The game of American football has a long and storied history that promotes teamwork, leadership skills and resiliency. However, players are constantly battling injuries and adversity in order to further advance their careers. Recently ex-players and their families have lashed out against the NFL because of its lack of compassion and attention towards the well-being of its players, especially head injuries. The long term effects of repeated head injuries have been linked to debilitating and sometimes permanent brain trauma including Alzheimer’s, dementia, depression and premature death. It is obvious that the game needs to be made safer in order to continue, as many parents are pulling their kids out of youth programs in response to the current controversy. Recent changes in equipment, protocol and evaluations of concussions are being implemented in a hope to improve the safety of the game. The NFL should be doing more to protect their players than what is currently being employed.

The quarterback drops back as he reads the defense, proudly and patiently standing behind his offensive line. He shuffles his feet eagerly while he waits on his wide out to break free from his defender. Unaware of the left tackle who missed his block, a six-foot five two hundred and fifty-pound defensive end crashes down on the quarterback as he releases the ball. The QB wasn’t expecting the hit and his body goes limp like a noodle as his helmet bounces off the turf. Dazed and unaware of his surroundings the quarterback gingerly walks to the bench holding his head. After taking a seat on the bench the player winces in pain as he takes off his helmet. Athletic trainers approach him with water and questions, like “What day is today? What’s your name? What year is it?” As they shine a flashlight in his eye to test his pupil dilation, the player’s mom can be seen sprinting towards the bench. The head trainer leans over to the worried mother and says that her son has suffered a concussion. A concussion, also known as a traumatic brain injury, is the act of the brain shaking or jarring within the skull creating swelling, discomfort and potential internal bleeding. Repeated concussions can lead to a degenerative brain disease called Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, more commonly known as CTE.

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy is a degenerative disease found in people who have had a severe head injury or a history of head injuries. This disease can affect anyone regardless of age or gender. Symptoms of CTE don’t appear right away, as most symptoms appear around 10 years after the initial hit or when the player retires. CTE can only be identified in the brains of deceased players, which is why the NFL was able to deny its existence for so long. It took the NFL until 2009 to finally admit that there is a link between repetitive brain injuries and the potentially fatal disease called CTE. The NFL’s negligence in this matter became explicitly clear in the 2013 movie, Concussion starring Will Smith.

Casey Cochran used to be a quarterback for the University of Connecticut and was someone I trained with for years before he was forced to retire from football a few years ago. On July 5th 2016, a story written by Casey titled 13 concussions was published to The Players Tribune. He explains the last time he was on the field and how his 13th reported concussion was his last. “As a kid, I felt like I was crazy. There was pressure on me to be on the field, and because of that I would convince myself that I felt fine after suffering a head injury even when I didn’t. I tried to ignore whatever concerns I had (Cochran, 13 concussions, The Players Tribune)”. Casey admits to not reporting all of the concussions he ever received, in which he played through despite the obvious warning signs his body was giving him that something was wrong. “I probably should have stopped playing football in eighth grade after my third concussion, but I was afraid to speak up. Afraid of disappointing people who had invested in my career (Cochran)”. Casey was coached by his father from pee wee all the way to his senior year of high school. The feeling of underachievement and overwhelming pressure to impress his father haunted him throughout his career. Although he was unaware of the implications that would result later in life, Casey refused to report injuries as he was afraid scouts might not recruit him if he was concussion prone. The ex-QB is now a 23-year-old graduate student who suffers from anxiety and depression and struggles balancing his daily routine. Unsure of what his future has in store for him Casey realizes he isn’t alone and that there are plenty of athletes experiencing the same struggles. Now he is an advocate for player safety who appears on television, in front of legislatures and was even a keynote speaker for the Brain Injury Alliance of Connecticut’s annual conference. Still the fact remains, Casey’s brain has been severely damaged from his years of playing football and the consequences that result will plague him for the rest of his life.

Professional football has changed dramatically since its creation, similarly the football helmet has evolved with it. As player safety became increasingly more important to the league better helmet technology was implemented. Before the 1920’s football was played without helmets and it wasn’t until 1943 that the NFL required all players to wear helmets. Helmets were first introduced in the 1920’s in a soft leather style, and for the next 25 years a hard leather style was used. The 40’s and 50’s introduced the chinstrap as well as plastic helmets and the first facemask. Plastic helmets were used until the 70’s when Riddell changed the game with “energy absorbing helmets” which provided air bladders inside the helmet designed to soften impact. Since the 80’s the NFL has been using molded polycarbonate shell helmets with full facemasks. Current NFL players have the option to wear whatever helmet they want as long as it meets league guidelines. Helmets used today go through rigorous impacting testing and safety checks before they become available to players. As helmet technology improved, more and more padding was added. The evolution of the helmet is just one example that depicts how player safety has become a more relevant issue in recent years.

