Head Trauma: An NFL Player’s Worst Reality The ideal autumn Sunday, for many of us, involves dedicating time to watch football with friends or family─we consider this a great source of relaxation. Whether it be a classic rivalry or a sensational divisional matchup, people across America enjoy football. However, most viewers do not examine the safety of the players providing entertainment. Head trauma, a major problem battled by countless present-day and former football players, is substantially impacting the league. Head injuries are becoming more common each year; they can lead to greater struggles such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which is similar to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. In order to protect its current and upcoming …show more content…
In the past, the NFL had denied any link between head trauma and football before a case had even been identified. Recently, the NFL admitted to the connection between CTE and football. The realization developed gradually, as these injuries had become more common throughout the years, causing more long-term issues in the players’ lives. According to The New York Times, Greg Aiello, a spokesman for the league, had claimed: “It’s quite obvious from the medical research that’s been done that concussions can lead to long-term problems” (Belson NP). Numerous lawsuits have been filed against the NFL due to no actions being taken in regards to the repetitive cases of head trauma. A total of 4,300 players of the league’s alumni is suing the NFL, claiming it concealed the connections between repetitive head trauma and CTE cases, while profiting billions of dollars on violence (Jenkins NP). Because of this, the NFL strived to develop safety advancements such as helmet testing and clinical for advanced imaging to better identify concussions. However, the association proclaimed that it aims to alter rules of the game instead of undergoing reinforcements (Beck NP). The NFL has had several attempts on refining safety issues but has failed to do so in several …show more content…
The league has been encountering head trauma issues for years─it is a disease ruining the careers of present and future players. Even after realizing the issues, the league has been unsuccessful in trying to improve problems that lead up to head trauma. Allowing the game to be played as it currently is, having players tolerate surgeries throughout their careers, and ruining their future lives is ruthless. Whether it be a significant change of rules, upgraded helmets, or sports-tech innovations, providing greater safety for the players is a necessity. For the past few years, the NFL has acknowledged how serious these occurrences are; still, they stabilized the game as it is, and have failed to take action. Fans ignore how impactful head trauma can be in players’ lives because the players earn millions of dollars in return of enduring the hardships. Due to this, popularity for the sport has never decreased. Many children dream of becoming football players. However, they do not conceptualize the cruel reality that comes with this dream. Overall, the NFL must take major safety precautions regarding head trauma before America’s most favorite sport develops into a complete
This paper will go into detail about the mental and physical health effects of CTE and address what the NFL is doing to reduce concussions. CTE affects players not just mentally but also physically. One out of every three NFL players are affected by CTE and it is becoming a bigger issue everyday. CTE used to not be as common in football payers, but more in boxers, it was very common due to various amounts of headshots taken by the
NFL vs. Players: Analysis and Intervention The National Football League is currently in a long-standing conflict with a group of its players and former players who demand compensation for the brain damage incurred during their professional careers with the NFL as a result of multiple concussions. The players’ group has taken these grievances to court, accusing the NFL of wrongful death and negligence for allegedly concealing the long-term effects of multiple concussions sustained during play, despite voluntarily investigating these possible effects. (Kenney 2012) This player’s group claims that players were not actively warned of the dangers of cumulative mild traumatic brain injury or MTBI until 2010.
The book Concussion focuses on the dangers of concussions in football and exposes the NFL to its audience for neglecting what concussions were doing to their players. In the book Concussion the author Jeanne Marie Laskas uses Logos and Analogy to persuade NFL players, families, and fans that the NFL should be discredited for endangering NFL players and to spread awareness about the dangers of Football. In the Book Concussion Jeanne Laskas uses statistics in the book to spread awareness about the dangers of football. “ The G-Force for a football being knocked out is about 60-90 G’s to compare a fighter pilot will pass out at 5 or 6 G’s but that’s over a long period of time” (Laskas 164)
Since American football star Michael Webster’s death, Nigerian-American physician, Bennet Omalu performed an autopsy that surprisingly showed his cause of death was from sever damage of the frontal lobe of Webster’s brain. What happened to Webster’s brain is now called chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE, which is a degenerative disease. This “sickness” is due to the repeated impact of football related concussions. Since the discovery the NFL and all the players have taken serious repercussions in the attempt of lowering the amount of potential concussions. The sport of football might appear dangerous but now the safety measures have been and are still improving.
