Football, the most popular sport in America, seems to be fun for everybody. Viewers watch at home on Sundays with friends and family, enjoying their favorite snacks and participating in their gameday rituals. Game-goers pile in to stadiums after tailgating to cheer on and support their favorite teams to victory. Athletes enjoy fame and fortune while playing the game they love, pulling in large salaries, and acquiring a large and loyal fan base. But what people don’t usually see are the lifelong effects that concussions, obtained during football games, have on athletes after their football careers. According to data released by the NFL in 2015, 271 players had concussions during the 2015 preseason and regular-season. A concussion is a type of traumatic brain injury that is caused by a blow to the head or body, a fall, or another injury that jars or shakes the brain inside the skull. So, what causes a sports industry, that relies on its athletes to bring in revenue and attention from media sources, to allow its athletes to suffer from traumatic brain injuries? The answer is that the industry thinks about its problems regarding concussions in the short-run and ignores the long-run effects of concussions. To combat this, the National Football Association needs to increase the productivity of its regulatory guidelines and concussion protocols.

Too often in professional football games you will see a huge helmet to helmet or shoulder to helmet hit that will require an athlete to be sent off to the sidelines after he demonstrated some signs of having a concussion. According to “NFLPA Brain Health & Concussion Education Video”, there is an entire staff dedicated to looking for concussion symptoms. There is an unaffiliated trauma consultant, coaches, refs, trainers, teammates, a booth trainer, and two physicians, a team physician and an unaffiliated neurotrauma consultant. When a large hit occurs, the player is required to leave the field and undergo a first assessment that dictates whether the player can return to play. A trainer will look for loss of consciousness or unresponsiveness, confusion, amnesia, abnormal neurological findings, or new, persistent, or progressive symptoms. If an athlete does not demonstrate any of these signs of a concussion, he can return to play. While this may seem like safe protocol, concussions symptoms may not be noticeable for several hours or even days after the incident. There is a tremendous amount of pressure on professional football players to return to play when they are hurt or receive a blow to the head, and therefore will cause them to lie about their symptoms. Players believe that if they are unable to play for a short period of time that they will lose their starting positions and with their skills that they possess, they think that they will be letting their teams down if they do not return to play. According to “Epidemiology of Concussion in Collegiate and High School Football Players” out of 888 surveyed football players who sustained a concussion, 14.7% sustained a second concussion later in the season. After receiving a concussion, your chances are greatly increased of receiving a second concussion and your brain is more vulnerable to injury. 

Concussions have been of greater concern recently when brought into light by concerned fans, medical officials, and players. In December of 2015, Columbia Pictures released “Concussion”, an American biographical sports drama film. This film is about Dr. Omalu, a forensic pathologist who fights against the National Football League. He is trying to convince the NFL that players are suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain condition that is brought on by repeated blows to the heads and concussions. He links the deaths of several football players to CTE. This speculation from concerned people and huge media sources has put the NFL under a microscope to do something about how concussions are handled. 

The results of repeated concussions have tragic effects on professional athletes that could be easily avoided with the implication of stricter and safer regulatory guidelines and concussion protocols. One of the most concerning is the number of players with chronic traumatic encephalopathy. According to “The grim list of football players with CTE continues to grow”, Dr. Bennet Omalu “has estimated that more than 90 percent of all NFL players have CTE.” To help put the issue into perspective scientists describe the brain “Like a computer, the brain doesn’t take kindly to hitting, dropping, slamming, banging, pounding or whacking, especially when it happens over and over again.” Several professional football players have been posthumously diagnosed with CIT. The effects of these concussions are killing famed athletes. In “The grim list of football players with CTE continues to grow”, the article talks about the deaths of several athletes and how they directly link playing professional football to brain damage that is the basis for the athlete’s deaths. As stated in the article, A postmortem analysis of the brain of Jovan Belcher, the Chiefs linebacker who killed his girlfriend in December 2012 in a murder-suicide, found that the 25-year-old linebacker probably was suffering from CTE. He is among the youngest known players to have the disease.

Other professional football players that were found to have the disease as a result from concussions that died due to the condition are: New York Giant’s safety Tyler Sash, former New York Giants running back Frank Gifford, former Atlanta Falcon’s safety Ray Easterling, San Diego Chargers linebacker Junior Seau, and professional football player OJ Simpson. 

With the death of so many professional football athletes from repeated blows to the head in games, the National Football Association needs to demand stricter regulatory guidelines and concussion protocols. Athletes who were pulled out of games that were thought to have concussions should not be allowed to reenter into games. Once confirmed that an athlete is concussed, the wait period between when the symptoms stop and when the player is allowed to return to playing again, should be increased. The regulations on in-game hits need to stress the importance of not being allowed to hit defenseless players, illuminate high hits, and end helmet to helmet spearing. 

Some may ask if it is really that important to increase regulations involving helmet to helmet and helmet to ground, questioning the likelihood of brain injury. In the TIME Health article, “40% of Former NFL Players Had Brain Injuries,” written by Alice Park, a TIME magazine staff writer who reports on the breaking frontiers of health and medicine, the article states that, …on a series of cognitive tests the players took, half showed serious problems with executive functions such as reasoning, problem solving, planning and attention, while 45% had difficulty with learning and memory.

These large numbers seen in studies done by scientists “led by Dr. Frank Conidi, director of the Florida Center for Headache and Sports Neurology” (Park) at the American Academy of Neurology’s annual meeting in Vancouver show why the NFL needs to demand stricter regulatory guidelines and concussion protocol. “40% of Former NFL Players Had Brain Injuries” states that “Conidi found that the more years a player spent in the NFL, the more likely he was to show signs of TBI,” (Traumatic Brain Injury). These findings are the reason why the rules need to be stricter in the NFL. Players should be able to play for several years and not have to worry about the effects of repeated blows to the head. Fans and viewers like to see big hits, but the safety of players is more important than the wants and needs of fans. 

A large opinion contrasting the need for an increase of regulatory guidelines and concussion procedures is that while repeated hits to the head causes damage to white matter of the brain, the brain will slowly heal and eventually return to normal. While it largely unknown at this point whether white matter in the brain will heal over time, in the short term, this white matter damage is very detrimental to professional football players. “40% of Former NFL Players Had Brain Injuries” talks about professional players saying, “Thirty percent showed disruption of long arms that neurons use to communicate with each other – compromised connections are a leading cause of many brain disorders and the first sign of poor brain health.” These poor brain connections directly affect the short-term memory of these athletes and is detrimental to their health. While it is unknown if this white matter affects long-term memory, it is known that the white matter can slow down brain function.