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 NFL 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 Lisa Gutierrez in “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” (Gutierrez). Several professional football players have been posthumously diagnosed with CTE. The effects of these concussions are killing famed athletes. Gutierrez 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. (Gutierrez) 

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 Giant’s running back Frank Gifford, former Chicago Bear’s great Dave Duerson, former Atlanta Falcon’s safety Ray Easterling, San Diego Charger’s linebacker Junior Seau and, recently, Aaron Hernandez. 

The concerning part of all these players that were posthumously diagnosed with CTE is that most of them knew they had the disease before they died. They struggled through chronic migraines, headaches, memory loss, and depression from symptoms that wouldn’t go away and for some, CTE was ultimately the reason for their death. San Diego Charger’s linebacker Junior Seau committed suicide on May 2nd, 2012 by shooting himself in the chest. He decided to shoot himself in the chest so that his brain was intact and able to be studied by scientists to further the research for chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Like Seau, Chicago Bear’s Dave Duerson committed suicide February 17, 2011 by shooting himself in the chest to preserve his brain. In an article by Alan Schwarz, “A Suicide, a Last Request, a Family’s Questions” it is said that Duerson texted ex-wife, Alicia Duerson, saying, “Please, see that my brain is given to the N.F.L.’s brain bank.” Another last-minute note that he had written, found near his body restated his request to have his brain donated to the N.F.L.’s brain bank. Another former football player, New York Giant’s safety, Tyler Sash, was found dead in his home on September 8th, 2015 after an overdose after mixing two powerful pain medications. He was later diagnosed with CTE.

With many unfortunate deaths of top NFL football players, people are starting to ask questions and look for answers from the league itself on what is being done to prevent further concussions. One case in particular is the family of Kansas City Chief’s linebacker, Jovan Belcher. In an article written by Joe Harris, “Family Blames Kansas City Chiefs for Linebacker’s Murder-Suicide” it talks about the action’s his family are taking to go after the NFL. Information relating to his death says, “Jovan Belcher played for the Chiefs for four years before he killed himself in the team’s parking lot in front of then-head coach Romeo Crennel and other staff members” (Harris). His family claims that the Chiefs ignored the signs of brain damage clearly recognizable in Belcher. Athletes such as Belcher are being pushed to return to play too soon after receiving a concussion without proper time needed to recover. His family claims that, “…coaching staff and management engaged in a systematic campaign of mental abuse to ‘motivate’ decedent to play through his injuries,” and that, “The defendant’s constant bullying pressure and stress coupled with decedent’s occupational neurological impairments caused of contributed to cause decedent to become insane” (Harris). 

Belcher’s family is not the only one going after the NFL. Hundreds of current and past professional football players are going after the NFL looking for money for compensation from numerous concussions and early stages of CTE and the effects that come along with them. In an article posted by USA Today, “Judge approves potential $1 billion settlement to resolve NFL concussion lawsuits,” it states that, “The NFL expects 6,000 of nearly 20,000 retired players to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease or moderate dementia someday,” and that, “The awards could reach $1 million to $5 million for those diagnosed in their 30s and 40s with Parkinson’s disease or Lou Gehrig’s disease, or for deaths involving chronic brain trauma.” This settlement will help the families of those players who have suffered from traumatic brain injuries or CTE with future medical expenses.

While the NFL is making things right with past cases of players with CTE, the NFL needs to demand stricter regulatory guidelines and concussion protocols. There are several things that the NFL needs to implement in order to reduce the amount of concussions and cases of CTE after professional play.

First of all, we need to define concussions. There are many different symptoms, signs, and indicators of concussions but many have different tests in order to see if a player has a concussion. There should be one universal test to see if a player has a concussion. As Taylor Kubota says in “5 Ways Science Could Make Football Safer”, “There are currently no standardized criteria for diagnosing concussions. Symptoms can be wide-ranging, including problems with vision, hearing, memory, focus, and coordination.” If concussion were to be further defined, doctors, trainers, coaches, and players could have more specific criteria to look for when diagnosing a concussion.

The next step in assuring further safety of players, is that the NFL needs to establish a rule restricting athletes who are pulled out of games, that are thought to have a concussion, from reentering back into games. Once confirmed that the athlete is concussed, using the new guidelines that would be established, the wait period between when the symptoms of the concussion stop and when the player is allowed to return to playing again, should be lengthened. In order to implement this rule, the NFL needs more trained sideline spotters that look for big hits or head trauma to a player. NFL Insider, Jason La Canfora, voices his idea on the topic in his article “Here are four things the NFL needs to do to fix its concussion problem” saying,

Give the spotters a device that signals the head official... The spotter relays the player he or she believes is in need of assistance and they are given a concussion test by a third-person independent sideline doctor hired jointly by the NFL and NFLPA to staff each game. The player is ushered off the field in a careful and timely manner and then play resumes while the concussion test is administered.

This simple idea would increase the productivity of the game while keeping players safe. It would assure that potentially injured players do not return same-game after receiving a big hit. It would also allow players to get the proper medical attention required to determine if they have a concussion or not.

Lastly, the NFL needs to take to create stricter regulations to reduce the number of concussions by stressing the importance of not being allowed to hit defenseless players, eliminating high hits, and by ending helmet to helmet spearing. By potentially adding another on-field referee to look for such hits, the NFL could drastically cut back on the number of head injuries. They also need to strengthen regulation by creating stricter repercussions and fines to players who do not adhere to the rules. NFL teams and coaches could train players to avoid using their heads while hitting by introducing helmetless practices. While this may seem counterproductive, it teaches the players to hit without their heads. Without equipment to protect themselves, the athletes realize how vulnerable they actually are. By doing this in practice, the players do not feel pressure to go full speed and can learn how to hit properly and protect themselves and their teammates. 

In one study with 50 University of New Hampshire football players, half of the players were assigned to do 5-minute tackling drills at 50 to 75 percent effort without helmets or shoulder pads, twice a week during the preseason and once a week during the season. Compared to the 25 players who were assigned to practice noncontact football skills in lieu of these drills, the helmetless drill group suffered 28 percent fewer head impacts. (Kubota)

Some may ask if it is really that important to increase regulations involving helmet to helmet and helmet to ground hits, 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. “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],” (Park). These findings are the reason 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 enjoy seeing 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. In a study of players it was found that, “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” (Park). 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.

With the increase in findings of CTE posthumously in top NFL football players, the short-term effects of memory loss that is plaguing so many current and retired athletes, and the dangers of hard head impacts throughout the entire football league. The NFL must act fast to keep the credibility of America’s favorite sport. If nothing changes the stadiums every Sunday will no longer have fans piling in, Sunday gameday traditions will no longer exist, and athletes will lose out playing in the top sports industry in the country. In order to protect athletes and prevent them from obtaining CTE, the NFL needs to increase the productivity of its regulatory guidelines and concussion protocols. 
