
A man was driven to insanity to the point where he was supergluing his teeth back in his mouth and having to electrocute himself with a stun gun at night just so he can go to sleep just by doing something he loved and was praised for doing (Gordon). Since it was first invented in 1892, football, has grown to become one of the highest grossing professional sports in the United States today. The popularity came from the thrill of watching men smash into each other like barbarians risking their well-being with every hit. Football was a deadly sport to begin with, killing at least 45 people from 1900 to 1905 but the league slowly started making rules for hitting that would make it safer for the players, but even after all this time the NFL has continued to do poorly to make rules to assure that concussions are treated correctly. The NFL needs to take higher precautions in effort to prevent concussions in football along with making sure that the medical staff is trained properly to diagnose and treat concussions. 

In 125 years football has had thousands of new rules being made and old rules being changed, spanning all the way from something as simple as being able to pass the ball forward to more complicated rules such as not being able to have two men in motion on the offensive side of the ball. These rules have been made to protect the player and make the game more enjoyable. These rules have proven effective by lessening the external physical injuries significantly but have still failed to protect one of the most important organs in the body, the brain. When the skull is suddenly struck by an outside force it causes the brain to bounce around inside of the skull and since the brain is a very weak and malleable organ it can twist and contort in a way which causes bruising in the interior and exterior of the brain. When this happens it is called a concussion and is also known as the most horrific silent killer of the NFL because it can lie dormant for years and then it slowly affects brain function every day until the person goes completely insane. One of the most famous instances of concussions slowly killing a football player is when Mike Webster died at age 50 from a heart attack but had early onset dementia. Mike Webster was a professional football player for the Pittsburgh Steelers that played in the NFL from 1974 to 1990. During his career in the NFL he won four Super Bowls, chosen for the Pro Bowl nine times, voted for the NFL 75th Anniversary All-Time Team, and he made the All-Decades team in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Mike came into the NFL as an undersized center at 225 pounds but was put on a special diet and was soon made into a 260-pound freak of nature. Mike was known for not caring about his personal well-being and not backing down from a fight. He was the role model for thousands of hopeful children that want to play football. Webster retired as a hero in the NFL community and everyone including himself thought he was at the top of the world and wouldn’t come down but during his sixteen years in the NFL he was never diagnosed with a concussion even though he received dozens, because in the 70’s, “Players worry about ending their career, she says. “Some of the guys will treat a concussion like a hangnail.”” (Meryl). Seven years after his retirement he was inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame and while he was in the process of getting voted on being one of the most glorified football players in the NFL he was sleeping in his truck because he couldn’t remember how to get home, his teeth were also starting to rot out of his mouth because of his steady drug addiction and instead of him going to the dentist to get them properly fixed he would superglue them back into his mouth(Meryl). When he wasn’t sleeping out of his truck he would sleep at home with his wife having to electrocute himself with a stun gun upwards of a dozen times so that he would pass out and go to sleep. At the age of fifty Mike Webster had one of the most serious cases of dementia anyone has ever seen for a person his age.  When Mike died in a hospital bed, he did so not knowing what was going on or who he was. When he passed doctor Bennet Omalu who was a neuropathologist and forensic pathologist wanted to take a closer look into what was going on inside of him before he passed. Omalu’s findings would change the NFL forever. When Omalu looked at the slides of Webter’s brain tissue he had to double check to make sure that he grabbed the correct slides, “I looked again. I saw changes that shouldn’t be in a 50-year-old man’s brains, and also changes that shouldn’t be in a brain that looked normal.” (Breslow). Omalu found that Webster’s brain tissue has had severe bruising caused by twisting of the brain inside of the skull. Omalu’s findings were so new that he helped coined the term for this damage caused by concussions CTE or Chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Dr. Omalu also found CTE in Terry Long and Andre Waters. These two both committed suicide which Omalu said was caused by the CTE affecting the brain so severely that it drove them to insanity. Concussions were over looked by the NFL players and medical staffs that hardly any players were actually diagnosed with a concussion. It is only until now, where technology has advanced that the former players are realizing that the concussions that they received were potentially deadly, “Reports show an increasing number of retired NFL players who have suffered concussions have developed memory and cognitive issues such as dementia, Alzheimer's, depression and chronic traumatic encephalopathy” (CNN Library). The autopsy that Omlau performed on Mike Webster would later be known as, “the autopsy that changed football” (Breslow). After Omalu released his findings the NFL did not take it seriously and they even forced him to have the results retracted at first but Omalu fought it and it made dozens of retired football players come forward stating that they had also been mistreated for concussions. They started suing the league but not just because they wanted money but just in case they would end up like Mike Webster and would have countless numbers of hospital bills. 

