Safety: This Issue Broken Down

Concussions, the most prevalent injury in the sport of football. A concussion is defined by
the Merriam-Webster dictionary as a stunning, damaging, or shattering effect from a hard blow;
especially a jarring injury of the brain resulting in disturbance of cerebral function
(Concussion). That being said, concussions are bound to happen in football, it is a hardcore
contact sport where big men are hitting bigger men usually with their heads. However, are we
doing enough to protect our players? Lets start at the top of the chain with the discovery of how
traumatic brain injuries are in football, specifically the NFL, and work our way down to the
lowest level of football, the young generation.

The first major discovery concerning concussions and the trauma they cause to the brain
was made by Dr. Bennet Omalu while doing an autopsy of former Pittsburgh steeler Mike
Webster. According to an article done by Jeanne Laskas for GQ magazine Mike Webster had
gone from a four time super bowler and nine time pro bowler to a man who was putting super
glue on his teeth and tasering himself to try and get some sleep. (Laskas) This shocked Dr.
Omalu, it led him to make one of the most influential discoveries of brain related injuries in our
century. What he discovered was called CTE or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, essentially it
is a disease caused by repeated head traumas, such as helmet to helmet collisions that occur
every single game in the NFL. The saddest thing of all is how we can abandon these players in
the deepest darkest times of need. See, CTE isnt something that shows up right away, it can lie
dormant for years and years, such was the case with Mike Webster. Webster died at age 50, 27
years before the average male, he died alone unable to work or care for himself. According to the
article by Mrs. Laskas Mike Webster was awarded 3,000 dollars a month disability from the

NFL, the lowest level of disability the offer. This was after he went to four separate doctors who
all diagnosed him with a closed head injury as a result of multiple concussions; the NFL
demanded he see their head doctor so he did, and he also diagnosed webster with a closed head
injury as a result of multiple concussions.(Laskas) Even after hearing the diagnoses from five
different doctors they still refused to give Webster the help he not only needed but deserved; after
all, he had given his everything out on the field every sunday for years yet now that he was out
of the league they didnt give a rats ass about him. So why is it that after all these players give to
the game they are just cast out on the streets to just figure it out. In the early 70s when Webster
started playing I can almost guarantee that no one was giving him fair warning about what might
happen if he kept playing, no one warned him that the game he loved so much could end up
being his downfall. This example only proves that we need not only more safety in football but
also more education, players need to know what theyre signing up for when they go out on the
field every week. Not only that, but parents need to know what all could happen when they sign
their kids up to play as well.

So what are we doing to improve the safety and education of the game? Safety in the
game is improving by leaps and bounds as time goes on. It used to be that when a player got a
concussion it could go undiagnosed for the entire game and he could be hit again and again just
adding to the damage that was occurring inside his brain. This could even kill the player if he
was hit hard enough. Al lucas, a player in the AFL was killed in a routine kick off return in 2005,
nothing out of the ordinary happened; he went to make a tackle and when he did he broke his
spine and died a few hours later. (Weintraub) Saddening isnt it? One play, just one single play
can end someones life. Technology has come really far in the past few years, we now have
sensors inside of helmets that give readings to trained professionals on the sidelines so that when

someone is hit hard enough to receive a concussion they can be pulled out of the game and run
through the concussion protocol. The NFL has greatly improved not only their concussion
protocol which consists of a set of questions that assess the mental state of the player, if the
player fails this test they are taken into the locker room and medical staff stays with them the rest
of the game on the sidelines to monitor their health. Along with this the NFL has recently
implemented two other precautions to assist in keeping players safe. Above the field is what is
called an eye in the sky camera, looking through this lense is a trained professional whose sole
job is to monitor the game for possible injuries that the refs or medical staff could have missed.
As well as the eye in the sky there is now a neuro-trauma expert physician on the sidelines that
the medical staff can consult if they are unsure.(NFL) With all these precautions and safety
improvements the league is definitely making a valiant effort to try and keep their players safe,
however more could be done by the owners of the teams, not necessarily for the players on their
teams but for the younger up and coming generations that will eventually play for them. With all
the money those owners have they could easily increase the amount of research being done into
brain trauma and how to keep it in check by ten fold. The safety of the game and the players has
no doubt made leaps and bounds from where it was back in Mike Websters playing days,
however we must make this final push to make sure the players health is as big of a concern as it
can be.

