Ever since O.J. Simpson almost assuredly got away with murder, Jack has wondered if all of those years of football contributed to brain injury. We know that brain injury alone doesn't necessarily make one violent, but coupled with existing mental illness and/or child abuse, you end up fitting the model for one of Jonathan H. Pincus's violent killers.

Pincus and his colleague Dr. Dorothy Lewis, a child psychiatrist, developed the view that murderers, and especially the most notorious kind, such as serial killers, are the product of the combination of child abuse with neurological damage and psychiatric illness. The three factors interact, as childhood abuse creates enormous anger, while neurologic and psychiatric diseases of the brain damage the capacity to stop urges to violence. A supplementary disinhibiting factor is the abuse of alcohol and drugs, involved in an estimated 70 percent of violent crimes.

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So, with all of that in mind, here's an article from "Slate" that explores the same question -- could football have contributed to O.J.'s behavior?

Slate by Chadwick Matlin, Sept. 21, 2007 -- With the murder trial, the "hypothetical" outline of how he would have killed his ex-wife, and now his "sting operation" in a Las Vegas hotel room, it's hard to remember that O.J. Simpson used to play football. He was actually pretty good at it, running away with the Heisman Trophy in 1968 and making the Pro Bowl five times in his NFL career. As a pro, Simpson carried the ball more than 2,400 times. As the evidence mounts that football can cause massive head trauma, it's worth wondering: Could O.J.'s erratic behavior have something to do with taking too many gridiron collisions?

After former Eagles defensive back Andre Waters committed suicide last year, the Waters family sent pieces of his brain to a forensic pathologist. The doctor reported that damage sustained while playing football had made Waters' brain similar to that of "an octogenarian Alzheimer's patient." According to his doctors, Hall of Fame center Mike Webster suffered frontal lobe damage due to repeated head injuries; he was suffering from dementia when he died at age 50. A post-mortem analysis of Chris Benoit, the professional wrestler who killed his wife and son and then committed suicide, revealed massive brain damage. Diaries were also found with cryptic, disturbing passages that suggested Benoit's behavior wasn't a result of steroid-induced rage, but rather a gradual decline into violence and dementia.

All of these athletes sustained traumatic brain injuries that killed brain cells and left them permanently impaired. Dr. David Hovda, a neurosurgeon at UCLA told me that any altered consciousness—seeing stars, dizziness, or feeling dazed after a hit—is considered a mild TBI. Even a mild concussion causes damage. With football's macho culture, players often pick themselves up and stay in the game, leaving themselves open to more serious harm. But repeated TBIs can lead to an altered frontal and temporal lobe, which can cause heightened anxiety and a loss of emotional control. Football players tend to damage their temporal lobe, which controls feeding, fighting, fleeing, and the person's sex drive.

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Labels: brain injury, football, O.J. Simpson, TBI