Former Hawkeye football player-turned-professor leaving his brain to science

Mike Hlas
It’s unlikely to be mentioned at this week’s Big Ten’s football media days, but a former Iowa football player recently pledged his brain to the Concussion Legacy Foundation.
Dr. Jay Bickford has been a professor of social studies education for the last 14 years at Eastern Illinois University after teaching and coaching at Mid-Prairie High in Wellman for nine years. He lettered as an offensive lineman for the Hawkeyes in 1998 and 1999, Hayden Fry’s last season as Iowa’s head coach and Kirk Ferentz’s first.
“I loved playing football,” Bickford said by phone last week. “It was the most important thing in my life. I tell my kids and they don’t believe me. I didn’t drink a soda or eat a french fry for eight years, my last three years of high school and five years of college.”
After his final college game, and on a team that went 1-10, Bickford told reporters he’d buy Iowa season tickets for the next 10 years if he had the money. He predicted big things to come for the team. He eventually got those tickets, and Ferentz’s teams proved him right.
But the native of New York state said he later got “really jaded” on football and didn’t watch a game in 2012 after information about CTE became more widespread.
CTE is a degenerative brain disease found in people with histories of repetitive brain trauma. It can only be diagnosed post-death. Symptoms often don’t present themselves until years after the traumas.
Bickford, who turns 47 Monday, said he had his first seizure about a year after he was done playing football.
“I was put on medication for 10 or 12 years,” he said. “The doctors took me off it because I hadn’t had a seizure for 10 or 11 years. They came back.”
So Bickford went back on an anti-seizure medication and has turned to yoga, meditation, getting plenty of sleep and what he calls “extra things I do for my brain.”
“One of the things they’re finding is that the people who use their brains in diverse ways have a much, much better chance of not having the symptoms emerge,” he said. “Guys who retire early and have the time off sometimes struggle more than the guys who work longer.
“It’s to build up your cognitive resources as much as possible. A neuroscientist described it as adding concrete on a dam to cover up the cracks. The more diverse things you do like puzzles or painting, the better it is for your brain.
“I’ve taken up the drums and the bass guitar, and I’m making sure I’m reading every single day. You know, just to really stimulate my neurons as much as possible.”
Bickford can’t ever know if he has CTE.
“I don’t have symptoms,” he said, “other than some sensitivity to light and sound, more so than a younger man. So I limit my exposures.
“But I’ll bet that when I’m long gone my kids will learn I had some form of it.”
Bickford bases that on having played football from 9 years old until he was 22, and having played offensive line.
“The only thing worse is tailback,” he said. “Offensive line, defensive line and tailback, they have the biggest collisions. I had quite a bit of exposure, more than enough.
“You can’t make a tackle or a run-block without using your head. You can’t play effectively without using your head. There’s no hope for the case like having a better helmet, or the doctors will be able to prescribe a pill. Our brains just weren’t made for it.”
Bickford’s son, Samuel, was valedictorian at Charleston (Ill.) High and is a chemistry major at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. He was forbidden to play football by his father. Not just as a third-grader, but as a high schooler.
“His sophomore, junior and senior year he really asked,” Bickford said, “and his senior year he begged. I said no. He really wanted to try it just that one year.
“But I pointed out the baseline. At CLF (Concussion Legacy Foundation) out of Boston University, Dr. Ann McKee discovered a young man who died by suicide at age 20. His only experience with violent sports was one year of football in eighth-grade. The kid never played hockey or wrestling, never was hit in the head by a baseball. And he had first-level CTE.
“According to what the scientists know, one season is enough at one time to at least give this person the condition. Not that it’s causal or guaranteed, but there’s the correlation. It may be the anomaly, but it’s there.”
Bickford speaks highly of all his past football coaches, and the experiences and qualities he got from the game. He wishes his son could have known that part of the sport.
“I don’t want to take anything away from band or music,” he said. “But there’s no referee judging them the way there is in football. There can be a penalty on every play. You need to overcome that stuff, play through it.
“I think Sam would have done very well as a tight end or wide receiver because he could jump out of the gym. And he was very lean and fit the measurements.
“But you know, I also don’t regret that decision. He’s doing undergraduate research now in college. He’s considering which doctoral program to go into. He’s doing really, really well.”
Bickford does watch football now, college and pro.
Dr. Jay Bickford
“I rationalize it now, cheering for the Hawkeyes,” Bickford said, “because it’s like smokers. The players playing now have had enough awareness that football is something they chose knowing the risks.
“But I try not to watch high school and below. One of the important pieces of information found from research is that it’s not just the duration of your career that matters or the position you played, but how early did you start playing and how early did you have your first concussion?
“Because people who have concussions under the age of 12, there's a much higher correlation that they'll have a higher level of CTE later than if they started playing when they were like 14 or 15. I don’t want to use the word ‘criminal.’ But I think it's willful ignorance that we're allowing children under 12 and 13 to play.”
As for Bickford, he participates in a yearly research study for CLF that tests his cognitive dexterity.
“It helps them understand the patterns of CTE and degeneration,” he said. “I’m privileged to be a part of that, to help scientists in their fight against it.”