Even after these results stunned the world, hundreds of thousands of people continue watch NFL football games because they want to see stunning athletes perform marvelous acts of athleticism. There are three major things that every football fan wants to see in a game: amazing catches, amazing runs, and above all else, amazing hits. Hitting is a major part of football and at the rate of which contact rules are changing, hitting will no longer be a part of the NFL and the fans are not pleased with this and could possibly cause the league to lose tons of their viewers, because, the hits are what fans want to see the most, just like they want to see wrecks in NASCAR, fights in hockey, and knockouts in boxing. Searching “NFL Hard Hits” on YouTube will produce about 941,000 results. The top viewed video has almost 25 million views.  This is because they get the adrenaline rush from it as if they were the ones competing, which can be addicting. The fans are enraged at the new rules that are being made by Roger Goodell to reduce the number of concussions in the NFL which in turn reduces the amount of colossal and many people do not like these changes, “the rules of the game are changing and asking them to change the way they were taught to play, which has many players as well as fans upset.” (Wiseman 2). Many fans do not like that a brutal American past time is changing into a mild contact sport. The fans are not alone on this one, there are still many players in the NFL currently that have also been playing football since they were kids is now changing and they are forced to change with it or be out of a job.  The quarterback used to be one the most targeted player on the field because they were the most important player and also it was legal to hit the quarterback at any point during the play. But now hitting the quarterback is a rare and praised sight ever since “roughing the passer” became a penalty. The NFL quite considerably lowered the amount of concussions in the NFL. 

While the NFL would not be the NFL without copious amounts of bone crushing hits, it also wouldn’t be the NFL without players. If players continue to hit like they do now, then players will have increased amounts of concussions causing players to retire sooner and sooner each year until the average length of career would be three to four years. Richard Crepeau describes the NFL from then to now perfectly stating, “The rise of the National Football League—from a ragtag group of often fly- by-night teams in the industrial towns of the Midwest to a global operation with nine billion dollars in annual revenue—is an incredible story.” (Crepeau 152). This describes how the NFL went from one of the most hated sports ever created to one of the most popular and bringing in millions of millions of dollars every year. Even through all of the rule changes the NFL is still one of the highest profitable sports and will most likely continue to be. Hitting will not be removed altogether but it will be decreased in the future to protect the players. These rule changes have allowed many players to have longer careers, such as, Tom Brady, who is 39 years old and just won a Super Bowl this year adding to his other 4. The rule changes that many people say are “ruining the NFL” must not think about what could happen if these rules were not in place. Tom Brady is considered to be the best quarterback of all time, a couple statistics on Brady’s physical capabilities, he is 6’4” and 225 pounds and ran the 40-yard dash in 5.28 seconds which seems like a very big guy who can run pretty fast but if you look at the number one draft pick this year was defensive end, Myles Garrett, Garrett is also 6’4” and but weighs a whopping 272 pounds. Now just looking at these numbers you might think that a 225-pound man can outrun a man that is his exact same height but weighs more, but that is false because Garrett ran the 40-yard dash in 4.64 seconds. So this not only makes Garrett bigger but also faster than Brady. If the current NFL rules were not enforced, Garrett could hit Brady anytime that he wants to. This would most likely shorten Brady’s career by a decent amount. Without these rules Brady might have retired at the age of 30 which would lower his record breaking five Super Bowl wins to three and he would just be another quarterback and we never would’ve seen his true talent. Even though the amount of hitting has declined over the years the fans still watch it because it is an American past time and will continue to be. 

One solution to the problems of concussions it that the NFL can continue to make changes on teaching players to properly.  If the NFL would all practice the same way of hitting, then it would make the NFL safer in countless ways. First off there would not be any penalties for targeting or roughing the passer if they were all taught the correct way to hit from the time they are playing little league football. This one is tricky because it will be a slow and tedious building process because all of the players now have been taught to hit the old fashioned way and will take some time getting used to the new way of hitting. Secondly it will make the game better with less broken tackles and more “form-fit” tackles. Thus resulting in more successful tackles which the fans will enjoy. The game will have better fundamentals and will then allow players to make flashier offensive plays without the players getting a serious injury.

