Source: AOL Sports
Studying the human brain isn’t the typical job for a retired professional wrestler, but Chris Nowinski wasn’t the typical professional wrestler.
Nowinski is a Harvard graduate (it should come as no surprise that he was the first Harvard alumnus in the history of the WWE) who played Ivy League football and suffered concussions both on the gridiron and in the ring. That has made him particularly interested in the long-term consequences of concussions, consequences that Nowinski says he’s dealing with himself.
In an interview with The Jets Blog, Nowinski discussed his book, Head Games: Football’s Concussion Crisis from the NFL to Youth Leagues, and said that contrary to the NFL’s public claims that it has taken steps to make players safer from brain injury, things might actually be getting worse:
their proposals are mostly PR moves, and at this moment in time I firmly believe players are less safe than they were in 2006. Unfortunately, at this point the NFL either doesn’t understand the cultural aspects of this injury (and therefore they haven’t read my book) or they aren’t that concerned with protecting their players’ short term and long term health.
Nowinski is not a doctor, but he has studied concussions and their long-term effects on the brain, and he has developed a level of expertise that, combined with his athletic credentials, gives him a great deal of credibility on the issue. People who follow football should expect to hear a lot more about concussions and a lot more from Nowinski.
