SAN FRANCISCO — John Mara’s family business is football and he takes offense at those who lash out against the NFL for being uncaring and careless in the diagnosis and treatment of concussions and CTE post-career brain damage.
“We’ve been involved in this business in my family since 1925,’’ Mara, the Giants’ co-owner, said forcefully on Friday. “You better believe it’s important to me to find out what’s going on and to improve this going forward.”
Mara was particularly upset with the accusations of Chris Nowinski, the co-founder of the Sports Legacy Institute and the co-director of Boston University’s CTE Center. An outspoken critic of the NFL, Nowinski — a former Harvard football player and professional wrestler — crashed the league’s annual health and safety press conference on Thursday, once again ripping into the league, accusing the NFL of preventing funding for a new brain disease study.
“Their attempt to prevent that study from being funded was frankly a slap in the face of every family suffering from CTE right now,’’ Nowinski said. “That study in itself was delayed by at least nine months by the games the NFL tried to play.”
Nowinski also said the NFL’s interest in concussions and brain trauma reminds him of watching a Big Tobacco documentary about the indiscretions of the tobacco industry.
“I disagree with that,’’ Mara said. “Listen, I respect him, but my God we spent a lot of time talking about this. This is not for show as far as I’m concerned. I, myself, spent a lot of hours in those meetings, both in the Competition Committee and in the Health and Safety committee. We’ve committed a lot of money for research. For me it’s not a game. It’s not for show. It’s to find answers to these problems.
“This is our business. We have a lot of young men playing this game that we want to try to protect. This is not for show. This is serious business.’’