Considered to be America’s favorite sport, football is the biggest and most successful game that the United States of America offers. Football is a game that I have not only watched but also played for a good portion of my life. I have bonded with my family watching the games together and made many friends playing it. In the late 2000’s, football seemed to be an unstoppable force growing larger by the year and having revenue off the charts. In the 2000-2001 season, the University of Texas Long Horns alone collected revenue of $25.6 million; multiplying that revenue to a staggering $103.8 million in ten years. With increasing popularity in past years, the National Football League (NFL) and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) have been under fire concerning player’s safety, mainly regarding concussions and head trauma. The way the industry evaluates and manages head trauma and related injuries must be reevaluated in order to solidify the future of football.

One of the main reasons why the industry is under fire is because of the problems that result from consistent head trauma. Because of these associated risks, the idea that football might go completely extinct is realistic to consider. The main problem with concussions is that after player’s careers are over and they retire, many of them that have played for over five seasons develop chronic traumatic encephalopathy. More formally referred to as CTE, it has mainly been a problem in boxers but new research has shown that CTE is a huge problem in football and other contact sports. 

Because players and fans fear the game would be hindered by imposing rules to resolve this situation, the biggest proposed solution is to leave it alone, although it may not be the wisest. Many players and fans feel that making changes to remedy the current issues will take away from the things they love about the game. Both the NFL and NCAA have already implemented new fouls, rules, and even forms of ejections for players that perform illegal hits that could result in injury. After implementing new rules these organizations received a lot of backlash for being overprotective and ruining the game, regardless of their good intention. For instance, in college football the NCAA enforced targeting. Targeting refers to a player illegally making a helmet to helmet hit on a defenseless player. The problem with the targeting rule is that a player can be ejected from the entire game on questionable calls, and these calls can heavily impact the results of games. 

The NFL is, often times, scrutinized even further than the NCAA. NFL football fans believe that since the players are treated so well and are paid more than adequately, that the players should understand the risk they are taking by playing professional football. The average NFL salary is $1.9 million, so the idea that they are compensated more than adequately for the risk they are taking makes sense, (Beck). Considering that NCAA football players are not paid outside of a scholarship and are still students, changing rules to ensure their safety is considered far more reasonable. 

Many players agree that the game shouldn’t be changed. Only a couple years ago the NFL redefined what an unnecessary hit on a defenseless player is, and many players on defense don’t agree with these rules. In an interview a couple years after the emphasis was put on head to head contact with former Titans safety Michael Griffin, he claimed that he wasn’t happy about the direction that the league was headed in. He stated in the interview “When I first came into the league, you rarely saw any flags for unnecessary roughness. Now there’s too much thinking. When you’re going in for a tackle, you’re thinking in the back of your mind how much you’re going to get fined or if you’ll be suspended.” Griffin still plays safety in the NFL for the Carolina Panthers and he is just one of many players on defense that are upset with the new rules and regulations implemented against them, (Klemko). 

The research I’ve done leads me to believe that that rule changes are good for the game of football and are necessary if the game intends to sustain growth. Many former stars have come forward and said that they wished they never played football and they are scared for their family because of their sustained injuries. Having this image among former stars doesn’t help when you need young people to play the game to continue its success. By implementing new rules that restrict players from being able to make consistent head on head collisions, it improves the game for everyone involved. The competitive nature of the game will always remain constant if the new rules don’t deviate too far from football’s original state. Implementing new equipment and updating the current equipment should also be a top priority of the NFL and the NCAA. The NFL is spending huge amounts of money funding CTE research but they should focus more resources into developing better equipment and making the upgraded equipment more affordable. The gear that professional and top college teams use haven’t been upgraded for years yet if they did the risk of injury would fall drastically. Another reason that the funding is off balance is because of the recent concussion settlement. With the settlement taking so much money it leaves little to allocate to other fields like equipment upgrades and research. At some point some of the former players not heavily affected need to help the NFL and the NCAA find solutions to the problems that they were plagued with, leaving a lasting impact on football for years to come.

The NFL put itself into a rough situation with the concussion litigation by denying that head trauma was a problem in the early 2000s. Once contrary information started to come out they had to retract their statements and then former players started to freak out. CTE got so bad in some players that they ended up committing suicide by shooting themselves in the chest, so that doctors can look at their brains for research on the problem. With CTE being new to the scene in terms of problems among athletes and doctors, nobody really knows a lot of accurate statistics on CTE and who will develop it. Studies range on percentages but looking at them collectively it seems that upwards of 80-90% of players develop some form of CTE. Many people find that this is horrible, but in most cases the research is based off player’s memories and other basic cognitive functions. There is a lot of room for error since some people could have better memory than others. Another way that there is room for error is that the research was rushed for the court cases against the NFL, which pressed doctors to try and get information as fast as possible. The result was a one-billion-dollar settlement that pays former players up to five million dollars to cover medical expenses and treatments. Pretty much all former players qualify for the settlement but a lot of them will develop other diseases that may not be covered by it. Why CTE is so serious is because it causes an unnecessary buildup of tau. Tau is a type of protein produced in the brain but tau build up in high quantities slowly kills brain cells. The buildup of tau and the killing of brain cells are slow processes which progress over time. Therefore, well retired players are the ones heavily affected because they had CTE and didn’t know or receive treatment for it. Once the buildup of tau is too much and too many brain cells are dead, other diseases and problems start to occur. Diseases such as Alzheimer’s kick in and it is too late for treatment to help much, (McKee). 

