Growing up in America, there are a few things that are very important to us one of them being sports. Playing on a team helps develop chemistry, team leadership, and just the love of the   game. While Baseball may be America's pastime football has developed fans for years and has created a billion dollar industry. Especially in the National Football League it is very easy to get so invested. Even when it's not on its being talked about, there are free agent signings and lots of other things to get excited about. The way the game is played is the reason people are interested in watching. The amazing one hand catches, sacking the quarterback, linebackers coming down with the hammer on offense. People love the intensity and the violence. These are the reasons that make it great but there are some dark sides to the sport. Due to the nature of the game it is easy to suffer head trauma that can lead to potential brain damage. With new advancements injuries can be reduced.

Most players if they make it to the NFL have been practicing and training since little league. It can create a wear and tear like no other. Football is such a heavy contact sport that it is very likely to get injured or sustain head trauma. Recently one of the biggest concerns for the sport through all levels is the protection of one's head and stabilizing and pulling out players that seem to have concussion symptoms. Sadly, some of the older retired players are in the news nowadays for having Chronic Traumatic encephalopathy from having repeated head trauma during the 70s and 80s when the NFL supported big hits and the public really wasn't sure what the consequences really were to the body. Before it was known the NFL's biggest hits were put on tapes and sold for entertainment in which usually the player used a technique that would not be allowed in today's game. In reality, the disease is no joke and can lead to memory loss, depression, suicidal thoughts, and progressive dementia. The way to fix this is to start from the bottom all the way to the top and try to teach the youth how to tackle without using the crown of the helmet as a weapon or create a new type of coaching and practicing.

When avid fans of the sport hear about dulling down the hits and making it more safe they think that they are making the game less interesting and less intense. The way that the game is played is potentially harmful to all players and can make them fearful for their health. Most players have experienced a concussion at some point in their career. A concussion is when your brain is shaken inside your skull and causes a change in alertness. Many blackout for a short time or "see stars." Concussions can affect the brain's ability to communicate to the rest of the body. If not properly recovered, and you receive another concussion, the symptoms can worsen and become permanent and deadly. For many years, the NFL denied all links to the fact that repeated head trauma could lead to CTE (Fainaru). They brought in their own experts and continued to push that the link did not exist. As more and more players have come out about their own mental health problems, Congress began to meddle in the issue and ask that any player with any symptoms of concussion be pulled immediately and placed under concussion testing. To ensure the game would become safer, the NFL has now put in place rules that prohibit targeting in which a player targets another player, especially a defenseless one with the crown of their helmet and puts a hit on them that could be potentially very dangerous. In the past, their have been notable players who have placed hits on players that are very questionable. A few years ago, Steelers Linebacker James Harrison was finally suspended for one game and fined after his fifth illegal hit against a Quarterback in three seasons. Although he seemed to disagree with the penalty for his hit, it had to be done in order to continue with the safety of the game. Many players now are starting to come out and talk about their experience from playing in the league in the past. Many players would agree that the NFL withheld information about how repeated head trauma can cause CTE. CTE is a disease that is only determined after death. It begins early in your life around your 40s and there is not a known cure and can only be definitely proven after death. The only way to receive the disease is from repeated hits to the head. The first player diagnosed with CTE was Mike Webster and is considered to be the best center to ever play. Physicians noticed that the skin on Webster's forehead had become stuck to his scalp. His body looked very beat up and way older than he actually was. Before his death, he began to collect guns and began talking about killing NFL officials from the mood swings that occur from the disease. He stated that the only way he could make it through the day was with the use of Ritalin and became addicted to the substance. After many issues, he died around the age of 50. There has been major significant milestones as a research study done at UCLA could potentially identify the signs of CTE while the person is living. The study was done on former Linebacker Fred McNeill. They scanned his brain and found an abnormal protein called TAU in the same parts of his brain as where it had been shown in people who had it post mortem. Doctors know how much TAU in the brain determines the symptoms (Weinbaum). Former player Tracy Scroggins sued the NFL after being preliminarily diagnosed with CTE due to reoccurring head trauma with the same information and study that was used on McNeill. Scroggins says that during the time of his playing he and his teammates were taught to use their helmet as a weapon and that it was condoned by the NFL and created highlight type hits. With this research, they are trying to pursue the first FDA approved diagnostic method for CTE while alive. You can tell that the players that played in that time period all show signs of regression. Hall of Fame safety Willie Wood has no memory of playing in Super Bowl 1 and suffers dementia.

