Imagine that a matador is centered in the middle of the arena, awaiting the entrance of his foe, the enraged bull that is held back by the gates. The gates are let loose and the bull charges at the matador. The matador makes a near fatal mistake in his footwork and the horn of the bull catches him, mortally wounding the matador. Nobody in the arena nor anyone associated with bull fighting is held responsible for the injuries that the bull fighter has sustained in the fight, nor the injuries that will affect the matador later on in life, except the bull fighter himself. The matador knew the occupational hazards that were involved with bull fighting, but he weighed the risks and came to the conclusion that the risk was worth the reward, may that be the fame, fortune, or his love for the sport. The same process should be expected by participants of football. The players should be expected to weigh the risks and assume the repercussions of the violent sport and the toll that it will take on their bodies currently and later on in life. The NFL as an association should not be held responsible for the injuries that the players have sustained in their time in the NFL because the occupational hazards are known to the players before they play the sport, especially the risk of a concussion that is involved with their participation. I played football in high school and understood the risks and dangers of partaking in the sport, and decided that the comradery was worth the potential injuries that I could receive. I had numerous injuries, one of those being a concussion. After my concussion I did research and found a helmet that would help prevent further concussions, though not guaranteed as stated on the warning label on the helmet itself, "NO HELMET CAN PREVENT SERIOUS HEAD OR CECK INJURIES A PLAYER MIGHT RECEIVE WHILE PARTICIPATING IN FOOTBALL," (Riddell) and continued play. The players in the NFL should be held to a higher standard of understanding than a high school student and assume the risks before signing onto an NFL team.

The NFL has been ridiculed for the lack of protection that it provides for the players of the sport through the number of injuries sustained by the players. However, the NFL should not be held responsible for the protection for the players. The protection for the players is important to the NFL, but the NFL should not be held fully responsible for the injuries that the players are experiencing in their time during their time in the game. There are many things that the league does for the players and should be active in providing the safest environment for the players that can be provided in a dangerous sport such as football. Football is a dangerous sport and there is bound to be injury associated with participating in the sport, but the individual player himself is to be held responsible for the safety and well-being of himself. It is the player's responsibility to do everything in his power to protect himself, being that he takes himself out of the game when injured, take the necessary recuperation involved with sustained injuries, and to not put themselves in situations during the game that is subject to injury. The league does their part in the protection of players by doing research to better improve the equipment that the players are protecting themselves with, implementing new rules and regulations that preserve the well-being and safety of the players while the players are participating in the sport, providing a new concussion protocol and onsite doctors on the sideline of each of the teams to ensure the safety of the players during and after the game, and finally, the league has implemented major fines, suspensions, and ejections for the unsafe actions that the players have committed during their time in game.

The equipment of the NFL has been changing ever since the game began. The sport first started with a leather helmet and leather pads for the players to provide protection for themselves. As the sport evolved and the players became bigger, faster, and stronger, the equipment has changed to better protect the players from injury sustained during the game. Today, the players have the top of the line equipment to wear during the game including a helmet with pads that help prevent concussions, although nothing can fully protect players from head or neck injury, light shoulder pads that take impact away from hits taken and hits given, and leg pads that are thick and light to absorb as much impact as possible. The NFL has done extensive research to provide the safest equipment for the players to wear. Since the NFL has done this, there has been a significant reduction in the injuries of the players. The study that has shown the presence of CTE, a brain degenerative disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy that is caused by repeated blows to the head, in NFL former players sparked a change in the equipment of the players, providing new helmets to the players that offer more protection to concussions. The study, however, was flawed in it was mostly made up of linemen, the players in the sport that sustain the most hits to the head, every play starts off with these players launching themselves into one another, which shows the strong presence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy is in the players that do the most hitting in the sport, which would be expected. The fact that the NFL has heard these studies and have undergone major research to produce newer and more protective helmets shows that the NFL cares about the safety of the players, even though they should not be held mostly responsible for the well-being of the players, and the players should be aware of the studies themselves and decide if participating in the sport is worth the medical complications.

As new studies come out and new injuries become more and more prevalent during the games, the NFL changes the rules of the game to do the best they can to protect the players, but in the end, the safety of the players lie with the players. In a contact sport, there are many risks that are involved in participating. The players on both sides are elite athletes that are competing for their spots on the team and their living, which causes everybody on the field to go all out which provides risks to the players. With the fines to the players themselves there is an incentive to play with safety in mind because they will lose their income due to the negative actions that can be committed during a game. The NFL and the commissioner, Roger Goodell, has implemented "'39 rule changes over the past 10 years to make [the] game safer'" (Hille) that include regulations on the types of hits, penalties called during games, and suspensions and ejections that were implemented due to illegal actions that place players in an unsafe scenario. Due to the rule changes and regulations the game has become safer for the athletes in the "reductions of concussions by 35 percent" (Hille). With the changes in the rules there has also been a significant decline in unnecessary injuries sustained by players through dangerous plays done on the field. With a sport like football, there are bound to be injuries to the participants as expected when these elite athletes are colliding with each other each and every play, but the NFL has done their share in protecting the players as much as possible. It is not the job of the NFL to solely protect the players, but they are responsible for creating the safest environment for the players, and the NFL has done this very effectively through implementation of the rules for the safety of the players, the ejections and suspensions that the players are issued, and fines that the players will receive.