The idea of keeping football the way it has always been is something that the NFL and the NCAA should consider. Football has become huge with the rules and regulations that they had and it was successful for a huge period. It should also be noted that most players don’t develop CTE especially if players don’t play for over five years. Keeping the game the way it is and having players play for less time is a good solution for the problem that is at hand. Another way the game can avoid players from getting concussions and developing CTE is changing the style that players use. The players that get concussions are the ones that every play try to get every inch and lower their head to hit harder or get extra yards. What many players are doing in the NFL today is going to the ground before or as they are getting hit. For example, when a receiver catches a ball fifteen yards down the field and is surrounded by the other team, why try to fight for extra yards when the receiver is going to be tackled anyway? Yes, in some cases the receiver may be able to get a couple yards more but in almost all cases they would end up in the same spot if they gave themselves up. Coaches can also change their game plans from “smash mouth football”, which is when a team tries to run the ball up the middle getting three to four yards every play until they reach the end zone. This style of play leads to constant head trauma where as if a team throws the ball towards the sideline the receiver either catches the ball and goes immediately out of bounds or doesn’t catch the ball and the pass is incomplete. Another argument is that by making the game safe for offensive players by denying head to head contact, it makes the game less safe for defensive players. Since they defensive players can’t use their heads to initiate contact, they must put their heads down and hit blindly. Doing this leads to a huge amount of stress on the necks of defensive backs and if they hit the knee of an offensive player then they are now the victims of the vicious head hits. 

Many believe that football must change if it wants to remain a relevant sport or even a sport at all. Some of the ideas brought up are much more drastic than implementing a new foul here and there. Most of these ideas won’t happen and haven’t gotten a lot of traction, but they are worth mentioning because they could be implemented in the long run or if CTE becomes a bigger problem. The first and most popular drastic change would be weight and possibly even height restrictions. Having players weigh less makes sense with athletes today being bigger and faster than ever before. Having a weight restriction makes sense, since force is equal to mass multiplied by acceleration, lowering the mass of players would result in less force on hits. A big question with this is where to set the weight limit to get rid of big players or limiting them. Having a weight limit of two hundred forty pounds is a popular benchmark, but hits would still be a problem even with that restriction. But, having a restriction too light would limit too many athletes from being able to play. Not only would this restriction limit the impact of hits it would force teams to pass the ball more, and if the hit on a defenseless receiver penalty is heavily enforced the game could become completely safe. Some of these restrictions are being pondered and implemented in lower level football leagues such as Arena football and Canadian football. Another solution would be to change the equipment that the players wear and possibly even the playing surface. The equipment changes could be more padded shoulder pads so that the impact of a player’s shoulder to the head of another player would limit the constant head trauma. Making the playing surface softer or give when pressured, the shock on a player’s neck and head when hitting the ground would be decreased. This type of playing surface would also slow players down a fraction to also help with huge hits if players can’t reach their top speeds. Another innovation that has been thought of is a padding on the face of the helmet for linemen when they are blocking and their facemasks collide. Instead of hitting facemasks, the paddings around the face would hit, which would also limit the constant head to head collisions of linemen when blocking. In the spring, instead of playing actual football skill position players turn to seven vs. seven games to improve their skills. Seven vs. seven football is pass only with five receivers, a quarterback, and a center on offense and five defensive back and two linebackers on defense.  This type of gameplay can possibly take over football and those rules will be implemented. A less popular version of this is flag football. Flag football is much less contact but mostly the same rules as regular football. Instead of tackling the player with the football every player has flags hanging down from their waste and when they are pulled a player with the ball is down just as if they were tackled. 

My position on what football can do to help fix the problems of head trauma is a mix and match of different ideas. I believe that minor rule changes can have success but changing the game completely would have too far negative results. Limiting the number of plays that a player can play every game would benefit everybody. Not only would limiting plays help for head trauma it would help for the regular wear and tear of playing professional football. Giving teams more than fifty-three roster spots would let teams rotate players more. Special exceptions could be given for positions like quarterback and kickers since they aren’t positions that receive the punishment that the others do. Limiting playing time doesn’t just have to be a game by game limitation. The NFL could limit the number of seasons that players can play. Since studies show that players that play more than five seasons develop CTE more often than players that don’t, it would be no surprise if having careers lasting around five years would impact the number of players that end up developing CTE. Implementing new equipment and upgrading outdated equipment should also be a top priority on the agenda. Not only is making the new equipment better part of the equation the companies producing it need to make it affordable for NCAA and lower level football players. 

I believe that a specific mix and match of ideas is one of the only solutions that can solve the head trauma issue. Changing the rules completely would ruin the popularity of the game. For example, if the NFL decided next season that it was changing to a flag football league there would be an uproar. The same result would happen if the game was switched to seven vs. seven. Implementing height and weight restrictions would make the game less competitive. A big reason that the NFL is extremely popular is because it involves some of the best athletes in the world. At the same time the rules must still be changed to improve player safety. Even though changing the helmet to helmet hits may hinder defensive players, the total number of concussions diagnosed in the NFL has been decreasing. According to the NFL, concussions in the 2014 regular season were 111, in 2013 there were 148, and in 2012 there were 173, (ESPN). Not changing the rules and relying on equipment upgrades when the NFL doesn’t have money to allocate to the equipment research would ruin the progress that the league has made to limit concussions. 

The future of football is still undetermined and only time will tell if it will still be America’s sport in the years to come. Not changing any rules won’t lead to less concussions but more rule changes will upset fans and players. The NFL won’t be able to change the past and many players have already been affected. The options that the NFL and NCAA have for the future are limited but they have been improving that situation thus far. I hope that I can continue to watch football games with my family and that one day my kids would be able to play the game as well.
