Concussions, Trump, and the NFL’s biggest dangers to tackle

Judy Woodruff:

A long-running feud between President Trump and the National Football League over players taking a knee for the national anthem bubbled up yesterday, even before players took to the field for the first games of the regular season.

Mr. Trump tweeted, "If the players stood for our flag and anthem, and it is all shown on broadcast, maybe ratings could come back."

William Brangham explores the month-long dispute.

William Brangham:

By some measures, the NFL is in great shape. Football games are consistently the most popular events on TV, and owners are making millions.

But the NFL is also wrestling with multiple scandals, horrible violence committed off the field by players, the growing awareness that players' bodies and brains can be irreparably damaged by the game, and, of course, the political protests by some players, which have been amplified and attacked by President Trump.

New York Times political reporter Mark Leibovich spent four years in and amongst the owners and players of pro football. And he's just out with a new book, "Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times."

Welcome to the "NewsHour."

Mark Leibovich:

Good to be with you.

William Brangham:

So, many people are going to know you as a political reporter. They will remember your last book, "This Town," which was all about Washington, D.C.

Mark Leibovich:

Right.

William Brangham:

I'm just curious what it was like for you, spending all these years chronicling and covering Washington, and then now immersing yourself in what, to my eye, feels like a very different world.

Mark Leibovich:

To my eye, it did too. I wanted a respite from politics. I needed a break.

And, as it turned out, I jumped into the NFL swamp, and the respite from politics probably lasted about two minutes or so.

(LAUGHTER)

Mark Leibovich:

There was no escape from politics in the NFL. And that includes league politics, and then getting sort of immersed with the owners and the commissioner and a bunch of players.

You realize that the backbiting and the elbowing that goes on in Washington is very comparable to what you see in this organization. But then, obviously, Donald Trump got involved, and the NFL has become this hobby horse of his, and he thinks it's a winning political issue for him.

And he sort of jumped on it.

William Brangham:

You actually uncovered a tape of owners talking about the difficulty they were having with this.

What did you find?

Mark Leibovich:

This was during the height of the national anthem crisis last October. There was a private meeting between a group of players and a group of owners that Roger Goodell, the commissioner, convened at the Park Avenue headquarters.

And it was a private meeting. And one of the participants in this was nice enough to share an audio recording of this with me and Ken Belson, my colleague at The New York Times. And to be able to listen to how the owners talk about this issue, and really the kind of primal fear they have of Donald Trump was very reminiscent somewhat of listening to sort of U.S. senators or congressmen, particularly Republicans, who are living in fear of the next presidential tweet.

It's like you have a sense of someone who is manipulating events from afar. And I was amazed at how scared they sounded, how confused they sounded, and also how shortsighted they sounded. I mean, they are sitting at the top of a multibillion-dollar empire. They can just print money.

I mean, it's not going to go away anytime soon. And yet they're just worried about the next tweet.

William Brangham:

You also spend a lot of time in the book and personally with Tom Brady, the NFL's golden boy, marquee man. And you admit heavily in the book that you are a die-hard Patriots fan. I think you referred to it as the disease you contracted early on.

Mark Leibovich:

Yes.

William Brangham:

What was that like for you?

Mark Leibovich:

Tom Brady is a very good guy. I was able to write a profile of him for "The Times Magazine" a few years ago.

And, look, I have interviewed presidents and all kinds of CEO, celebrity types. I don't think I have ever been as nervous as when I sort of got to meet like the…

William Brangham:

Is that right?

Mark Leibovich:

I got to be a fanboy. It's a kind of pathetic thing to admit. But it's sort of true.

William Brangham:

And yet, in the book, you're — you're not — you don't go easy on him. I mean, you're tough on him. You do point out, especially with regards to this holistic mind-body thing he's doing with his guru…

Mark Leibovich:

Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

William Brangham:

… fellow.