Traditionally, football helmets have performed the same way for a long time. The original purpose of a football helmet was to protect players from spinal injuries, but as concussions become a more well-known issue recent advancements have been faceted specifically to combat concussions. The current leader in the helmet industry is Riddell, with Schutt following closely behind. Each company’s products have a distinct identity which set them apart; yet both helmets react to collisions in similar ways. A company called Vicis has been researching and developing a new kind of football helmet for the past few years. Their product, the ZERO1 helmet is supposed to perform better against skull fractures and concussions than the traditional helmets used by athletes today. Vicis CEO Dave Marver attended a summit for GeekWire in October 2015 where he demonstrated the key differences in performance and physical structure of the ZERO1 vs it’s competitors. “We have a multi-layered system with a novel outer shell material and a novel engineered structure. We’ve redesigned the helmet from scratch to provide protection against not just skull fracture, but from traumatic brain injury or concussion.” Vicis helmet has a soft outer shell and a memory foam like inner shell with a hard plastic core layer between them. The helmet is supposed to replicate a car bumper that gives a little when it is struck in order to slow the impact of the hit before it reaches the players brain (Robison, Gruley). The NFL is currently backing this product with a $500,000 donation. This proves the relevance of concussions in today’s NFL and how important it is for the league to end the stigma that it neglects player safety.

Coaches and players want to avoid injuries at all cost, especially in practice. But players need live repetitions of game situations in order to make plays in the game. However, this comes at a cost to player’s safety because running live drills increases the chance for injury. ESPN recently featured a technological breakthrough in the football community that will help to reduce concussions from the practice field. The Mobile Virtual Player or MVP is a remote controlled tackling dummy that can replicate the movements of a real player, which will help eliminate the need for unnecessary player on player collisions. The innovative machine was developed at Dartmouth University after Head Football Coach Eugene “Buddy” Teevens challenged the engineers at Dartmouth to create a safer way to train for contact. The idea flourished after the Ivy League coaches voted to unanimously ban full-contact hitting from practices. Teevens eliminated tackling from his practices due to the belief that “If you take one [hit] on a Tuesday, and you take a decent hit on Saturday, the fact that you had the subconcussive hit on Tuesday may contribute to the concussive hit on Saturday. And if you don’t have that subconcussive on Tuesday, and you had that same hit on Saturday, you’re probably not concussed.” This methodology has been working for the Dartmouth football team as they have had winning seasons every year since the institution of the ban. More importantly no defensive player suffered a concussion in 2015 and less practice time was missed due to injuries across the board. 

A shroud of uncertainty and deceit hangs over the grave of longtime Steelers center Mike Webster, who died at age 50 in 2002. He was first NFL player to be diagnosed with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (Fainaru, Fainaru-Wada). Since then CTE has been found in 87/91 former players (Bellware). The NFL retirement board determined in 1999 that repeated blows to the head had left Webster, who spent most of his 17-year career with the Pittsburgh Steelers “totally and permanently” disabled. Their findings were based on the diagnoses of five doctors, including Dr. Edward L. Westbrook who evaluated dozens of ex-players that filed disability claims for traumatic brain injury. Westbrook said he had no doubt that Webster’s problems were caused by “multiple hits” related to football (Fainaru, Fainaru-Wada). Jason Luckasevic was an attorney from Pittsburgh who represented some of the first players to sue the NFL over the concussion issue. He said it was hypocritical for the NFL to award disability benefits based on football-related brain damage while, at the same time, denying there was a link to the sport. “That’s completely fraudulent — you say these people have cognitive problems from playing football and award them benefits, and yet you lie and write studies telling the public that’s not the case,” (Fainaru, Fainaru-Wada 2,3). This text was extracted from the Frontline article that expanded on the documentary, League of Denial which portrayed the NFL’s concussion crisis in specific detail. It was reported in this article that the NFL Player Retirement Plan distributes more than $74 million every year to retired players. While this plan is helpful more must be done as this plan has become a sort of necessity as a result of the negligence in years prior.

The long term effects of repeated head injuries for NFL players is clear to most people. Dr. Elliot Pellman however is an exception, the NFL’s longtime chief medical officer was notorious for denying the correlation between head trauma and long-term neurological diseases like CTE (Bibber). Pellman was the former head of the Leagues Traumatic Brain Injury Committee. In a series of scientific papers from 2003 to 2009, members of the NFL’s Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee wrote that “no NFL player” had experienced chronic brain damage from repeated concussions. “Professional football players do not sustain frequent repetitive blows to the brain on a regular basis,” members of the NFL committee wrote in a December 2005 paper on Neurosurgery, the official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons (Fainaru, Fainaru-Wada). 

