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CFL alumni Tommy Joe Coffey, Ken Ploen, Henry Janzen battle dementia "epidemic"
While the subject of concussions and the CFL alumni struggling with long-term health issues linked to head injuries didn't get much attention during Grey Cup Week, it's become a major topic of conversation this week. That's thanks to a couple of terrific pieces, one by Paul Wiecek of The Winnipeg Free Press exploring the dementia diagnoses of two former Blue Bombers and other Bombers' alumni struggling with concussions, and one from Curtis Rush of The Toronto Star looking at former Argos'/Ticats'/Eskimos' star Tommy Joe Coffey and his battle with dementia. From Wiecek's piece, here's what legendary Bomber QB Ken Ploen is dealing with:
"He’s still in great health otherwise. We just had our checkups and the doctors say he has the heart of a 16-year-old," says Janet Ploen, his wife of 55 years.
"He’s still able to get out and he’s still able to do things. It’s just that he doesn’t remember the experience the next day."
It’s a tender mercy Ploen thus far retains his long-term memories and can recall the greatest moments of an exceptional life. Who needs to remember yesterday, after all, when your yesteryear is so rich and so full?
"Ken likes to tell me," says Janet, "that he remembers what he wants to remember."
Among those memories Ploen has retained are some of the savage hits to the head he took during a 10-year career with the Blue Bombers from 1957 to 1967.
"They didn’t talk about concussions in those days; they said you got your bell rung," says Janet. "And Ken says he can remember a few times when he got his bell rung."
From Rush's piece, here's how things are for Coffey, a famed receiver with the Eskimos, Tiger-Cats and Argonauts for 14 seasons:
He once complained he didn’t think much of his records, accumulated over a 14-year career with Edmonton, Hamilton and Toronto.
“They’re nice to have,” he said, “but they don’t put any bread on the table.”
His monthly CFL pension cheque of $244.01 hardly puts bread on the table now. Coffey, 79, and his wife, Joan, 72, subsist mostly on government pensions. “It’s tight, but we’re not hurting by any stretch of the imagination,” he says proudly.
In his final CFL year, with Toronto in 1973, he was making $21,000, when the average working man’s salary was around $8,400. He remembers his CFL days, when he could draw a crowd in bars across the country, as his golden years. These are not that golden.
He is struggling with memory loss brought on by dementia.
“It’s probably my biggest fear,” Coffey says in his Texas drawl. “Loss of memory.”
Joan says he went for a battery of tests a couple of years ago and doctors told her the dementia was related to head injuries associated with football.
That's the key here, really. Dementia (a term which covers a wide array of neurological diseases affecting memory and cognition, including Alzheimer's) is faced by many elderly people, and it's not always tied to concussions, but football players appear to be diagnosed with it at a much higher rate. As former Bomber punt returner and legendary Manitoba Bisons coach, athletic director and dean of physical education Henry Janzen, who's also battling memory issues, told Wiecek, "There’s no question that age is a big factor in memory loss. But I also took a lot of hits to the head playing football and it makes me wonder if that’s not a part of this, too." Moreover, former Bombers' halfback Nick Miller, a member of the club's hall of fame and a long-time board member with the team's alumni association who himself is still in good health, told Wiecek, "It seems like everyone is having trouble with this. It seems like an epidemic." Miller's comments about how concussions were treated during his playing career (1953-64) help to illustrate why this is showing up so frequently:
"They asked you how many fingers they were holding up, what day it was, what the score was," recalls Miller, a Bombers halfback from 1953-64 and a member of the club’s Hall of Fame.
"They took sprained ankles more seriously in those days than concussions. Because a sprained ankle could cause you to miss a game or two, but a concussion just meant you missed a play or two." ...
Miller recalls the time he got knocked unconscious while tackling a Stampeders running back late in the first half of an afternoon game.
"I had him dead to rights and he tried to jump over me. And his knee hit me right in the head and knocked me out. And then he fell down and he was knocked out, too. It was," Miller says with a laugh, "like a Road Runner cartoon."
And just like Wile E. Coyote, Miller got right back up after that 1,000-foot plunge off a desert cliff.
"I was back in the game," he recalls, "by the third quarter."
It was all very cavalier, and it’s all catching up to them now, says Miller.
That's perhaps the crucial issue ahead for the CFL. The improvements to current concussion protocols are necessary and important, as is the further research in how to prevent and treat concussions, and it's clear that these problems are recent and ongoing as well; more modern players such as Doug Brown and Chris Walby also told Wiecek about the various issues they're having. On that front, it's notable that two of the current lawsuits against the league involve recent players (Arland Bruce III and Korey Banks). It's the long-ago alumni who may be the biggest factor in driving further litigation against the league, though, and these stories are just a few of the many out there of former CFL players dealing with significant neurological issues, which may be linked to their football careers.
The league would be smart to pay attention to these stories, take them seriously, and perhaps even see if there's anything they can do to help out former players facing these issues (maybe along the lines of the NFL's "88 Plan" ) before the lawsuits grow. The stories from Ploen, Janzen and Coffey are all notable, but what's most important about them is that they're just a few of the stories of the numerous CFL alumni dealing with similar issues. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