108. The number of concussions that have occurred throughout the NFL season so far.
(Concussion Watch) That is a staggering number. Now lets put that into the context of the next
generation. Lets say that a child starts playing football at age 6 and continues on until age 26. So
if over the course of 11 weeks of football there have been 108 concussions, how many would
that child have had over his 20 years of playing? This is what really brings it home for most

people. Children dont know the consequences of these hits that they receive, as parents we have
know the risks that we put our children in, now thats not say that we shouldnt allow our kids to
play football, especially if it is something they love to do. That being said, this is why we have to
push for greater safety precautions and safer equipment. There is no way to take hits out of the
game of football but we can certainly find better ways to monitor them and better ways to protect
them. To put things into perspective Ill reference a recent article by Edwin Rios written on the
staggering amount of deaths in high school football. He writes, Between 2005 and 2014,
another 92 high school football players died indirectly from the sport, and only 37 percent of
public high schools had access to a full-time athletic trainer. (Rios) Those are both ridiculous
numbers, 92 high school boys have died playing the sport whether by hard hits or the conditions
they were playing under. 92 lives taken away before their time playing the game they loved. Now
could all of these deaths have been prevented? More than likely not, some were caused by preexisting health conditions that no one could have predicted. However could the majority of them
have been prevented? Hell yes. Only 37% of public high schools have access to a full time
athletic trainer. So what about the other 63%, who is going to be there when one of their kids
gets rocked on a play but gets up and goes back into the game. All the money that the NFL
makes, that football team owners have and they cant afford to help out the public school
system? What are they going to do ten or twenty years down the road when kids stop playing
because theyve watched too many of their friends severely hurt because no one is there to tell
them not to go back into the game. We can do more, not only to just educate the parents on the
risks of their kids playing football but also in getting these kids the resources they need to not
just survive the game but truly thrive in it.

To recap on concussions, they are probably the injury that appears the most throughout
the game of football, they may not seem like a major deal at the time or even in the few years
following however repeated head trauma can lead to CTE which can end up causing a very
preventable death. To avoid our players, our friends, our family from being affected by this
condition we must do a few things as a community of fans and spectators. One: We must
continue our push for a safer game for the players, we obviously cannot take the hits out of the
game in fact if we did the spectator base for football would drop through the floor. We can
however continue to develop safer equipment and better strategies for treating these concussions
while we strive to find a way to prevent them entirely. Two: We need to continue to educate, not
just the medical staff that treats these players but also the parents that sign their kids up to play
football at such a young age. They need to know full well the risky situation they are putting
their kids in. Parents should then educate their kids when they come of age on the risks of
continuing to play football so that they can make an informed decision about how they want to
proceed in life. Three: We need to call on not only the multi-billion dollar industry that is the
NFL but we must also call on the lucratively rich owners of the teams to help provide for the up
and coming players. They could help provide better equipment and better technology to not only
high schools but colleges as well, they could make sure that every high school has at least a
damn athletic trainer to make sure that these kids are being taken care of properly on and off the
field. All in all we have made major strides towards preventing concussion related illnesses, all
of this going back to Dr. Omalu in 2002. However I know that if we make one more push, just
one more big effort we can get it to where our players feel safe on the field in knowing that if
something does happen we can make sure that they are taken care of to the highest standards.

Works Cited:

""Concussion"" Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster. Web. 30 Nov. 2015

"CONCUSSION WATCH." PBS. PBS, 30 Nov. 2015. Web. 30 Nov. 2015.
Laskas, Jeanne. "Game Brain." GQ.com. GQ, 14 Sept. 2009. Web. 30 Nov. 2015.
"NFL's 2013 Protocol for Players with Concussions." NFL.com. 1 Oct. 2013. Web. 30 Nov.
2015.
Rios, Edwin. "We Had No Idea This Many Kids Have Died Playing High School Football This
Year." Mother Jones. Mother Jones, 21 Oct. 2015. Web. 30 Nov. 2015.
Weintraub, Robert. "Football's Worst Nightmare." Grantland. Grantland, 16 Apr. 2013. Web. 30
Nov. 2015.