The players understand how crucial it is to stop these head to head hits, because of the brain trauma that comes about as a result, but the National Football League continues to refute it. The coaches and teams need to realize that even though removing their star player may cause them to lose a game, the player’s life is more important than the game itself. While the new protocol has helped reduce concussions, the only way to improve the situation of concussions in the National Football League is for the officials to more strictly enforce the
The NFL is about to go into one of the most unwanted territories it has ever been into, but this is definitely an issue that it needs to grasp before they are to deep into it and this is the issue of head injuries sustained by players. This issue is overwhelmingly forcing the hands of player’s future careers. This is something that our society has never seen before with things such as players retiring one to two years into their career due to the scare that head injuries have on these players. Along with after players retire they are receiving statements from these players saying that the NFL doesn’t do enough in the protection of head injuries. The NFL has had considerable problems with concussions dating all the way back to the 1900’s (Powell,
Concussions themselves are a controversial topic simply because of their destructive forces on the lives of everyone, ranging from people who tripped and fell a little too hard, to people who make a career of hitting other people as hard as they possibly can. There are many people opposed to the idea of football’s inherent violence, yet advocates of the sport claim that removing the factor of colliding would make a completely different sport that cannot even be called football, which itself has become so ingrained in American society that it practically owns a day of the week from Week One of preseason to the closing seconds of the Superbowl. The fact remains though that if football were to suddenly cease existing, many people would be jobless,
The NFL has had a problem with concussions for the last twenty years. Recent studies have shown that concussions hurt your brain in the long term of your life which is to be expected when getting hit in the head with 1600 pounds of force from an average defensive player. But this is exactly what the players signed up for. Lots of money now but they will most likely have medical problems in the near to distant future. Players are now getting penalized and even fined for hitting the head.
More Safety Precautions are Needed in Football 34 of 35 former NFL athletes suffer from CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy). Brain injuries and other injuries are ruining athletes careers. But some people think that the players gear isn’t safe. Even though the NFL already has safety precautions in place, safety precautions in the NFL should be more strict because concussions are causing a lot of players to get hurt, and injuries are ruining careers in the NFL. Concussions and injuries cost teams and player a lot of money.
Following the season league officials and doctors got together to discuss the issue and they wondered if there was simply more concussions or if they just identified them better and more efficiently. “47% of all sports related concussions occur during high school football” (Head Case - Complete Concussion Managements). From 2012-2015 in the NFL there was no huge leap but still growing, in 2012 there were 261 concussions compared to 2015’s total of 271. 3,800,000 reported concussions in 2012, double that from 2002. Annually, 4-5 million concussions happen and the numbers are rising among middle schoolers.
The concussion crisis exactly began over a century ago. The concussions were identified among football players during the first decades of the game. This crisis subsided and allowed the issue to grow rapidly, because football supporters redesigned the public’s acceptance of the risk. They appealed to the American values that allowed violence, attentions shifted to address more highly visible injuries, which legitimized football within a more ethically dependable institution. In the meantime, changing demands in the medical profession made specialists more reluctant to take a definitive stand.
A football player experiences massive hits to the helmet in a game. Those hits slam the brain on the side of the skull, which creates a concussion or a bruise on the brain. Continuous concussions create massive head trauma which chokes the brain. This choking of the brain lowers the life expectancy of a football player to fifty-three to fifty-nine years old. Unfortunately many players and families ignore the facts and allow their children and themselves to slowly injure the most important part of the human body.
The study of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) has a very short history. In the following paragraphs, I will show the impacts of the history of studying concussions and CTE in football, as well as the impacts that CTE brings to player’s health. As well as the study of concussions, I will discuss the impacts of concussions on the game of football and the rule changes and equipment changes the National Football League has had to make to improve the safety of the game for the players. Another focus of the NFL I will discuss is the role of improving knowledge of concussions not only professionally, but also in youth and high school level sports to protect younger players.
It is currently of common knowledge that the National Football League is participating in the improvements and advancements of technological and psychological methods with which to better protect players, it is therefore not an indiscretion within our responsibilities to view the NFL. If the NFL were not attempting to sway and minimize injury and abuse for the ultimate betterment of players, then viewership would decline. Pioneering within the technologies and protections has been well publicized, and league action has prevented a negative fan reaction to the harm of players. Injury or its potential is now met with immediate and unrelenting sidelining and subsequent evaluation
In May, a jury in Iowa awarded $1 million to a former high school player who was allowed to keep playing despite a head injury. Those pressures can lead to changes that make football less dangerous. Or they can hasten its decline. But parents shouldn 't leave it to the insurance companies to determine whether their kids can play. Parents need to ask questions, weigh the risks and demand policies and practices that protect their kids.