 Football is such a great sport that involves a lot of skill and is very fun but it can be very dangerous. When Im watching my Panthers play, I love a good hit from the linebacker core, but we have to regulate it. To show a greater dedication to player safety, a one billion dollar settlement was made with more than 5000 retired players claiming the league held important information from the players about the concerns of concussions. They have made other initiatives like helmet testing, but that can lead to a false sense of protection. The players believe that they can make any type of hit just because they are wearing protective gear and could make someone try to hit harder with more aggression than needed due to the safety belt of a helmet. 

To keep players safer, the way practice is done needs to change. Studies show that concussions are more likely to occur in practice than in games. In High School and College, just 42 percent of concussions happened during games while 58 percent were during practice. The amount of players that play in practice compared to games is way more abundant. In practice, you have your whole team on the field including practice squad, and there is a better chance that someone gets hit in the head or receives a concussion. With Football being the most important sport in the country, it is important to stress the need for safety at all levels but especially at the youth level, so that they can continue to build on their technique and ability while still being injury free. Coaches should take a greater initiative in instilling this type of demeanor while practicing. If players are safer during practice and less banged up they can give it all they have during a game and potentially produce better than if they were tackling their own teammates and creating injuries.

There are many people in the world trying to create a new way to play more safely. A strategy shown through research was implemented at the University of New Hampshire. To reduce the amount of hits a player may receive to the head, they began to temporarily practice without their helmets reducing the use of the head as a weapon. The point of this strategy is to promote health and safety while also trying to naturally learn how to tackle and do everything you would in football without the use of the head and to keep it away from contact. The University of New Hampshire did this with 50 people and did a 50/50 test. Half would practice without the helmet and the other half with the helmet. The research resulted in data that could prove insightful as the helmet group had more impacts to the head at 14 compared to the helmet -less group that had only 10 impacts to the head. This study was so intriguing that it helped influence other attempts to encourage safer and better practices with less injuries. To think that Football practices could be non contact seems crazy considering the intensity of the actual game but most players already know how to hit. What they don't know is how to do it safely and with the correct technique to accomplish what their position goals are without having to have contact with their heads (Dotinga).

The study done by University of New Hampshire helped to create an idea in the school of Engineering at Dartmouth for a project to develop a moving tackling dummy that can be used to simulate many positions and a person to limit injuries. In 2010 Dartmouth decided to create a non-contact practice environment with the use of the new devices to help players keep in shape injury-wise and learn better techniques without being a battering ram with the use of the helmet on. The device can do many different things in practice and can even move at a 40 yard dash speed of 4.8 seconds and weighs around 200 plus pounds. The device itself costs around 3,500 dollars to produce and is expensive, so not everyone has the ability to practice with the dummies, but it is a step in the right direction and could possibly be manufactured cheaper and spread across the country to help promote safety. When Dartmouth in 2010 eliminated full contact in practice, they were probably looked at as crazy, but it kept their players healthy and eventually after a couples years of hard work it led them to an Ivy League Championship, finishing the season 9-1. The non-contact practices actually made a difference and improved the team from where they started just a few years back. The research in limiting full contact in practice shows that less people are getting concussed or injured. This was achieved by creating a mobile virtual player as the tackle dummy. At the collegiate level, everyone knows how to hit someone, but what they're doing is refining the technique with the dummy to enforce correct but safe tackles or hits. With more media coverage between sports and traumatic injuries every day, the Ivy League coaches decided to anonymously approve eliminating full contact hitting.  Although it seems as the game is changing to a less intense and less entertaining version of its old self, it is for reasons that are self-explanatory. Teams that have less contact between players are less likely to be injured during practice. This change by the Ivy League as a whole could be a huge game changer to all other levels of football (Belson).

Football in America is a big deal but the safety is more important. If we implement these new ideas on how to practice we can create a safer game that still includes all the intensity and competition that it has done since the beginning of Football. It will still produce great entertainment for the viewers with less risks to the players.

