By Ken Dryden

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and I both went to Cornell. He began in September 1970, when he commenced his studies in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, while I had graduated in June 1969 with a history degree from the School of Arts and Sciences.

In my junior year, a professor began a lecture with a demonstration. He asked for two students to volunteer for something, though he didn’t say what. When two students were chosen, the professor reached into his pocket and pulled out a dollar bill. He said he was going to auction it off to the highest bidder. He told the students they could bid any amount they wanted and that the winner would get the dollar for the highest amount while the loser would have to give the professor one cent less than the winning bid. The students looked at each other and smiled — the professor assured them they could bid as low as they wanted — and the bidding began.

One cent, two cents, three. When they got to about 30 cents, the two students and the rest of us began to realize what was happening. How was this going to end? With each new bid, each of them was committing to a higher amount, and the only way either of them could win was to bid even higher. At about 80 cents, they both saw that the bidding was going to go over the dollar that the professor had provided, and the sum the winner would receive.

After another brief escalation of bids, the students looked at each other again, spoke briefly, and accepted that there was only one way out — they came to an agreement. They would stop bidding, one would win the dollar, together they would split the proceeds of that dollar and also the losing bid, the one cent less than the $1.30, and pay it to the professor. They would lose money, but would lose less than they might have lost had they continued to one-up the other.

This was the time of the Vietnam War. The auction was a demonstration, and this wasn’t about pennies, but rather a representation of dead soldiers. The professor wanted to show us the lesson of escalation — how, once you’re locked into something, how difficult it is to get out.

The Vietnam War cost Lyndon Johnson his presidency. If not for Watergate, it might have cost Richard Nixon his. There were reasons that made sense to both of them to remain in Vietnam. Scores, then hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of soldiers had died. They must not be allowed to have died in vain. The faith and belief of the American people in their country and in their president was at stake. The reputation and credibility of America and of its president in the world was at stake. They were stuck. They carried on, as the public made up its own mind and left them behind.

I was thinking of Gary Bettman and that class at Cornell when I heard his April interview on WFAN. The show’s hosts were Chris Carlin, Maggie Gray and Bart Scott, a former NFL player. After some preliminaries, Gray asked Bettman about the concussion lawsuit brought by some former players against the league. Bettman responded by saying, as he had many times before, that the science connecting concussions and CTE was not clear. Near the end of the interview, Carlin asked him if he believed the league was doing all that could be done about concussions in the NHL.

Bettman paused, then said, “We are doing all that we think is appropriate.”

In the days that followed, Bettman’s quote still rankled them. They played the clip again.

“It’s tough to take,” Carlin said on the show. “It’s honestly tough to take. And when I hear his answer to the question again the other day, it just borderline makes me sick.”

Sometimes the public knows before scientists know, before scientists can offer sufficient proof that a court would accept. Whatever science knows now is only a placeholder for what it will learn, and know better, tomorrow. The world is flat, the sun revolves around the earth, until we learn it doesn’t. That’s where decision-makers come in. It is their job to take the best of what we know today, and apply it. And to base their decisions on that knowledge. The public doesn’t know, the scientists don’t know, if this hit in this game has caused CTE in that player.

But the public sees thunderous hits and knows what they have felt themselves when they’ve hit their head, and they see players on the ice or on a playing field with problems they don’t see in others of the same age who are not on the ice or on the field. They are aware of the depression that some players experience, the anxiety, the memory problems, the anger problems. And they know. A hit to the head is not a good thing. Many hits, hard hits, are bad things. They’ve made up their minds too. To them, to think otherwise, to say otherwise, to act otherwise, is ridiculous.

And increasingly, it’s embarrassing.

It’s not just that Bettman is holding firm to his recurring message, as he did again at his annual news conference on May 28 before the first game of the Stanley Cup final. There, he offered an exasperated, or nervous, chuckle – it was hard to tell which – when he handed over a question about concussions and science to his deputy, Bill Daly. It’s that the video depositions that are emerging from the former players’ lawsuit are now available for everybody to see.

Jeremy Jacobs, owner of the Boston Bruins, chairman of the NHL Board of Governors, recent inductee into the Hockey Hall of Fame, when asked in a September 2015 deposition, “Have you ever heard of the neurodegenerative disease known as CTE?” His answer: “No.” Did he know that CTE had been found in the brains of former professional football players. “I don’t know,” he said. “How about former professional hockey players?” “I don’t think so. I don’t know,” said Jacobs, who, with his family, gave $30 million to the University of Buffalo medical school, an institution which is now named the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

Los Angeles Kings owner Phil Anschutz said in his deposition, taken two weeks after Jacobs’, that he wasn’t aware of the term chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. He also said he had never heard of the term “Lou Gehrig’s disease.” Asked whether Alzheimer’s and dementia are serious medical conditions, he said, “They appear to be.”

On a video screen, unable to avoid the questions, they come across as uncaring, money-obsessed, or ignorant. Pick your poison.

Gary Bettman chooses not to talk publicly about concussions and the NHL, citing the pending litigation involving the former players. But to introduce the changes needed to make the NHL game safer has nothing to do with the lawsuit. Bettman can instruct the Competition Committee to begin exploring options tomorrow.

Bettman prizes loyalty in those who have stood by him — Jacobs, Anschutz and other owners; his main hockey lieutenant, Colin Campbell; and his other hockey guys. Bettman is an employee of the league, but after 25 years as its commissioner, he has earned the owners’ trust. He, not they, is the most powerful voice in hockey. He will not throw them under the bus. Yet his words put them into positions where, under oath, their answers bring embarrassment to themselves.

This is all so unnecessary. There is an easy, viable solution. Elbows and sticks to the head have been penalized for decades, and a stick to the face has brought an automatic penalty for the past several years. Penalize all hits to the head the same way — no excuses. No convoluted explanations. Whether such a hit is intentional or accidental, a “hockey play” or not, the brain doesn’t distinguish. It doesn’t care. The damage is the same.

NHL owners love Bettman. He has brought stability to their league, he has made the teams they own worth vastly more money, and he has brought competitive parity so that when things go wrong, their teams need not remain at the bottom for long. Almost universally, these owners have said nothing publicly about concussions and brain injuries. But these video depositions surely must make them squirm.

It might be time for some of them to show Bettman some loyalty in return by bringing him aside and saying, privately, “Gary, this is not going in a good direction. It is getting embarrassing. I am getting embarrassed. I don’t like being embarrassed. I can’t deal with being embarrassed. My friends see these video depositions. My kids see them. I don’t want them to see me on the stand in court some day. I don’t want them to see me before a parliamentary or congressional committee.”

For Gary Bettman, this can still be a huge win. It’s easy for any of us to see what’s wrong, even to see what’s right. What’s hard is to do right. Gary Bettman is the one who can do right, and only he can. The achievement would be his. A game that’s just as exciting to play and to watch, where the number of life-transforming head injuries to its players is drastically reduced. If he does help move the league to take these steps: no hits to the head — no excuses — some will say, sure, but it took him so long. Yet a few months after that others will say, and say rightly, yes, but at least he did act. That’s what matters.

It’s all still possible.

(Top photo: Timothy T. Ludwig/USA TODAY Sports)

Ken Dryden was a goalie for the Montreal Canadiens in the 1970s, during which time the team won six Stanley Cups. He is a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame, a former member of the Canadian parliament and is the author of six books, including “Game Change: The Life and Death of Steve Montador and the Future of Hockey.”