Have you ever had a concussions or some type of brain injury?  Concussions are becoming a huge problem in all sports today and especially in football.  Even sports like soccer can cause concussions based off just head budding a soft ball as stated in an article written by Annie Sneed.  Many sports are involved in the concussions crisis but the main sport involved and headlining the crisis is football.  

Football has an absurd amount of head to head contact and players pay for it in their day to day lives even after they have retired from the league.  In George Lundbergs's article about brain trauma he goes into detail about how bad head to head hits are by giving examples of the hits on defenseless like Ryan Shaziers hit on Giovani Bernard, when it was clearly a penalty and the referees simply did nothing about it.  In another article written by Zack Furness he talks about and uses one on one interview with retired football players to talk about how much the game has meant to them.  In almost all of these interviews the players gave a negative review saying they either have brain trauma or serious migraines all the time or that the game simply wasn't worth it because of the pain they have to go through along with their families each and every day.

One of the things that are also extremely upsetting about this topic is the fact that people are so oblivious to the concussion crisis.  The amount of concussions grows each and every year as stated by Ken Belson; there has been a 31.6 percent increase in concussions throughout the past year.  Concussions are a prominent problem and will continue to happen and be a problem until the NFL and commissioner Rodger Goodell actually start trying to do something to fix this problem instead of letting it just slide over. Lundberg brings up much more good point about how Goodell is putting some policies in place to try to slow down the problem but he is more trying to hide the problem from the public, but for 2 reasons.

Rodger Goodells first reason for trying to hide to the problem of concussions from the public is because it is the most popular event in history as quoted by Anthony Riccobono.  Riccobono states that the super bowl in 2015 was the most watched event in TV history and that doesn't even account for the amount of people in the stadium at the time or the amount of people watching on a single persons TV.  It was reported that approximately 114.4 million people watched that one football game which is just an estimate, there could have been many more.  The reason this stat is brought up is because if this many people are watching the game of football then something should definitely be done to stop or limit the amount of concussions.

Rodger Goodells second reason for hiding this problem from the public is for good reason.  Goodell is the first commissioner to instead of just trying to change the game of football itself he is actually to do studies about the injury to find different ways to stop and cut down concussions without completely changing and ending the game that everyone loves as shown from the statistic above.  Many people are under the assumption of two big things, either taking the players helmet away in practice so the players can learn not to use their helmets as weapons to tackle people.  The other answer to the problem has been used much more which is just making the equipment more protective and better.  For example there is new company the just came out called Xenith which is supposed to be the future of football pads stated by the Xenith  website and especially focusing on helmets.  These helmets are supposed to limit the amount of concussions but for some reason the amount of concussions are still increasing each year.  This shows me that there need to be other things implemented like maybe actually making the players practice without helmets so that they can learn to tackle with their shoulder instead of their heads.  

The most recent document that I have read a watched because it includes a video was written by CBS news which is one of the largest news crews in the world.  In this article in video they talk about how this year alone there has been a 58 percent increase in the amount head injuries and concussions, this statistic was taken just days before the 2016 super bowl this year so the information is very recent making it extremely credible and a scary fact.  This article then goes into say that a man at the age of 27 died based off a brain injury that was caused by playing in the national football league.

The counter argument to all these statistics and thoughts is that the game has always been the same way and that it should not be changed because it is America's past time.  People also believe that's the price players pay for being professional athletes, it's just part of the job.  The fact that football players make so much money that they should be able to deal with a simple injury.  This argument is shown by the article "Football, So Beautiful for Fans, Scars Players with Dementia," as seen by the title itself.  This article talks about how the fans are just blocked out by how much they love the game and they don't actually understand what is going on behind the game of football, behind the scenes.  Fans love to watch a big hit, that's how civilization has always been, I myself love to see a huge hit and used to love to hit people hard when I played football but it simply is killing people or destroying their brains.  

The next major issue when it comes to concussions is the fact that people do not deal with them or treat them correctly when they occur or a player experiences a head injury.  This problem is brought up by Ken Belson when she talks about the amount of players that play through concussions or simply just don't do the correct rehab for their head injury that they need to, in order to give their brain a rest.  Tanya Lewis wrote an article all about the human brain and all that it does for the human body and it shows that the brain is by far the most important body part or organ.  This shows that the amount of injuries that happens to this organ needs to stop because it is ruining people's lives.  Concussions not only are bad for the human brain but they can be extremely painful as well.  

