The Nfl's Head Cases

In the true story based movie and the documentary, the dangers of head injuries in football are laid out for the viewer. Dr. Bennet Omalu discovered the brain injury chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE; however, the NFL was in denial about the effects football had on the brain and had on causing CTE. I believe that the NFL’s denial to the accusations were detrimental to many football players and that serious consideration should be taken into the way football is played overall.

The sport of Football has been evolving to help prevent head injuries in many ways one way that it tries to help prevent head injuries is by making a stronger helmet. When the sport first started playing with no helmets. but they later found out that without helmets there were too many people getting

In this article, the author explains why sports are very dangerous but also very beneficial. He starts off with his own personal stories and gets into describing how American football is seen as remarkably dangerous, and he includes evidence such as the violence the sport brings. He especially talks about the risks of brain damage that comes with the sport, including when “group of past players...sued the NFL for not properly informing players about the risks of brain damage during their careers”.

The danger of concussions are very high in football, but helmet safety has reduces the risks of concussion. Helmets is one of the big deal in the 50s. “Awareness of this sporting context in particular can be surmised from a 1958 paper on helmet design, and concussive blows to the head as causes of chronic traumatic encephalopathy” (Casper). In the 50s there wasn’t may changes until over time on head traumatic. A couple of years later helmets were starting to develop and safer and better. In the modern world helmets has establish more of harding shell in the inside instead of the outside, but players are still suffering from depressions and dying on the fields. Skull fractures and broken noses losing teeth have to really change since the

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?

Since the start of the National Football League, head injuries resulting in long term illness and brain compilations have occurred. Millions of dollars of research have been done to ensure the sport is safe. The general public has turned a blind eye to the mental health during and after retirement from the NFL. Mistreated and pushed to the side concussions, if left untreated,

Concussions have been plagued NFL players during their careers and are now starting to affect them, even after they are done playing. The lasting effects of a concussion range from cognitive, to physical, as well as emotional symptoms. As a cause of these many concussions popping up in the league, many rules have changed and are making some aspects of the game illegal in terms of hitting. Even lining up in a certain position is not allowed, this is simply for the safety of the players. Getting a physical therapist on staff at all times to help athletes is required in the NFL. Since concussions still happen, physical therapists and athletic trainers still must find a way to help athletes deal with the injury. A plan must be developed to cope and manage a head injury. Concussions have had a tendency to cause lasting effects and this led the NFL to change the rules of the game as well as helped to develop plans to help manage the injury.

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.

The equipment in football has improved from what it use to be. Players in college need to have a jersey with numbers, knee pads, helmet, mouthpiece, shoulder pads, socks, and shoes. In the NFL players need to have a jersey with numbers, pants, helmet, socks, shoes, and shoulder pads (Miller ). When football was first being played players used to wear little or no head and face protection (Buckley 24). There are many types of helmets, air pump, liquid, and padded helmets. The air pump could be pumped to fit the player’s head, liquid and padded helmets could not adjust to a player’s head and the most comfortable helmet is a padded one (Miller). Caged face masks are used today and protect jaws, noses, and faces of players (Buckley 25). Shoulder pads are used to protect a player’s upper body, quarterbacks, ball carriers, and linebackers have smaller shoulder pads so their movement is not restricted

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.

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

The documentary Head Games directed by Steve James follows former football player and ex-wrestler, Chris Nowinski, on his mission to uncover the truth about the consequences of playing sports related to concussions. A concussion is a brain injury that you cannot see and where the brain moves around in the skull. More than 3.8 million concussions occur a year due to a sport. The documentary raises the question of whether protective head-gear should be worn in all contact sports. I believe a head is more likely to sustain more damage to the brain without a helmet than a head with a helmet.

From the first football game ever played till now, the development of safety equipment has sky rocketed tremendously from the first leather helmet to the now hard plastic shelling with thick padding on the inside. The classic idea of a helmet that have been used since 1893, is to wrap the players head in a tough external shell. Over time the evolution of helmets has had significant improvements in reduced lacerations and skull fractures, however, the ability to prevent brain injury has been limited. Helmets can help reduce the size of impact forces, but they cannot counter the brain from moving within the skull. An invention called the Q-Collar, incorporates a different approach to attempt to do that. Slightly clamping down on a player’s jugular vein, causes the brain to swell and fit more snug inside the brain. Already, tests have been done and have shown major improvements however, the Q-Collar has not yet received Food and Drug Administration approval yet, and more research is still needed. Not only could this have major benefits in athletics, this could also benefit automobile accidents and military operations. More than just developing safe equipment is being done. The simple modification of changing what the sport of football is played on to help reduce concussions are

He shows that rugby tackling has proven to prevent as many concussions as possible, and if it was adopted by football it could prevent a majority of concussions. The author adds onto his idea of the change in tackling, by also suggesting helmet sensors to detect when a concussion occurs. Finally, Munger states that if the athletes created a mutual respect for their fellow athletes’ safety then this could cause a decrease in major injuries among athletes in football and rugby. Overall Munger tried to portray an urgency to change the tackling used in football and an increased respect for athletes’ health could cause a significant drop of concussions in football and rugby. Munger succeeds at convincing sports lovers and athletes to believe that the root of the concussion problem is how the athletes view concussions and their overall health because of his use of logic and personal experience in the sport; but he takes away from his overall argument with the choice to not restate his point in the conclusion, choosing to add another idea

In this article, written by Elizabeth Eckhart, the issue of sports-related concussions is discussed. The article addresses the concern of the increasing number of concussions in attempt to spread awareness and hopefully help the cause. Eckhart shares that concussions are not only associated with professional football, they are also a large concern in all sports. The main argument that is made in this article is the fact that this injury is a serious issue that attention needs to be brought to in order to better help, treat, and prevent head traumas in athletes. Throughout this article, Eckhart concludes that a huge contribution