Sometimes a pair of seemingly unrelated stories collide, with concussive force you might say, and compel even the most simple-minded among us to draw the inferences between them. Such a phenomenon occurred today, Wednesday, which just happens to be the opening night of the NF- (my apologies, Merrill Hoge) National Football League season.

This morning NFL commissioner Roger Goodell appeared on network television and announced that the league was donating $30 million, its largest one-time donation ever, to the National Institutes of Health. While the league itself referred to the gift as “unrestricted”, it is no secret that the league has taken a public stance on finally hoping to be a leader in brain injury research. Goodell himself tweeted, “We announced today: NFL to provide $30 million for medical research to study brain injuries & other health issues.”

The second story pertained to Dallas Cowboy tight end Jason Witten, who suffered a lacerated spleen during an exhibition game and will miss tonight’s opener between the Cowboys and the Super Bowl-champion New York Giants. Witten, team sources told ESPN, “has persistently told the Cowboys he is willing to sign a medical waiver that would absolve the team and its doctors of liability in case he re-injured his spleen during the NFC East matchup.”

Beautiful.

The tackle that caused Jason Witten’s injury.

Now, while it is true that the brain bone is not connected to the spleen bone, let’s examine this for a moment.

The NFL is writing a check for $30 million to the NIH (while quietly filing a motion to dismiss a class-action suit brought by 3,400 former players suing for damages related to concussions) to study brain injuries, the results of which will do absolutely nothing to curb the root of its perceived problem.

Here, simply, are the facts. I will lay them out like a geometry proof for you:

1. To excel at football, particularly on defense, it pays to be a) large b) swift and c) aggressive.

2. NFL salaries are at least ten times greater than most other starting salaries in the workforce. Often they are 20 to 100 times greater.

3. The largest, swiftest and most aggressive men are most likely to excel at football, meaning…

4. …That they are the most likely to fill NFL rosters.

5. There is no apparatus in any weight room that one can use to create a stronger cranium, or to properly protect the head from the effects of the brain knocking against the cranium.

6. The largest, swiftest and most aggressive men will deliver the most lethal hits to the skull, which means that they are the most likely to deliver devastating brain injuries.

7. Because of the allure of an NFL salary, relative to most other salaries, it is highly unlikely that the largest, swiftest and most aggressive men will not continue to play in the NFL.

The Witten story is so sublimely timed because it takes this proof one step further. You see (that’s the Michelle Obama in me coming out, adding the folksy “You see…”), NFL players, even if they are armed with unquestionable evidence of the gravity of their injury and the potential dangers of continuing to play, would still do so. They cannot be protected from themselves. Ask Witten, who is married and has two sons, if he would risk his health to play in the opening game of the NFL season and his answer is, “Hell, yeah.”

You know what makes this even better? Jason Witten’s wife is an emergency room nurse.

Save your $30 million, commissioner Goodell. Or give it to someone who really will benefit by it. Yes, the NIH may learn more about the devastating effects of brain injuries due to the NFL’s munificence, but that education will not change the culture of the NFL. Men are providers. If you give a man an opportunity to provide for himself and his family that is high multiples above the norm, he will take that opportunity at whatever risk (see “The Champ”). And as long as NFL salaries continue to escalate, the men who play the sport will only become larger, swifter and more aggressive. While the skull remains the same.