Concussions can cause many issues long term and short term to the human brain.  Short term concussions problems are much more likely and these are called mTBIs.  Long term concussions problems are much more traumatic and painful, they are called PCS.  Both of these concussions symptoms are extremely bad for the human brain and can do anything to a person from either making them just simply dizzy or from something so traumatic and terrible that someone would take their life because they have to deal with so much pain each and every day like Junior Seua (Weill Medical College).  

Concussions have become such a huge problem and the players feel like their rights are being looked over so much that the player's organization put law suit on the NFL.  The law suit was because a statistic came out that one in every ten players that have retired from the NFL has a strong possibility of getting Alzheimer's (Fox Sports).  If the NFL would agree to the settlement of the players it would make the players of the league much happier and save them millions of dollars.  Instead this law suit is brining attention to the game of football but not the attention that the National Football League wants and that is why there are so many players perusing this deal.  There are thousands of lawsuits against the NFL and most people haven't even heard of one which takes me back to the problem that everything is so hidden.  

All of these statistics and facts may make it seem like the NFL is making no effort at all to protect its players but in fact it is just most people believe they are not going enough.  There are only 5 new rule changes happening in the NFL and they are mostly all to protect defenseless players (NFL.com).  This still shows that the league is not doing very much to help its players but it is at least doing something to try to help them out and give them a chance to make a play and defend themselves.

Many defensive players specifically have a problem with the fact that all these rule changes are being put in place because they think it is making it unfair for them.  All the rules that come up every year are put their in order to protect the offensive player from taking a huge hit but all the defensive players believe that if they get there in that much of perfect timing where then they should be rewarded with being able to dish out a big hit.  I played football in middle and high school and I also played defense so I see where they are coming from with that argument but players forget to think about their safety.  Either way the player either getting hit or receiving the hit is in some way damaging their brain whether they know it or not so no matter if the defensive players is the on delivering the hit and thinks it is a good idea they still are causing damage to their brain.  The rules changes are meant to take away the cheap shots of the game to help player safety so that players do not get hurt of suffer serious injuries for no reason.

Concussions have become such a big problem lately that there has even been a movie was one of the top movies in the box offices.  This movie really brought the problem of concussions to view of the public because it was very hidden before.  This was very bad for the NFL because not all the things brought up in this movie aren't completely true about football or concussions bringing negative publicity to the NFL.  Will Smith is the star of this movie and brings up many problems with the NFL because of how bias the movie is against how terrible concussions (Official Concussion Trailer).  The movie does not do the NFL any justice at all because it is all about negative things that happen in the game of football.  On the bright side this did bring attention to the problem of concussions that most audiences or the public would have never known or thought about.  

The main problem with the problem of concussions is the fact that the NFL raises the most money of any entertainment event in the world.  This means that no one ever wants to change or do anything to the game itself especially the board that run the league because they don't want to cut into their salaries by messing up the game and loosing customers or people that watch it on TV.  This would also strongly effect TV companies too because football is the most watched event on TV therefore if the game is changed and not as many people watch it then tv companies lose money.  

The thing that I think is the worst when it comes to concussions is that they are overshadowed by other legal problems.  Lately concussions have not been thought of as the main problem in the NFL.  Concussions have been completely overshadowed by other legal isssues that happen on the field because they are more worried about their image off the field rather then the pain the player go through on the field.  The league focuses a lot stronger and the legal aspects of the game and league rather than the health of the players.  Domestic violence is terrible but I also think it is evenly as bad as people killing themselves off their heads being hurt from playing a game.

Concussions will forever be changing the game of football until enough research is done to figure out to stop concussions.  Concussions are a very serious injury that occurs to the most important organ or body part of the human body.  Brains are what make people function and being repeatedly hit in the brain is not good or healthy for anyone.  When football is thought of the main thing that people think about is the violence of the game but they need to start to take in the fact that the violence takes a toll on people's bodies and can deeply affect the human brain.  The human brain is a very valuable and fragile thing that needs to be examined more so that concussions can be cut down on and or at least helped out.

