JAMES DEVELIN, ZAK DEOSSIE, CAMERON BRATE, KYLE JUSZCZYK…AND THE LIKE

According to ivyleaguesports.com:

“The Ivy League is the most diverse intercollegiate conference in the country with more than 8,000 student-athletes competing each year. Sponsoring conference championships in 33 men’s and women’s sports and averaging more than 35 varsity teams at each school, the Ivy League provides more intercollegiate athletic opportunities per school than any other conference in the country. All eight Ivy schools are among the top 20 of NCAA Division 1 schools in number of sports offered for both men and women and enjoy regular competitive success at the highest championship levels of NCAA Division 1 athletics.

The League’s schools — Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton and Yale — share a rich history of success and influence in college athletics, dating back to the origins of intercollegiate competition. Ivy League institutions have won 287 team national championships and 579 individual national championships since intercollegiate competition began. The Ivy League conference was formally established in 1954, based on the mutual agreement that intercollegiate athletics competition should be ‘kept in harmony with the essential educational purposes of the institution.’”

That’s all well and good but what’s the story with Ivy Leaguers playing in the National Football League? Historically is one thing, but more contemporarily?

Ask Sid Luckman (Columbia). Or Chuck Bednarik (Penn). Or Chuck Mercein (Yale).

How about Charlie Gogolak (Princeton)?

Perhaps Calvin Hill or Dick Jauron (Yale).

Ed Marinaro (Cornell).

Or Pat McInally (Harvard). Danny Marcellus Jiggetts (Harvard). George Starke (Columbia). Steve Jordan (Brown).

Gary Fencik, Nick Lowery, Jason Garrett, Marcellus Wiley, Jay Fiedler, Matt Birk, Kevin Boothe or Ryan Fitzpatrick.

An oxymoron it is, Ivy League gridiron heroes competing at the highest level in football, a barbaric and uncivilized rock ’em, sock ’em activity.

And graduating from the universities which blast open doors and furnish opportunity like no others, not to mention the ‘party-line fact’ that they do not even offer athletic scholarships. (If they want you and you want them, well…things have a way of working out).

But the American template of progress and understanding has always highlighted opportunity in exchange for hard work, and competitive sorts typically want to measure themselves against those considered the cream of the crop in (or on) any field.

Athletes — even and perhaps especially Ivy League athletes — are no different.

As of the third week of the 2017 NFL season, no fewer than 14 former Ivy League footballers had secured roster or practice squad spots, with six (of the “Ten Thousand”) men of Harvard leading the pack. (As many as 27 former Ivy football standouts dotted NFL rosters at the start of this season’s training camps).

Only Yale and Dartmouth of the eight Ivy institutions are not represented presently. History lends solace to them however; Yale’s Fritz Barzilauskas (1947) and Calvin Hill (1969) — both 1st round selections — along with fellow alum Chuck Mercein, a third round pick (1965) earned accolades as all-time Top 25 NFL/Ivy players. Dartmouth’s Bob MacLeod (1939) joined them.

The youngest player to find himself on this exalted list is Joe Valerio of Penn (1991) drafted in the second round and 50th. overall by the Kansas City Chiefs.

Not surprisingly, scores of Ivy football alums find themselves collecting NFL paychecks in various other capacities, notably including head coaches Bill O’Brien (Brown/Houston Texans) and Jason Garrett (Princeton, Columbia and Princeton/Dallas Cowboys).

Less visible perhaps are assistant coaches with an Ivy pedigree, numbering no fewer than a dozen: 1.) Bill Lazor, Cornell — OC, Cincinnati; 2.) Matt Burke, Dartmouth — DC, Miami; 3.) Steven Williams, Harvard — Defensive QC, Detroit; 4.) Joe D’Orazio, Penn — Offensive QC/Asst. Wide Receiver Coach, Philadelphia; 5.) Kevin Stefanski, Penn — QB Coach, Minnesota; 6.) Geep Chryst, Princeton — TE Coach, Denver; 7.) Joe Baker, Princeton — Asst. Secondary Coach, Dallas; 8.) Luke Steckel, Princeton — Asst. To the Head Coach, Cleveland; 9.) Blake Williams, Princeton — Linebackers Coach, Cleveland; 10.) Josh Grizzard, Yale — Offensive QC, Miami; 11.) Mike McDaniel, Yale — Run Game Specialist, San Francisco; and 12.) Patrick Graham, Yale — DL Coach, New York Giants.

These head coaches and their assistants are the most recognizable; countless others work as high-level club front office and NFL executives behind-the-scenes.

You wouldn’t know them unless you were relatives, co-workers, or tripped over them (or they over you) and even then, maybe all bets would be off. They don’t play and they don’t coach; they act as the very well-compensated producers, directors, creators, stagehands and crew on a long-running Broadway-inspired production. One that seems to keep its head above water in tough times and ultimately triumph to rousing and deafening cheers in the end.

