NFL bans alcohol for all team functions, flights

The Associated Press

Published Friday, June 1, 2007

NFL clubs may no longer serve alcohol at team functions or on buses or flights, extending a ban that until now applied only in locker rooms.

NFL executives were told yesterday by Commissioner Roger Goodell that the rule pertains not only to players but to owners, coaches and guests.

"I believe that no constructive purpose is served by clubs continuing to make alcoholic beverages available and that doing so imposes significant and unnecessary risks to the league, its players and others," Goodell wrote to all 32 teams in a letter obtained by The Associated Press.

The commissioner’s letter separates him from, among others, baseball Commissioner Bud Selig. After St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Josh Hancock died a month ago in what was ruled an alcohol-related auto accident, Selig said a decision on banning beer in clubhouses was a team matter, not a league one.

● STUDY LINKS CONCUSSIONS TO DEPRESSION: A study of more than 2,500 retired NFL players found that those who had at least three concussions during their careers had triple the risk of clinical depression as those who had no concussions.

Those who recalled one or two concussions were 1½ times more likely to be diagnosed with depression, said Kevin Guskiewicz, research director of the University of North Carolina’s Center for the Study of Retired Athletes and lead author of the study published yesterday in "Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise," the journal of the American College of Sports Medicine.

Dr. Amparo Gutierrez, a child psychiatrist before becoming associate professor of clinical neurology at LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, said the study’s biggest problem is that it relies on athletes’ memory, unverified by doctors’ records. But she said its chance of accuracy is improved by its response rate: 2,552 of the 3,683 retired players who were sent surveys completed them.