On Monday, a huge story dominated NFL headlines, and it had nothing to do with one of the game’s greats announcing his ALS diagnosis. Dwight Clark published a heartbreaking letter on Sunday to announce he has been stricken with the disease. Yet one day later that news was buried.
The reason? Tom Brady’s Super Bowl jerseys were found, and reports dumped onto major networks and social media like a never-ending avalanche.
At least one NFL agent believes this was no coincidence.
One NFL agent told me he thinks it's no coincidence "news of Brady's jersey being found came one day after Dwight Clark's ALS announcement."
— JosinaAnderson (@JosinaAnderson) March 21, 2017
Indeed, Clark himself suspects playing football may have caused the illness. He said as much in the open letter published on Sunday, writing, “I’ve been asked if playing football caused this. I don’t know for sure. But I certainly suspect it did.”
The NFL obviously isn’t going to be a big fan of that kind of news being highlighted.
The league has already been in damage control over new information coming out about concussions and CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy), a brain disease that progressively gets worse and causes extreme emotional, psychological and mental distress.
One recent study found that a very high percentage of late, former NFL players were found to have CTE (more on that here), and we’ve already begun to see an exodus of sorts as young players choose health over money and football.
Call us skeptics, but we cannot fully discount the NFL agent’s supposition that the league did strategically plan the news release that Tom Brady’s jersey was found. Then again, maybe it was just a big coincidence.