Concussions and Football, Where is it Headed?

November 22, 2015

 If there ever has been a sports story that evolves more than the concussion talk, it is hard to find one. Maybe the whole steroid issue gets as much attention, but the concussion crisis is much more wide-ranging in scope. Steroids affected only a certain percentage of athletes and mainly at the professional level. Head injuries are across the board involving all athletes, from small kids to seniors.

The rash of reported concussions in sports hasn't risen due to more people sustaining head injuries but more for better diagnoses. Especially football, where getting knocked in the head was something you had to accept as part of the game. You would shake it off and gather yourself in the past, then go back onto the field. This may be a simplified excuse, but you can ask any professional football player, and they will tell you to a man; this is the reality. Even in today's hyper-awareness for concussions sustained in sports, many athletes are still reluctant to report symptoms of head trauma.

In the past few years, an abundance of studies shows the effects of continuous head impacts and the possibility of contracting long term problems. There are not as many disagreements on the short-term issues and the analysis of concussions. Concussions have a grading system to the severity of the injury, and I’m not sure what version the NFL is currently using. One of the new mandates of the league is to give each player who comes off the field with a possible head injury has to be diagnosed and cleared by a neurosurgeon before they can return to game action.

This brings us to the question of who is benefiting from this new awareness. Indeed, the players do by having a safety net, but it gets into grey matter. Owners don't benefit by having players not playing; fans don't gain by not seeing or having their best guys performing for them. Helmet manufacturers will be called into action to create super prototypes to withstand a more direct impact. Rosters might need to be expanded to replace the injured who are ruled ineligible to play.

The NFL will be pressured to figure out this problem, not just to look after their athletes but their survival as a business. There will be an increase in lawsuits and drain on the talent pool, as the youth is directed away from football. Super headgear may help with some injuries, but will this create more boldness for players to use their helmets as battering rams. As the NFL gets deeper and deeper in penalty quagmires, adding helmet spearing is a more dramatic infraction. The way to go is changing the tackling methods at all levels. The helmet should not be the first thing projecting into an opposing player, but more arm wrapping and takedown techniques need to be diligently taught. If rugby can be a sport which employs tackling, and the players do not use helmets, why can't the NFL? I heard of eliminating face masks as one possible remedy as it would remove one of the barriers that players have to withstand impacts. That may be a long-term answer, but the injuries taken on initially might not be something the owners and fans want to see.

The violence and physical demands of football are going to be in the news forever at this point. The NFL must be the frontrunner in player safety because they have the most at stake. As with the NFL, this will be a slow deliberating process taking years. The concussion issue will continue to evolve to the level wherein ten years, we will not recognize the game today. Each player will wear an inflatable suit, and the helmet will look like astronaut headgear. The contest will contain no field referees, and the scoreboard will tell us everything we need to know. Hopefully, this is not the future, but as Bob Dylan once sang, "The Times They Are A-Changin."