Overview Of The National Football League's Collective Bargaining Agreement

Football is the most watched sport in America (Paulsen, 2016). Football is also a very dangerous sport and a large number of injuries occur in the National Football League each year. Will Shields, a former National Football League player once said, “Football is a violent game. We are violent men” (“Will Shields Quotes”, n.d.). More than two hundred concussions alone occurred in the National Football League last year (Mukherjee, 2017). There is more focus on the potential health consequences, especially the neurological consequences that come with playing football than there ever has been. There are about twenty thousand former National Football League players alive today and thousands more still playing. It is imperative to further our

A collective bargaining agreement is a “Written, legally enforceable contract for a specified period (usually one year), between the management of an organization and its employees represented by an independent trade union” (“collective bargaining agreement,” n.d.). However, the statement in the Collective Bargaining Agreement can be interpreted in more than one way. It could be interpreted as the team doctor’s primary duty is to the player at all times. Conversely, it could also be interpreted as the team doctor’s primary duty is only to the player when he or she is providing services to the player not when he or she is providing services to the team. The way team doctors are currently situated prevents their two roles from being legitimately distinct. Regardless of how the statement is interpreted, the team doctors are required to provide medical care that places the interest of the players above the interest of the team. This is impossible to achieve though because sometimes the doctor is providing the team with information that is used to make business decisions. The team doctor could provide the best medical care possible to the player while at the same time hurting the player’s interests by providing the team with information regarding the injury. Given the fact that the National Football League’s current medical structure has the potential to create conflicts of interest for team doctors, how should they proceed to do their