Aside from the fact that an award winning movie was just released about how concussions have impacted football in recent years, I have a direct relation to concussions and the long-term effects they impose. I have suffered a high number of concussions and therefore was not allowed to play high school sports that involved high amounts of physical contact, deterring me from two of my favorite sports I had grown up playing. Also, there have been recent reports from one of my favorite players growing up about him having cognitive and motor skill problems at the age of 36. His career was cut short after much success because of injury. Plus, that's a very alarming report as this player basically has Alzheimer's at a super young age. In the past, concussions were just kind of brushed under the rug and there were no procedures put in place to properly recover from them. Players would just play the rest of the game or even the next one running the high risk of reinjuring the brain and causing severe problem to occur in the future. It was not until recent years that the National Football League passed a new protocol to test for and recover from concussions that each player who receives a vicious blow to the head must undergo. I believe I am qualified to right on this issue because I follow sports closer than anyone I have ever met that is not a journalist or analyst and my personal experiences with the injury.

The central claim for this article, "Concussion Lies," is that there were inaccuracies throughout the movie and that some of the things the film had Doctor Omalu do and say were actually done, just not at the time the movie had them done. Doctor Omalu was the lead doctor on the case against the NFL and his research focused on CTE (Chronic traumatic encephalopathy). It outlines an example of when federal agents raided his office looking for certain documents and how that did actually happen, but before Omalu published any of his work. The article also discusses that the actual disease of CTE is not necessarily the reason why the ex-players are committing suicide at the rates that they are. Another claim is that the number of athletes with these problems and even the death rate is lower than that if the general public in the same demographic.

One of the major values at stake in this article is the fact that the author is attacking an award winning film for inaccuracies and going after a researcher that has made a huge impact on the most popular sport in America. It is a bold claim to be against factual evidence and to think that the brain injuries and trauma suffered by these ex-players is not directly correlated to concussions or the sport itself.

The author is clearly biased against the film as he does not agree with the ways it showed the story of Omalu and his fight against the NFL's concussion policy. He feels that the film could have been much more accurate to the real life events rather than trying to make it a Hollywood masterpiece. The importance of the film was to get awareness from the general public and to help make the problem of brain injuries be limited as much as possible, not to be one hundred percent accurate to the real life story. 

This article, "Safety Rules and Regulations," outlines the regulations that the NFL has newly put in place regarding the prevention of catastrophic injury. It opens by explaining what the committee does to change the rules every so often to make sure that they are adjusting to the increasing violence of the game being played on the field. It showed what changes were made to help prevent the use of heads to make tackles and prevents players from being hit in the head or neck area without being able to brace themselves, or as the article calls it being a defenseless player. The article also discusses the protocol for taking a player out of the game if they experience any of the symptoms of a concussion.

This article is not really putting any values at stake except for exposing the leaders in the changes of the rules. If there are any activists against the sport or the changes, now people know who to target in their arguments and allegations to say who is doing something detrimental to the sport. This is more of an informative article so there is not an argument being made that would cause it to have values at stake.

This article is credible because it is from the official website of the NFL and it is factual in all of its points of evidence. All of the rule changes outlined in the article are actually what happened in the NFL recently and the article does not have any bias toward an argument for or against the changes made at this time. 

This article, "Concussion test may not be a panacea," opens by showing the numbers of how many athletes have received concussions at their respective level of competition in recent years, going from professional all the way down to high school sport. It then goes into discussing the use of a certain test that checks for the ability for an athlete to be able to return to playing after receiving a concussion. It is called the ImPACT test, and it is used across America. An athlete takes the test before the season in order to have a baseline in the event that they receive a concussion. If the player is unfortunate enough to receive a concussion, they take the test again when they think they can return to the game. IF the score is equal or close to the baseline, they are cleared to participate again. The article then talks about how professional sports should be using "real" tests to determine whether or not players are ready to play again. This means looking at the science of the injury and make sure the player is back to normal brain activity.

The values at stake are that the author is arguing against a test that is used all across the nation and that has prevented many further injuries by showing that a player is not ready to return and keeping them off the field. Also at stake is proving that the science and research being done is good enough to outlast the simplicity and ease of the ImPACT test and that this research will lead to the future of analyzing and preventing concussions.

The bias is toward researching further into the injury and the impact it has on the brain, and using that information in the determination if the player is ready to return to the game. The author feels that the research is the best way to blatantly see what is going on in the athlete's brain and whether or not they are stable enough to paly the sport. The facts presented in the article are credible because they come from examples of real events that happened in recent years. The author shows that other scientists are for the use of ImPACT, but there needs to be more done to properly treat concussions.

As seen in the first article, this issue is very debatable as the facts and even the existence of the disease CTE is still in question. There are former players that believe concussions are the root cause for the number of suicides by ex-players, and then there are scientists that believe concussions are not the reason these players are having difficulties later in life. The agreements are that some former players have experienced symptoms of CTE and even memory loss and severe pain. Also, most of Omalu's research proves that there is something different about the brain make up of former NFL athletes but the research can still be considered new and in early stages, a disagreement with the idea that concussions are the cause for post career mental challenges. Different perspectives on the issue simply open my eyes to the other side of the argument, allowing me to make mine stronger. I stay firm to my belief that concussions do cause severe problems with the brain and if not take seriously, more athletes will begin to have careers shortened and even lives shortened.
