
Concussions have been happening ever since football started.  The problem is that people did not take it as seriously as they should have.  Now players are coming out talking about how they have head problems and headaches.  The only person that they can seem to blame is the National Football League.  By looking at ways to make football safer, CTEs after death, and the number of former players that have brain damage, one can see that the NFL has to do something.  Therefore, we must make people more aware of this problem.

I've had many personal experiences with concussions in the past.  I've gotten all of my concussions from playing football.  After I used to get a concussion, I was put on concussion protocol.  That means that the trainers would watch me for like a week to make sure the symptoms of a concussion did not come back.  If at any step in the concussion protocol my symptoms came back let's say because of light jogging, then I would have to start the protocol over.  It really put a damper on things but I knew that the trainers were looking out for me because if I had gone back too early and had another big hit, I might have had a bigger problem.  It's all about precautions.

One thing that the National Football League has to do to start preventing concussions from happening is presented in all three articles that I used in the two ILPs.  In Sean Gregory's article, he talks about how to make football safer and what needs to be done to fix the concussion problem.  Gregory also addresses that maybe the NFL needs to change the rules, change equipment and training, and change the culture of football.  This article has major values because it talks about all the ways to make football safer.  A quote that shows the value that this article has for the NFL is, "Take the purposeful helmet hit out of football, for both blocking and tackling" (Gregory 5).  Another quote is, "Football players could probably benefit from fewer full-contact practices" (Gregory 6).  This again shows a way to prevent the number of hits that players have.

The second article by Jason Hanna, Debra Goldschmidt, and Kevin Flower more or less describes the consequences of playing in the NFL.  The summary of the article is that the article starts off by saying how 96% of former NFL players' brains have tested positive for brain disease.  The article talks about how postmortem CTE diagnosis is the outcome of brain disease and the number of former players that have been tested for brain damage.  The major values that this article has is how doctors have become aware of CTE after death.  A quote from the article is, "The overall rate of incidence of CTE among NFL players can only be determined after a number of brains from players who did not exhibit or experience any symptoms of CTE" (Hanna, Goldschmidt, Flower).  This quote shows that we really do not know about CTE until after death.  We need to learn from the deaths of these players and need to study their brains for more data.

Another thing that the NFL has done to prevent concussions is discussed in the final article by Jason La Canfora.  The article talks about how the VP of the NFL has become aware of the concussion problem.  It then discusses about how we should implement medical timeouts after a player got his bell rung and many more ways to help prevent concussions.  A quote from the article to show the value is, "Give the spotters a device that signals the head official" (La Canfora).  This quote talks about how if a spotter sees a player seem to have a concussion, he will signal the official.  The official would then take the necessary steps to take that player out of the game.

The National Football League has to start preventing concussions from happening or more players are going to have brain problems.  I talked about three articles that discussed the seriousness of preventing concussions.  They all gave important and crucial ways to improve the game whether it be changing the rules or changing the equipment.  I believe that we need more equipment change than anything.  If we don't find a way to diminish the number of concussions in the NFL, the players are not going to last long. 