Mark Leibovich:

Look, I mean, this is an absurd world we're talking about. I mean, these are worlds of incredible wealth and incredible ego, incredible accomplishment, incredible success, but also incredible insularity.

And I think it's incumbent upon me to sort of tell what this anthropology is like, and how it's different from what you and I are used to.

William Brangham:

The subtitle of the book, as we described, is "The NFL In Dangerous Times."

I mentioned a few of the things that might be icebergs in the water. What do you see as the most dangerous things for the NFL?

Mark Leibovich:

Well, I mean, I think — I would say the two things, one are definitely health and safety and concussions, and, like, the realization that the NFL is just going to be unsafe at any speed.

Players keep getting bigger, faster, stronger. And you can probably influence it around the margins with some rule changes or some equipment changes, but, ultimately, that's not going to change in any big way, except that the research is going to keep showing us that it's very dangerous.

And the more dead players' brains become available, the more awareness is going to be. And people are going to make, hopefully, informed decisions about whether they want to be a part of this.

The other thing, I think, is just the technological and cultural change around cord-cutting and technology change, and also just the idea that people have so many more options of entertainment, and there's just no sense that football has the room to grow that they might think it is.

William Brangham:

On the issue of concussions and the degenerative brain disease, your book is filled with examples of players and owners and people on the margins saying, I don't want to talk about concussions. I don't want to address that.

Mark Leibovich:

Right.

William Brangham:

But it really is, potentially, an existential threat.

If the talent pool dries up, if enough kids and parents say, I'm not doing that, I don't know how the game survives.

Mark Leibovich:

Yes.

Look, I mean, for, like, a viewer of this — I like to think I'm a thoughtful viewer of this — there's a lot of cognitive dissonance that goes into watching and loving football.

I mean, I experience it. I'm sure a lot of other people who watch football experience it. There's this commingling of just loving the sport, loving what's on TV, the great spectacle that football presents, a lot of the nostalgia that I grew up with watching football, with the adult realizations of what the sport is doing to people.

William Brangham:

Of course, we have also been seeing this recent controversy with the Nike ads and Colin Kaepernick and the ongoing protests by players against police violence and racial injustice.

Mark Leibovich:

Yes.

William Brangham:

President Trump, as you mentioned, has — clearly believes that the antagonism against those guys is a winning political issue for him.

Mark Leibovich:

Yes.

William Brangham:

What are the owners' reaction to that?

Mark Leibovich:

I mean, a lot of them have personal history with Donald Trump. I mean, a lot of them gave money to his campaign.

Donald Trump himself has been trying to get into the NFL over four decades, and they really wouldn't give him the time of day. So, they're — this is driven in some ways by personal grievance.

Most of them know him sort of in that rich guy circle, and they want nothing to do with him. And yet now they have to deal with him, because he's sitting in the White House, and he has decided to sort of heckle from the bully pulpit. And I assume we will be hearing a lot more from him as we get closer to the midterm elections.

William Brangham:

Your book also spent a good deal of time dissecting the career of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.

Mark Leibovich:

Yes.

William Brangham:

How much of the problems facing NFL do you put his at his feet. Could he have ameliorated any of these things you're talking about?

Mark Leibovich:

I think he could make them a lot better than he has.

I will say that, in the last 10 years, which sort of mimics his commissionship, the league has gone from one of the most unifying institutions in America to probably the most polarizing sports brand we have.

And I asked him flat out last January, do you bear any responsibility for this? And he punted — good football metaphor there. He said, well, I think that's more to do with the political times we're living through than anything else.

And it's probably true. But it's also — I mean, it's not — I don't think it's a healthy thing for the league to have a commissioner that is despised as widely as he is by the fans of the NFL and by a lot of the players of the NFL.

I mean, yes, he makes people a lot of money, but this is 32 really rich guys. And I think the rest is sort of a drain on the brand in some ways.

William Brangham:

The book is "Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times."

Mark Leibovich, thank you.

Mark Leibovich:

Thanks for having me.