Earlier this month, the NFL and NFLPA jointly announced a couple of new health and wellness initiatives focused on the wellbeing of the players who play the game. The vast bulk of the attention regarding the entire setup was something of a throwaway line that acknowledged that the league would be considering, among many other options, the use of medicinal marijuana for players to treat their pain management issues.
That was far from the full scope of what these new initiatives represent though, and there are some pretty significant things not being discussed. One of them comes from the newly-established health and wellness committee, which will require teams to “hire a behavioral health clinician whose job will be to coordinate mental health care for players and who will be required to spend ‘at least 8-12 hours per week’ at the team facility”.