With the rising numbers of concussions being diagnosed to the players of the NFL and endangering them now and later on in life, the NFL has decided to create a new concussion protocol to better protect the players. The protocol has proved to keep the players out of the game that have possibly received a blow to the head that could cause a concussion. The NFL has hired an "' eye in the sky,' a certified athletic trainer sitting in a stadium box who watches the game and television replays to scan the field and look for players with a potential head injury who may require assessment by the medical staff" (NFL.com). The athletic trainer is there for the safety of the players and calls in injuries that could result in head trauma to the onsite doctors and medical staff that each team must employ. Once a player is believed to have a possible concussion, the player is immediately removed from the game and undergoes many tests by the onsite doctors to determine if the player is concussed or not. During the entire time that the player is under observation, his helmet is taken away from him so that he cannot enter the game in case the player is concussed. The NFL has implemented these safety measures for the benefit of the players in the league. The new rules have reduced the number of concussions and the amount of players that have continued play with concussions. The NFL is doing all that it can to protect the players from injuries and complications later on in life. Due to the safety changes that the NFL are conducting, the league should not be held responsible for the injuries that are still sustained because of the measures in which they have enacted to protect the players already, and the constant changes being done.

No football player in the league would want to pay fines for the unnecessary hits, and especially do not want to be ejected or suspended because that is an even larger cut from pay. The NFL has implemented many rules about suspensions and ejections and uses them as a disciplinary action against the players. The players that get ejected or suspended for their poor decisions and actions on the field that puts others in danger go along with pay cuts from the teams and also get issued fines from the NFL as an association for the unsportsmanlike acts that a player may conduct in a game at a given time. Since the implementations of the new rules that eject and suspend the players for hits that place other players in danger there has been a reduction in "[f]ines against defenseless players have declined nearly 38 percent in the two years since it became a point of emphasis in 2012" (NFL.com). The game has become a much safer place in the recent years due to the changes the NFL has placed on the game. A very dangerous game has now become a much safer place by taking out the players that conduct the unsafe actions and place not only themselves, but other players in the game at risk for serious injuries both now and later on in life. The NFL created the parameters for the suspensions and ejections solely for the purpose of protecting the players during their time in the NFL. The NFL has assumed responsibility to keep the game safe, and the suspensions and ejections keeps the dangerous players out of the game for extended periods of time to have them be assessed before they come back into the game and it keeps the other players from committing the actions that put the players into dangerous situations on the field. At the beginning of each season the NFL sits down as an association and reviews the fines that were enforced the previous years as well as the injuries and the causes of the injuries in the games and creates a new revised version of the list of fines for the actions of players. The new list is presented to each player in the NFL and the players "which lists major infractions, the resulting fines and the appeal process. Players sign a form acknowledging that they agree to follow the code of conduct and understand the violations and fines" (NFL.com). This informs the players of the actions in the game that are unacceptable and will result in fines. 

In a dangerous sport such as football, there are bound to be injuries to the participants. The participants of the sport assume the risks of the occupation and weigh out the pros and cons of participating in the sport. The league should assume partial responsibility and provide the safest possible playing environment for the players. There have been studies that have shown the detrimental effects of participating in the sport showing that players "found high rates of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) -- a degenerative disease believed to stem from repetitive brain injury" (Beck). The studies did show that the former players of the NFL were subject to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, but what the study did not reveal to the readers was that the players that were tested were linemen that played in the 1970s. The fact that the players were linemen skews the data because those are the players that collide with each other most often during the game. Also, since 1970 there have been many rule changes and upgrades in equipment that have been done to protect the players, and ensure their safety even more.

As an association for the players, the league should offer some types of insurance to the players in case there are very serious injuries that lead to major health complications either immediately or at later times in their life. To give the players an insurance policy in case of this, there should be a mandatory insurance payment that comes out of the player's compensation. This would be a small amount, ten percent for example, of pay. The players may be opposed to this but it will allow the players to be better prepared for serious injuries that would be sustained during the game. It is not at the full liability of the NFL to protect the players and be the sole source of protection for the players in the game, so this proposal is an acceptable compromise to both sides of the argument. It gives the player an insurance policy to protect the player and it is the NFL that is instituting the policy, which is them protecting the players.

 