The treatment of concussions has been mishandled by the NFL for a very long time, and it was only until recently that new rules, regulations and protocols were incorporated to the game. The first use of instant replay was used in November of the 1986 season, and since then the instant replay has evolved to improve player safety. In the past, many injuries would go undetected because trainers were either preoccupied treating other players or had their view obstructed by larger players on the sideline. In 2011 an injury video review system was introduced; this made it easier for team doctors to identify injuries and concussions specifically. In the season that followed ATC spotters were implemented to watch for possible injuries and remove players who show symptoms of concussions. These spotters had to fit specific criteria set by the NFL which required them to be unbiased and extremely qualified. These certified athletic trainers are positioned both on the sidelines and in the skybox. ATC spotters have the ability to call a medical timeout if a player shows obvious signs of injury and refuses to leave the playing surface, even if he was hurt in a previous play.

The NFL has released multiple guidelines that entail what they think is the correct protocol for dealing with concussions. The “new” protocols instituted by the league state obvious claims that either should have already been place or are common knowledge. For example, “If an NFL player sustains a loss of consciousness, as determined by the team medical staff, he should not return to the same game or practice.” A player who sustains a loss of consciousness from a head injury should have never been allowed to re-enter a game at any point in time. The problem with some of these outlines is that they don’t do anything extra to protect their players. Half of the accounts outlined in the text are statements produced by the NFL to essentially cover their own ass. Such as, “The NFL will continue to research and study all elements of concussions with a particular focus on long-term effects.” These guidelines should have been in place years before they were actually enforced. It just seems like the NFL is intentionally behind the curve of the concussion crisis, essentially playing dumb and profiting at the expense of the players. For years the league has been able to deflect issues over the impact the game has had on its players by exclaiming its commitment to research by donating large sums of money to certain organizations.

NFL teams are always looking for ways to get the upper hand on their opponents. A modification in the way players on a certain team tackle could prove to be more efficient, which was true. What the Team did not realize until after is that this new style appeared to be safer too. In recent years the Seattle Seahawks have been renowned for their defensive prowess as they refer to themselves as the “legion of boom”. It is crucial for team success that their star players on the defensive side of the ball stay healthy. That’s why head coach Pete Carroll promotes a tackling technique that doesn’t require head to head contact; which is the leading cause of reported concussions in the NFL. It is called “hawk tackling” and it uses rugby principles to drag the player to the ground as opposed to traditional football style that relies on a dangerous spearing motion. The Seahawks have produced instructional videos regarding the leverage-based tackling style which are being used by youth teams across the country; including my own high school. This form of tackling has been adopted by USA football in hopes to decrease head injuries in youth players across the country. 

USA football was created in 2002 to help grow the sport among children ages 6 to 14. In 2010 there were 3 million kids participating in youth football, that number has dropped to 2.2 million since, most likely attributed to concerns about injuries, particularly to the brain (Schwarz). In an effort to keep parents invested in the sport the NFL began promoting the heads up football initiative. The NFL and USA Football worked with other organizations to help promote the initiative. The NFL stood firmly by the program by referencing and independent study that stated concussions decreased by 30% and injuries decreased by 76% (Schwarz). That study was published in July of 2015 and upon review by the New York Times proved those figures to be untrue. Research and interviews with people involved with the program show no demonstrable effect on concussions during the study and significantly less effect on injures overall, than what USA football and the league have claimed (Schwarz).  Elliot F. Kaye the chairman of the united states consumer product safety commission, who has worked with USA football and the NFL on improving helmet safety can attest to this. “Everybody who is involved in trying to improve the safety of youth sports, when parents such as myself are so desperate to have effective solutions, has the responsibility to make sure that any information that they are putting out to the public is accurate, is comprehensive, and is based on legitimate science,” “It does not appear that this met that standard” (Kaye). It was later learned that the NFL and USA football was unaware that they had mislead the public with false data. The NFL potentially put around 2.5 million kids at risk for life altering injuries due to their neglect. 

The game of American football has integrated itself into the lives of sport’s fans across the country. The NFL gives average people a sense of identity because they can identify with a certain team. Football’s rise to popularity resulted from the hard hitting competitive nature of the game. However, a career in this fast paced sport can come to a crashing halt as quick as a whistle blows. Football is a dangerous game; it is inherently unsafe because any routine play can result in a head to head collision. Yet it is a highly sought after career that represents the ultimate goal of millions of young football players around the world. The harsh reality of it is, the culture of football emphasizes a “tough guy” mentality where competitors are conditioned to play through pain and compete despite suffering injuries. This mind set has resulted from the NFL’s negligence towards its players in the past. The NFL consistently denied the correlation between multiple head injuries and CTE, controversial to multiple reports that were published between 2003 and 2009. As seen with many players who suffer from CTE, depression, migraines, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and even premature death are common. There are plenty of cases where professional and college football players are forced to retire from the game they love because of suffering too many concussions. Knowing when to quit could be the toughest aspect of football, more so than the hits, stress and glory that come with the game.
