Jerry Jones is a football lifer who’s made a massive amount of money in the NFL. So, it might not come as a huge surprise that he’s unwilling to admit the men he makes money off are in a place to suffer long-term health issues while playing football.
Despite the growing mounds and mounds of evidence, the Dallas Cowboys owner is skeptical of the supposed tie between playing football and brain disease.
“We want to continue to be safer and want to continue to support any type of research that would let us know what (the) consequences really are,” Jones said Tuesday at the NFL Annual Meeting, according to The Washington Post. “In no way should we be basically making assumptions with no more data than we’ve got about the consequences of a head injury.”
That’s tame enough, sure, and Jones insisted the NFL is doing all it can to ensure player safety, particularly when it comes to head injuries. However, when Jones was further pressed about a potential link between head trauma in football and brain diseases like CTE, Jones delivered a very strong take.
“No, that’s absurd,” Jones said, per the Post. “There’s no data that in any way creates a knowledge. There’s no way that you could have made a comment that there is an association and some type of assertion. In most things, you have to back it up by studies. And in this particular case, we all know how medicine is. Medicine is evolving. I grew up being told that aspirin was not good. I’m told that one a day is good for you…. I’m saying that changed over the years as we’ve had more research and knowledge.
“So we are very supportive of the research … We have for years been involved in trying to make it safer, safer as it pertains to head injury. We have millions of people that have played this game, have millions of people that are at various ages right now that have no issues at all. None at all. So that’s where we are. That didn’t alter at all what we’re doing about it. We’re gonna do everything we can to understand it better and make it safer.”
Jones’ comments come a week after NFL vice president of healthy and safety Jeff Miller acknowledged before Congress that there’s a link between football and head trauma. Of course, the NFL quickly backtracked after those comments.
Thumbnail photo via Timothy T. Ludwig/USA TODAY Sports Images
