How many hits to your head does it take to cause serious brain damage? If you knew, would it change anything?
These are questions explored in the Steve James-directed documentary Head Games (2012). The documentary follows former Harvard football standout turned WWE pro wrestler turned Boston University researcher Chris Nowinski, who after 19 years of playing sports that brought persistent hits to his brain, now engages in the research behind the brain injuries. Along the way, we meet other researchers, athletes, coaches, and specialists who have become entangled with the impact of brain concussions, either by profession or personal experience.
James, also the director of the critically acclaimed Hoop Dreams (1994) and Prefontaine (1997), uses well-known documentary vehicles – expert in his office of books, doctor in a lab coat – to tell us less known facts about chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the brain diseased associated with head trauma, often present in athletes who seem otherwise healthy. CTE has effects such as increasing onset of violent behavior, anger, dementia, depression, and inability to remember things – like months of the year or birthdays.
Research is still new in this emerging field of study, but already links have been found connecting the brain disease to football players, from retired NFL players to young college athletes. Although popularly associated with football, hockey, boxing, and wrestling, CTE also occurs in sports like women’s soccer, where players experience dizziness and other concussion symptoms when heading the ball.
As each layer of information on CTE is revealed, the impending dilemma looms evident. The million-dollar question hangs in the balance: what to do about this discovery? Certainly the leagues would just ignore the findings (which they did), and then suggest that better helmets or a slight change of rules – more protection for the quarterback, penalties for certain tackles – would help resolve the issue (which it didn’t).
The documentary goes to great length to describe the severity of bodily harm caused by repetitive hits to the brain that won’t be limited by new padded helmets, no matter what Michael Vick tells you.
What’s expected is backlash from the leagues and from sports fans. Will people stop tuning in on Sundays when athletes cease to be gladiators? And how much will the NFL or NHL allow rule changes until football doesn’t look like football and hockey doesn’t look like hockey?
Does anyone even care that football, hockey, boxing, wrestling, and other sports cause brain injuries? Ask the 108 million people who watched the Super Bowl.
Ask the Baltimore Ravens.
But certainly the most shocking and unexpected aspect of the documentary is the brute honesty shown by the very researchers who bring us this information on concussions and CTE-related deaths, when asked if they would pull their own sons and daughters out of violent contact sports. One doctor has a son who plays hockey and has already suffered two concussions – at age the ripe old age of 10. But when asked would she pull her son out of the sport, she replies that her kid loves playing hockey and she loves to watch him play hockey.
One former Philadelphia Flyers player who was let go from the team mid-season after suffering too many concussions is now coaching his own 14-year old son in hockey. And yes, his son has suffered a concussion already, but he would rather not think about the risks.
Even Chris Nowinski (Chris Harvard, to the WWE) hesitates when asked would he allow his sons to play football. You get the sense that the Harvard Crimson fuels his blood, and no measly three letters like CTE are going to prevent that warm, fuzzy pigskin spirit from flowing through his lineage.
Tons of statistical evidence, expert testimony, and hundreds of brains donated to science all add up to the grand finding that the games we play are actually quite traumatic. But in retrospect, at least according to these experts, it’s just football.
Watch the trailer.
Director/Producer: Steve James
Producer: Bruce Sheridan
Cinematographers: Dana Kupper, Keith Walker