Oh yes. Three owners have Ivy League degrees: New England’s Robert Kraft (Columbia); Houston’s Javier Loya (Columbia); and Cincinnati’s Michael Brown (Dartmouth).

But the show is not yet over and all are learning that a sad eventuality is lurking backstage.

A link between the relentless contact and ruthless hitting inherent to the game of football and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a brain disease which up until now can only be diagnosed with certainty post-mortem, is unmistakable and real. As of November 2016, 90 of 94 former NFL players were diagnosed post-mortem with CTE by Dr. Ann McKee, a neuropathologist and expert in neurodegenerative disease at Boston University School of Medicine.

In time, this will be the death knell of football — today’s national pastime — and other sports such as boxing and mixed martial arts which feature and promote contact, particularly in the area of the head, leading to head trauma.

An updated study published in late-July 2017 by the Journal of the American Medical Association examined the brains of deceased former football players and found that 110 of 111 brains of those who played in the NFL had CTE.

Concluded senior author McKee, “this is by far the largest [study] of individuals who developed CTE that has ever been described. And it only includes individuals who are exposed to head trauma by participation in football…The fact that we were able to gather this many cases [in that time frame — eight years ago] says this disease is much more common than we previously realized…It’s startling to be able to gather 177 examples of CTE [in a relatively short period of time].”

McKee acknowledges that studies must continue and that more money for research — to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars — will be necessary.

She remains skeptical of the NFL’s promises to fund research in spite of the league’s $100 million dollar pledge in 2016 along with another $100 million they claim to already be spending with partners on medical and neuroscience research.

“I will be extremely surprised if any of the 100 or 200 million comes my way,” she wryly remarked in response to the NFL assertions. “The NFL directs funding only to research they approve of.”

In fact the league has funded a portion of McKee’s past research, but in her view there will be “no continued NFL support [because] the results are considered too damaging.”

McKee believes that her study will help catalyze and perpetuate at least in part, the ongoing narrative regarding football’s future and whether or not young people should play the game.

“While I’m not willing to say football is doomed,” she conceded “and I also am unwilling to make a decision [on a young person playing football] for other individuals…I think there’s a risk to playing football,” adding that she suspects the “longer and higher” the level a player achieves the more likely it is for that player to be afflicted with CTE.

James Develin (Brown) and Kyle Juszczyk (Harvard) are bruising NFL fullbacks in the primes of their football careers and lives. Develin is 29 and Juszczyk is 26. Blocking — opening holes — is their meal-ticket and when they block, invariably they lead with their heads.

Zak DeOssie (Brown) is a 33-year-old long snapper for the New York Giants, a 2-time Pro Bowler and a 2-time Super Bowl champion who has been in the league for eleven seasons and has played more than 140 games. Cameron Brate (Harvard), a classmate and former teammate of Juszczyk, is a twenty-six-year-old tight end in his fourth NFL season.

They share the same complex sentiment as Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, a Kansas City Chiefs lineman and an off-season medical school student at McGill University. “Concussions is one of my fields of interest,” he stated in an interview. “I’ve read a lot about it. Especially when you study pediatrics, which I do, because it’s one of the biggest injuries for kids under 16.”

When he was concussed in the first half of a playoff game against the Texans he was held out and waited for clearance. Reading additional studies, he became familiar with the prognosis for concussions, including the examining and testing as well as the “scoring system” which would dictate whether or not he was “healthy” enough to return to the field.

Now in his medical residency and still the starting center for the Chiefs, he continues to play despite what he knows first-hand as a member of the medical community.

But that’s just it. How can a young, strong, virile and highly-successful athlete be hamstrung by the educated understanding of people many years his/her elder, regardless of the near-perfect sense it may make?

Implicit in the blinding aura and fierce independence of youth is the woefully misplaced sense of immortality. It takes years of life experiences and the inevitable passage of time to temper the emotions of youthful exuberance and enthusiasm.

Some remain young in their hearts and minds forever. That is good; great really. But nobody conquers time, because it was never part of the plan. We — all of us — simply try to comfortably manage it.

Great strides have been made in studies geared to identifying CTE in the living, although clearly research is still in its embryonic stages. Spearheaded by McKee and also by Dr. Sam Gandy, a neurologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York — among others — these studies provide hope.

There will be a few and possibly several more following in the footsteps of the San Francisco 49ers’ Chris Borland who retired from the game at age 24, unwilling to tempt fate any longer by taking life-changing risks.

God willing, the message will become powerful enough to engender greater and more far-reaching comprehensive thought and action.

I have never met a human being who would ultimately choose to live life without a mind or a body.

[Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Mr Kaplan in October 2017.]

[Addendum:

Carolina Panthers Linebacker Luke Kuechly, 28, the AP 2012 NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year; the AP 2013 NFL Defensive Player of the Year; a 7x Pro Bowl Selection; and a 5x First-Team All-Pro and 2x Second-Team All-Pro Selection chose to retire January 14, 2020.

Although unexpected, from 2015–2017 Kuechly missed seven games due to concussions.]