Many years removed from winning WWE reality show “Tough Enough” and a brief (weren’t they all?) tenure as the promotion’s Hardcore Champ, Chris Harvard aka Christopher Nowinski’s 2nd act as a concussion activist has been noted in this space previously. On Thursday, Nowinski gatecrashed the NFL’s annual health and safety press conference, and gave NY Giants co-owner John Mara an earful (“the NFL’s attempt to prevent that study from being funded was frankly a slap in the face of every family suffering from CTE right now…that study in itself was delayed by at least nine months by the games the NFL tried to play”). Mara, for his part, did his best to take offense (“we’ve been involved in this business in my family since 1925”). From the New York Post’s Paul Schwartz :
Nowitnski said the NFL’s interest in concussions and brain trauma reminds him of watching a Big Tobacco documentary about the indiscretions of the tobacco industry.
“I disagree with that,’’ Mara said. “Listen, I respect him, but my God we spent a lot of time talking about this. This is not for show as far as I’m concerned. I, myself, spent a lot of hours in those meetings, both in the Competition Committee and in the Health and Safety committee. We’ve committed a lot of money for research. For me it’s not a game. It’s not for show. It’s to find answers to these problems.
“This is our business. We have a lot of young men playing this game that we want to try to protect. This is not for show. This is serious business.’’