Another way to reduce the amount of concussions is to renovate the helmet. The NFL already changed the standard helmet to the Revolution which decreased the rate of concussions by thirty percent. David Camarillo makes a bold statement about helmets in his speech about concussions stating, “There is information that a repeated history of concussion can lead to early dementia, such as Alzheimer's, and chronic traumatic encephalopathy. -everybody is caught up in football and what they see in the military, but you may not know that bike riding is the leading cause of concussion for kids, sports-related concussion, that is.”(Camarillo). He states a hard fact that many people overlook in society. Riding bikes is considered a good aerobic exercise and a fun time, but many people do not know that riding bikes is the leader in causing concussions for children. Camarillo then states that the helmets that are used today in football and bike riding are only to prevent skull fractures and so while it does protect the head from serious damage but it doesn’t stop the brain from bouncing around inside of the skull. Later on in his speech he introduces a new type of helmet that  could potentially solve the problem of concussions while riding bikes, “this neck collar has sensors in it, the same type of sensors that are in our mouth guard, and it detects when he's likely to have a fall, and there's an airbag that explodes and triggers, the same way that an airbag works in your car, essentially” (Camarillo). Camarillo then makes a bold statement by saying that the helmets that are used in the NFL are not regulated by the government. Even though these players are going to be getting hit harder and more frequently than bikers are. The difference is that bike helmets are regulated by the government but the helmets they are testing are only preventing skull fractures while concussions are still a serious risk. They are not properly tested to prevent concussions and this is a huge problem, because they are allowing children to get concussions and refuse to change anything about it. This just goes to show how well the government does with the regulation of bike helmets.  

In a more recent attempt to prevent concussions in the NFL was to fine the team $100,000 if they misdiagnose a player with a concussion on the field. This came about in 2015 when the quarterback for the Rams, Case Keenum, was slammed to the ground by the Ravens defender viciously. When Keenum hit the ground you could see him holding his head with his hands and when he attempted to get up off the ground he immediately fell back down. Once the trainers saw this they ran out onto the field and went to inspect him but instead of pulling him off of the field to examine him more the trainer ran to the sideline alone and left Keenum out on the field to continue playing. Keenum played the remainder of the game and did not get tested for a concussion until after the game when he tested positive for a concussion. This raised many questions about how well the medical staff is trained in the NFL. Either they couldn’t tell that Keenum had a very serious concussion even though he couldn’t even stand up or another conspiracy was that people think that they only kept him in because they did not have a backup quarterback but even then it is still not acceptable to do such a thing. After this was witnessed by Goodell he made a rule to where if the team skimps out on the rules for concussions then they will be fined, “after their first offense.-a minimum of $100,000” (Belson). Even though $100,000 is not that much money in the NFL it is still a significant step towards trying to make teams enforce the new rules. Case Keenum “took one for the team” here. The trainers allowing him to stay in the game led him to suffering two more plays the one of which he had an incomplete pass and the other was a fumble. This led to another rule by Goodell stating that, “If the commissioner determines that a team’s medical staff did not follow the concussion protocol for competitive reasons — for example, by keeping a concussed player in the game — the team could be forced to forfeit one or more draft picks”(Belson). A draft pick is more significant than $100,000 due to the fact that a draft pick has the potential for a team to acquire a rookie player that could be the greatest player of all time but missed out on them because they failed to follow the rules. This new rule on mistreating concussion along with Keenum getting put back into the game sparked a large amount of lawsuits against the NFL due to concussion related injuries from players accusing “the NFL of negligence and failing to notify players of the link between concussions and brain injuries, in Multi-District Litigation Case No. 2323.”(CNN Library).  Many of the players have won the court cases and used the money to pay to get examined for concussion related injuries. 

The NFL is one of the top grossing sports in the United States but many players get hurt during the season each year. These injuries include but are not limited to: broken bones, pulled ligaments, and concussions. Bones and ligaments can heal naturally or with a little bit of help but brains are not so fortunate and once they are damaged they are damaged for life. This is a sad but true statement that can be fixed in the near future but there must be full participation by the majority of the population. Fans need to take into consideration that if they want football to continue to be played then some rules are going to be in order to achieve this and that they need to learn to cope with these new rules but be able to watch their favorite players for a longer period of time.  Concussions are a silent but deadly killer, and once it starts it is hard to stop. Concussions ruin people’s lives one day at a time by slowly and painfully making them not themselves again but instead makes them a zombie trapped in their own body. The side effects can potentially cause suicide and their family is affected as well. Mike Webster had six kids that he didn’t even know when he passed away and they had to watch him slowly rot from the inside out. 

As a true football fan I would never want to wish this upon anyone especially a football player just doing something that he loves. If all of the die-hard football fans come together, we can make football last longer than ever and put a stop to its spiraling decent that can lead to our favorite players being injured or even worse. Football is not only a game to these players but it is their entire lives, it is how they feed their family, provide shelter for their family and most important of all it lets them continue to be role models for all of the little children that watch them on Sunday afternoon. So let’s make a couple minor sacrifices and continue one of America’s greatest past time all while having a better understanding of concussions which will prepare us for what could happen to someone in your family. The NFL needs to continue to do concussion research and further their technological advances that in the end could help all the children in your hometown that are outside riding bikes every day. 
