Safety for Football Players

Football is one of the most beloved sports in the United States. It is one of the most violent bone crushing sports, leaving players permanently injured for life in some cases. The most common injury that football players suffer from pee-wee through the NFL is the concussion. A concussion is a traumatic brain injury that changes the way your brain works. The effects of a concussion are usually temporary and can result in a full recovery if its minor and treated correctly. A concussion can lead to brain problems later in life, even after a player has finished playing football. This is why people are studying and trying to understand concussions fully in order to prevent and treat future ones. Concussions are very

Concussions occur on a large scale in football. During a concussion, the head can experience a blow directly or can have whiplash. When the head is hit, the brain hits the inside of the skull, giving it a temporary bruise. This bruise or tearing of the brain can lead to mental impairments that can affect a person’s emotional state of being, physical problems like deteriorated mobility and sensitivity to light and sound. Doctors are quick to point out one of the major reasons that youth receive concussions, saying, “... children have big heads relative to the rest of their bodies and weak necks… that elevates the risk of concussions,” (P6). Along with a lack of education and care for the protection of athletes, youth are already at a huge risk. When children wear their football helmets, they are saving themselves from many injuries that could have occurred without them, most especially protecting the brain. But, in many cases, this is not enough.

Player safety has been an issue for the National Football League since the start of the league, but has taken on a greater importance in recent years. Now, when a player is injured after a play, he must sit out for at least one play to allow the team’s trainer to assess his injury and make sure he is fit to return to play. Many say the NFL is very invested in player safety, and the protocols recently introduced have drastically changed the way athletes are assessed and eventually released to return to the field. These changes were necessary in order to protect players from serious injury and long-term health issues. There are many possible reasons the NFL has increased its emphasis on player safety, including, many people are disturbed by the violence of the game, fewer kids are playing football at the youth and high school levels, league sponsors are worried about bad publicity, and there are lawsuits against the NFL dealing with the long-term effects of brain damage. These reasons make many ponder, “Does the NFL really care about player safety, or are they just saving themselves from bad public relations, and the detrimental economic effects that may result from them?”

Concussions are and will continue to be an ongoing issue in almost all sports today. This is especially true in the case of football and the NFL. Concussions are considered the most common and least devastating form of traumatic brain injury someone can receive. Although concussions are considered the least serious type of brain injury they can still lead to and cause many irreversible brain diseases and in some cases people have even lost their lives because of concussions. One of these diseases is called chronic traumatic encephalopathy or better known as CTE. There have been many recent medical developments that have allowed us to learn more about the brain and things that affect it. This increased knowledge has caused unrest

Everyone loves to get at least a little physical while playing sports. Football is a major sport that has a lot of injuries and concussions in the game but many people continue to play because of the physical contact and the fun they have in the sport. Even though there is different technology being used to help prevent serious problems such as concussions many people still have serious side effects from them or worse yet die because of theirs. As claimed by, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/football-and-the-brain-nfl-60-minutes/ there has been 39 changes in the NFL to make the game safer. One change is that helmet-to-helmet hits are now illegal. To reduce the amount of head banging, the NFL and the Players Association have limited the number of full contact practices during training camp and the regular season. The league also estimates that heads slamming into the turf causes 7% of all concussions. Changes in the rules for athletic competition have thankfully reduced the number of sports-related concussions.

Concussion in schools and the NFL are a problem. They can be life-altering injuries, and they have been around for years before anyone became aware of how dangerous they can be. Ever since the discovery of football many athletes have gotten their “bell rung” and doing damage to their brain with no knowledge of it. It has been recently that there has been more talk of understanding how severe concussions can be. Many think it is not a big deal but it is considered a mild form of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). The NFL had ignored all the information given to them regard concussion and they need to review their protocol and enforce it. Many players are still playing while

The hot topic of concussions in football has attracted a considerable amount of unwanted attention in recent years. This problem is continuing to grow at a rapid rate, while our society is oblivious that a problem even exists. Many of us in today’s day in age know someone who has played football at the high school, collegiate, or professional level. The incidence of players who end up with concussions is astounding. It is interesting that someone who has suffered from a concussion can seem virtually symptom free for many years before it causes a number problems. It is estimated that damage to the brain caused by a concussion can last for decades which opens the door for more potentially life

Player safety has always been and will always be one of the most controversial topics in all of sports. In particular, the safety of young football players is an extremely controversial topic. Many different studies have been conducted on concussions specifically. These studies research the different variables and what causes concussions and the most effective ways to prevent them. A recent study was done by the University of Pittsburgh and Cornell University, they tracked 468 participants ages 8-12 from 4 different youth football leagues. The basic information that they found was that nearly every concussion was sustained during a game, only

There is a lot of rising controversy surrounding minors and high-impact sports like football. From Elementary age kids playing little league to high school football, an increasing number of studies are surfacing that are showing many negative effects surrounding head trauma. Some experts are even calling for the sport to be banned from middle and high schools. The concerns surrounding head trauma have existed in the NFL for numerous year, and these concerns brought foreword extensive new research in detection, effects, and prevention. Even today the NFL plans to spend 100 million dollars on new prevention and treatment options for concussions. The shock absorption technology used in football helmets has made advanced majorly in the last 10 years, yet concussion rates are increasing. With the risk of head trauma having long term consequences, especially in minors with developing brains, the ideas of terminating the sport take root. Although serious, these risks are far outweighed by the benefits of football that a substitute sport can not provide: The answer to how to make football safer for minors is much simpler and cheaper than advancing technology.

