Am I Supposed To Be Impressed Or Insulted That The NFL Is Finally Hiring A New Chief Medical Officer?

In a memo sent to clubs today, @nflcommish says Dr. Elliot Pellman has agreed to retire. A move aimed at building trust from players & fans.

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) July 20, 2016

On Dr. Pellman's retirement, a league source said this is Commissioner Goodell's decision and Pellman agreed to it. So he's out.

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) July 20, 2016

.@NFL will hire a Chief Medical Officer to work in league office & assist team staffs and the @NFLPA. League is expanding medical resources

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) July 20, 2016

Hey now! Look at Roger Goodell and the boys stepping up in a timely manner and deciding to get to the bottom of head injuries in the National Football League. Nothing speaks to the severity of concussions quite like agreeing on a severance package with the laughably unqualified doctor that you knowingly paid an extensive amount of money for well over a decade to cover up the true dangers of them. Honestly, what more can you ask of the guy that makes 40 million dollars overseeing a league that has prematurely taken the lives and/or mental stability of so many of it's participants? I think it might finally be time to get off Roger's back. If you exclude the use of forthrightness, full disclosure, and the absence of actual precautions then he's basically doing everything he can to promote player safety. 

Before you go criticizing how long it took him to make a fairly obvious change in personnel why don't you consider how much more work he just created for himself by doing so. You know how long it's going to take to select a competent physician that's willing to keep their mouth shut about the long term, cumulative effects of repetitive violent collisions on the brain? It's going to be next to impossible to find someone that actually knows what they are talking about in regards to CTE AND will withhold that knowledge from the general public upon request from their employer. The NFL had the perfect situation with Dr. Elliot Pellman. They had a Chief Medical Officer that was literally too uninformed to understand that he should have felt morally compromised, and they gave it all away just so that they could make it sound like they even remotely cared about the health of their athletes. It's surely nothing more than a PR stunt, but it's a pretty selfless one if you ask me.