Dangers Of Head Injuries In Football

On Any Given Sunday injuries happen just as they do in any other sport that either has

"Now that I 'm getting older, I start thinking about it more. In 10 years, am I going to be one of those guys that 's suffering?" Denver Broncos defensive end Vonnie Holliday. Concussions, in the NFL, should be taken more seriously. It may cause depression, may lead to serious health issues, and it may cause domestic violence.

Football is the most popular sport in the United States. It is a part of school and college life, and everyone wants to try it out. It is the most lucrative professional sport, with the day Super Bowl Sunday functioning as an unofficial holiday. NFL (National Football League) does provide entertainment, but it has a dark secret that the NFL does not want anyone to know. They deny having any connection with CTE. CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy) is a progressive, degenerative disease of the brain caused by repeated head injuries. CTE was first found in boxers and recent studies show that CTE is also found in football players. It causes a buildup of an abnormal protein called Tau. During the recent interview conducted by the New York Times, NFL members have denied having any relationship between the NFL and CTE. However, there is evidence pointing against them. I will try to prove that the NFL and CTE are directly related. This will be accomplish by using information from Dr. Bennet Omalu’s research to prove that high impact sports like football are the major cause of CTE. I will provide information about the life of a retired NFL player who suffered from CTE, Mike Webster. Mike played for the NFL for twenty years. He had everythingone could imagine inhis life, and then

The project that I decided to research was concussions in sports, focusing on the National Football League. Though the NFL is famously known for being hammered with controversy surrounding concussions, they are trying to improve the health and safety measures to prevent them from happening, and to protect players. These measures are usually tagged with a term called “Concussion protocol”. This term has been thrown around for years by announcers, coaches, players, and probably the most by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. The question I had was, was the concussion protocol actually being effective and reducing the amount of concussions in the NFL?

Traumatic brain injuries sustained in the National Football League has risen steadily since the first game was played. The public, as well as players, have been inadequately informed of the severity of concussions resulting from severe head trauma. Players have been sent back into play with life threatening injuries that may be invisible immediately but detrimental when observed long term. The National Football League has covered the concussion issue due to the lack of publicly the sport receives when role players are out with a concussion or another injury. Concussions and traumatic brain related injuries have become a costly problem in the National Football League (NFL), and most instances are mistreated and covered up.

“ Pretty soon guys are going to decide their lives are more important than playing in the NFL” (Borland).The danger that goes with the game is extremely risky but it's also here for entertainment so trying the balance out the two is fairly difficult. This shows that reduce an injury and still have it entertaining can really equal out and still make football very enjoyable to watch and play. “The NFL is committed to protecting its players from unnecessary risk, while keeping the game fair, competitive and exciting” (NFL.com). All things considered, making the health and safety to the players is priority, the game of football will still be exceedingly enjoyable.

As concussions occur more and more in the NFL and among teens, more research has been conducted. There has been research on teens that concussions had occurred in teen’s brains, to find out what type of hit teens gotten by football may of suffer from it. There are many concussions in the NFL and especially teens who play football that have suffered death and never to play the sport they love. Teens and athletes who love the sport football, have been suffered by concussions that had ruin their playing for the most of this moments but research has been conducted of ways to help out teens and NFL.

Rewind to the NFL Wild Card Round earlier this year. The date was January 9th; The Pittsburgh Steelers were facing off against the Cincinnati Bengals in an intense conference matchup for the first playoff round. This game was special since both teams are in the AFC North conference, so both teams were playing with a chip on their shoulder. The game was a hard-fought battle that came right down to the end. On the last gasp drive made by the Steelers to try and win the game something extraordinary happened. Big Ben Roethlisberger drops back, throws the ball over the middle to star wide receiver Antonio Brown and goes right through his hands. As Antonio is coming down from his leap in the air Vontaze Burfict comes in late and makes head to head

Every person in the world loves football! Football has the highest rates of catastrophic head injuries (16).The long term health effects of high impact sport injures can be super dangerous.

