Head to Head Contact

We wouldn't be much without our brains. In fact, it is arguably the very organ that distinguishes us as humans. The brain controls and coordinates action and reaction, as well as rationality and emotion. Without our brains we are empty shells of ourselves, brains our undoubtedly our most precious body part. So, as the intelligent humans that we are, we created a sport where we directly put our most valuable organ at risk!

Football is by far the most popular sport in the United States, and of course the very nature of the game is violence and aggression. It's hard to imagine that originally this game was played without any helmets at all! Recently however, the NFL has come under fire for its ignorance of head injuries in their league. Many former players have come forward in recent years and spoken of permanent brain injuries they accumulated during their careers as players. In the past there was next to no head injury prevention, and no concussion screening on players. Of course with developing technology it has been easier to diagnose and treat the head injuries of players, but still there are limitations.

In the movie Concussion, the NFL is portrayed as the bad guy, in a way that they actively seek to blur the research being done on CTE, a serious digenerative disease caused by repetitive brain trauma. In the movie they obviously don’t want the truth to come out because that would hurt their brand. This isn’t so far from the truth in reality. The league claims they support independent research on the issue, but the continue to trivialize the problem that is CTE. The repetitive nature of clashing heads in the sport of football is of increased concern and debate recently, but the evidence clearly supports that the sport has directly caused this type of traumatic injury.

Photo courtesy of Huffington Post 

In the past the league has actively denied the effects football has had on brain injuries, but recent studies by Boston University have clearly put the issue in the spotlight. Out of a study of 91 former professional players, 87 tested positive for CTE. Similarly, two players have committed suicide in the past ten years, and their brains were donated to attributed universities that did extensive research on them. Both brains held traces of brain trauma that can be linked back to their history in the NFL. This problem has been proven, and put in the spotlight in the past decade. Things have improved, and rules have changed to better protect the players. However, the full impact of these findings have yet to be felt.

A handful of influential players have retired early, before living up to their Hall of Fame hype. Furthermore, parents are thinking twice about letting their children play the sport of football. Why put your child at risk of injury, when football incentive isn’t even close to some of the highest paying sports in the country. A youthful shift can be seen toward the sports of basketball, baseball, and soccer where your risk of brain injury is much less than "America's sport", football. Should we encourage our youth to play a dangerous sport like football, despite the clear findings linked with it?