Although football is a rough sport there are many solutions to prevent further head injuries.Players have bigger pads, stronger helmets, and more padding. The shoulder pads absorb contact and protect shoulders and rib cage. The neck pad helps keep head stable and protects neck area. The helmet prevents concussions

The safety of young football players for years has been a long growing concern and controversy for parents, players, high school coaches and school officials, and as well as NFL coaches and medical professionals in America. Parents worry about their children getting injured or concussions during the game. Furthermore, many parents believe that football can be safer and that the organization of football is not doing enough to protect players and their safety. However, to some football players concussions are not a big issue. Some players are too worried about their playing time to realize the consequences of getting concussions repeatedly. Therefore, some football players do not tell the coaches about their concussions. In addition, coaches also have a problem with the safety of football affecting their programs. Some coaches fear that football programs will shut down because of the controversy of how football can lead to brain damage. Besides parents, players, and coaches, doctors have a big say in the controversy. Neurologists, who are specialists in the disorders of nerves and the nervous system, have recently studied the link between football and brain damage. According to Jacob Vanlandingham, who is the founder and president of Prevacus Incorporated, a company who primarily studies concussions, said that “Doctors diagnose approximately 67,000 concussions in high school football players every year” (Vanlandingham, p.1). Nevertheless, some stakeholders, including ex-football players, believe that everything has already been done to make football as safe as possible. Football organizations have made new rules and placed new programs in order to keep young players healthy and to keep football programs from shutting down. The big controversial question that all stakeholders are asking is, “Is football doing enough to protect young children?”

This is causing them to becoming more at risk of receiving a concussion. A child’s brain is not fully developed until they are well into their teen years. There have been many researches in the past few years that show when a child received repeated hits to the head, it can cause lifelong damage to the brain. It will take longer for children to recover from a concussion than adults, and they are also at a higher risk at receiving a second concussion. A recent study at Boston University was taken to scan the brains of a few high school football players. The findings were troubling. Of the 24 players who were tested, most of whom began playing football before they even could learn to talk, preformed worse on cognitive exams. The MRI’s unveiled a series of abnormalities in a broad band of nerve fibers joining the two hemispheres of the brain also known as the corpus callosum. This part of the brains’ main job is to relay information and commands between

Football can be a very dangerous sport. And although those who play the game believe that they are being protected by the helmets that they wear, the truth is that this may not be the case. In a recent study released by the American Academy of Neurology it has been found that “protection against concussion and complications of brain injury is especially important for young players, including elementary and middle school, high school and college athletes, whose still-developing brains are more susceptible to the lasting effects of trauma”(Science Daily, 2014). The study also found that standard football helmets worn by the majority of players on the field today, only reduce the risk of traumatic brain injury by 20 percent compared to not wearing a helmet at all (Science Daily, 2014).

Many people that play sports get into some type of injury, the majority of injuries sustained in sports are usually head related. Football has about 118,886 injuries, basketball with 119,589 injuries, and rugby with 1,214 injuries between the years of 2002-20014 and has continued to skyrocket. There are difference between head injuries in football than when playing other sports. These differences can be from minor, moderate, to sever. Football is more on the sever side because of the impact and number of hits they are taking. On the other hand sports like basketball, soccer, and tennis are not as of aggressive as football. And this is due to the lack of contact in the sports. These sports are very strict about the contact when playing in a game, they are charged with a penalty or flagged if a player makes the slightest contact with another player. Therefore you would rarely see a head injury let alone a sever head injury when playing those kind of sports. With football being more aggressive and more contact, the head injuries can lead to a player being hospitalized, and depending on the impact on the blow can lead to death.

New surveys and data reports showing that repeated trauma to the head can cause CTE which seriously affects the brain and human body overall. Symptoms such as dizziness all the way to the most extreme like loss of motor function, dementia, etc. With all of the recent buzz about this phenomenon, The NFL, NCAA and state sports committees such as the WIAA have been trying to prevent the future generations of athletes and sports players suffer from these diseases. Acts such as reducing practice time allowing full contact and also schools buying the best helmet protection available shows how schools are really working to help kids across America. In addition, the NFL has publicly shown responsibility for head to head injuries and the lack of supervision and serious along with them. The organization is actively pushing technology to protect the brain as best as