You finally get a day off from work. You decide to go watch your sons’ football game, since he has been begging you to come to one for months. Everything is going great at the game, your son plays amazingly. All of a sudden your son is tackled, and is now lying on the ground screaming in pain. You run to him as he is surrounded by people trying to help. Over 147,000 youth football players suffered from concussions in the 2013-2014 school year. Although, the article “Should kids Play Football?” states that “Young athletes learn discipline, focus, teamwork—skills that will help them be successful later in life.” Football is too dangerous of a sport. Football players are at a high risk for concussions,

Also it helps with teaching the players the proper technique to hit and tackle an opposing player because they don’t want the players to get more concussions. This also helps coaches because it takes choice of putting a player back into the game or practice because the coaches aren’t medical experts and only have to worry about coaching the players and leave it up to the medical professionals on the

Over the past three seasons, the NFL alone has reported over 690 concussion related injuries causing major athletes such as Ben Roethlisberger, Devonta Freeman, DeAndre Hopkins, and Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie to miss significant time on the field (CNN 2015). Testing in sports have always been significant, but as of late, they have come to the forefront following the large concussion lawsuit filed against the National Football League and the countless names emerging from Major League Baseball for being linked to performance enhancing drugs. Health and player safety is becoming the number one issue for many of the professional sports leagues including the National Basketball Association and the Federation International de Futbol Association

Simple implementations such as better helmets, more trainers, and more physicians could further decrease the concussion rate to make the game even safer. With the joint effort from children’s leagues, the NCAA, and the NFL to make the game more secure, yet simultaneously just as enticing, the entire sport of football would be ameliorated, with very minimal cases of concussions. More parents would be willing to let their children play this new style of football instead of holding them back, as they may have done previously due to the fear of head injury. More research and care for concussions could result in even more technological advancements. All of this could easily become a reality with the unification of all types of football, resulting in a benign, yet highly enjoyable

In data released by the NFL, players suffered more concussions in 2017 than in the previous 5 years. There were 281 cases including the preseason and practices. It is the highest number in 6 years and an increase of 15.6 percent over the 5-year average. This also doesn’t account for the postseason. There were 190 concussions during the regular season but there was an increase during the preseason to 91 incidents, which was split evenly between preseason games and practices. Only 50 of all of these concussions were self-reported be players (Jones). This emphasizes that there are many concussions in the NFL and it doesn’t seem to be decreasing. Also, it points out that only 50 out of the 281 cases were self-reported and implies that most players would play through the concussion or don’t even know they have one. These concussions can accumulate and cause many neurological diseases to form like Chronic Trauma Encephalopathy, more commonly known as CTE. It is even debatable that even one concussion can give you neurological diseases or disabilities. In a 2017 study from Boston University of deceased NFL players, it found that 110 out of the 111 players’ brains had CTE (Fleming). That is astounding evidence of CTE

McKee and other researchers presented their findings to congress in 2009, the NFL has changed the way it researches and addresses CTE concerns. Later that year, during an interview with The New York Times, NFL Spokesman Greg Aiello stated “it’s quite obvious from the medical research that’s been done that concussion can lead to long-term problems.” This is one of the first times the league would admit that concussions and brain injuries have long-term impact on players. Admitting that there was a problem was one of the first steps in overhauling their approach to CTE research. Towards the end of that year, there was a shake up in the MTBI committee. The lead researchers, Dr. Ira Casson and Dr. David Viano resigned from the committee and Dr. Hunt Batjer along with Dr. Richard Ellenbogen were appointed as the new leads. In addition to shaking up the MTBI, the NFL used independent researchers and institution for a lot of their investigation on CTE going forward. Donating $1 million to independent institutions such as Dr, Mckee’s Center for the Study of Traumatic encephalopathy, an institution which they discredited in prior years. Overall, the NFL has pledged at least $30 million to fund research in brain trauma and to fund initiatives that promote safety and concussion’s in youth football. Consequently, the change in approach by the NFL and the amount of funds given demonstrates that the NFL is now addressing CTE has a real problem and is looking to outside researchers to make advances in CTE research. Although, comparatively to their early approach, the NFL is making strides in addressing the issues in terms of use money to fund research and make the game safer, there is still a disconnect inis strides to making the game safer then players there is still a lot more in terms of what the NFL can do monetarily to address CTE.