirical about concussion and that's why we need experts treating it. So it's basically the doctors job to know that when you suffer a brain injury, don't keep getting hit in the head. And if they were allowing you to go back in against what were known protocols. I mean you can go back into the literature and find in 1905 the Harvard football team kept their captain out of the game for a concussion. In 1945, not to be all Harvard here. But the Harvard team doctor retired every player that got three concussions and they were never allowed to go back into the game. So, people knew this, and if you were treating patients, you should have known to keep them out, and I look back and think when I was injured I was 24, I had a Harvard degree, I had no concept of what was going on. That really was the medical staff's job. So not only did they have, were need that to happen, but also athletes never knew what they were getting into. People say that, it's not true. Everyone started playing football when they were a minor, when they were a child, I was 13. I certainly didn't know what I was getting into and at no point along the way when I shifted from being a child to being an adult, did anyone sit down and inform me of that risk, that never happened. >> Do you see this, the ultimate question, as the beginning of the end of American football as we know it? I mean, soccer, you could say, oh, let's go play soccer but headers are in issue there the numbers are way down. Youth football is way down President Obama says, if I had a son, I wouldn't let him play football. Is there a fix for this or is football going to become like boxing? I think in a lot of ways it's up to football what it becomes, because there are some clear signs that we need to make changes. For example two weeks ago we announced a campaign with a number of stars for the '99 Women's World Cup Championship U.S. team, like Brandy Chastain and Cindy Parlow Cone, saying let's get rid of headers before high school. Because children shouldn't be taking regular brain trauma. And you know let's focus on foot skills, but kids colliding is bad for them. And there's overwhelming evidence, and we've wrote that up in a white paper. So football's choice right now is, I played only eight years. And I think I'm lucky to have only played eight years, and I'm lucky not to have played as a child because my situation would've probably been much much worse. And football has to decide, is tackle football the future for children before high school? Should five-year-olds be banging heads? I mean, anybody in the business or anyone who even knows football knows it's not true. They shouldn't be playing. So, is football going to encourage kids to shift over to 7-on-7 and no tackling? And therefore people still think football's okay, and then in high school we modify the risks and make it as safe as possible? Or are we going to say, let's keep tackling, everything's fine? And if that happens, I think the experts will have to turn around and say, you know what, you shouldn't be playing football because they're not taking this issue seriously. And the reality is no child should be taking 100s of hits to the head every year for fun. >> These are all great answers Chris. I want to leave some time here at the end for you to say if you were the commissioner of the NFL how would you change the game? >> So if I was the commissioner, I mean I think the NFL and the NFL Players Association have done a good job modifying the NFL game. But a point I'm now starting to make in those discussions that people got level is were not going to chance outcomes from NFL players. Now you look at the brains of 62 former NFL players, 58 have had this disease ratting their brain away, so it's nearly all of them. Even though it is a biased sampled, that means it is almost statistically impossible that it is less than half of the athletes, that are developing this. But maybe that development is really coming from before they get into the NFL, for a lot them. Because before the NFL, they are hitting more than one day a week, they don't have the army of medical people to help me, they are not physically mature enough, with neck strength and with understanding when they're injured to to take care of themselves. So the NFL has to take a better role in changing the youth game, at a high school game, college game and in a way they are doing that a little bit with the Heads Up program. But I think there's some issues with the Heads Up program in terms of there's no data to say that changing the way you tackle will actually improve your outcome. I think the better things to do would be to just have abstinence around hitting kids in the head at six years old, and make them throw and run and play flag or play seven on seven. And that's going to be the biggest decision facing the commissioner is which way to push the youth game. And right now I think he's pushing it in the wrong direction. >> An encyclopedic trip through a really important part of representing professional athletes on their post retirement years primarily. Chris, we can't thank you enough. You were kind enough to call me Professor. Is it time for me to call you Dr. Nowinski yet? How's your thesis coming along? >> Not yet, I passed the my comprehensive exam but I have not yet had to time to [LAUGH] even work on my dissertation. So, I look forward to that and like I said, I gotta stop writing updates to head games, I gotta stop doing the documentary that you mentioned earlier head games, global concussion crisis. All that work is distracting me from this doctorhood. >> Please read Chris' updated book. Please watch his movie about his life. You'll find it fascinating. I'm proud to be a member of your board. By the time on next board meeting, I'm going to hold you to it. I'm calling you Dr. Newinski one way or the other. >> I appreciate it, Professor Carfagna. Thanks for your service at SLI. >> Thanks for being with us today, Chris. [SOUND]
