America Is in a State of Denial When It Comes to Football
By Ken Reed
The Huffington Post
October 23, 2013
Two excellent documentaries about the concussion crisis in football, The United States of Football and League of Denial, have recently come and gone. oth films garnered some attention from the general public. But instead of spurring a national discussion about the safety of the game and what to do about it — from the peewee level to the NFL — it’s back to business as usual for players, coaches and parents.
It’s a classic case of avoidance behavior. As a nation, we love football and we don’t want to deal with the giant elephant in the room: football is a game that’s inherently dangerous to the human brain, and there’s really not much we can do about it.
Football is our great escape. It’s fun. It’s entertainment. We don’t want reality to intrude.
But intrude it must because we’re talking about people out on our football fields, not robots.
The brain simply wasn’t built to withstand a game based on violent collisions. That’s especially true for children, those 18 and under, whose brains aren’t fully developed, and thus more vulnerable to trauma.
That fact, along with the fact that we have approximately 3.5 million youth football players and 1.3 million high school football players in this country, means the national spotlight needs to move from the relatively few adults playing professional football in the NFL to children playing youth and high school football.
Here’s a brief synopsis of what we know today regarding football and the brains of our young people:
According to the Brain Injury Research Institute, 20 percent of high school football players sustain brain injuries in any given season. That’s one out of five boys who are playing for the local high school football team.
It gets scarier. A Purdue study revealed that high school football players who were concussion free and didn’t have any symptoms from brain trauma, actually had brain tissue damage similar to those players who had suffered concussions. Think about that for just a second… it means our sons are suffering brain injuries from subconcussive hits without coaches, trainers, parents or the athletes themselves even being aware of it.
The average high school football lineman takes 1,000 — 1,500 shots to the head during a single football season, according to Boston University researchers. As such, the human brain literally gets abused during a typical high school football campaign.
The picture isn’t any prettier in Pop Warner and other youth leagues.
Consider a 2012 study done by Virginia Tech and Wake Forest researchers. The study measured the g-forces of impacts to the heads of 7-year-old tackle football players and found that the impacts in a 7-year-old football game were comparable to those found in an adult football game — some of them at 40gs.
“It looks like a pillow fight,” Chris Nowinski, co-director of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy, said of peewee football games, “but the brain thinks it’s in a war.”
Unfortunately, there is no magic bullet — or in this case, magic helmet — that’s going to save the day. Helmets are great for preventing skull fractures, but not for preventing concussions or sub-concussive brain trauma. That’s because the brain is like Jell-O bouncing up against the walls of the skull. It’s the whiplash effect that leads to concussions. That’s why players can receive concussions without even being hit in the head. A blow to the chest can send the brain splashing against the skull with as much force as some head-to-head shots.
Admittedly, there are still a lot of answers about brain trauma, concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease associated with brain trauma, that we don’t have. For example, why do some football players get CTE, and others don’t? Is there a genetic predisposition?
(By the way, Ann McKee, a neurologist, pathologist and one of the country’s leading brain researchers, has said, “Most NFL players are going to get this (CTE). It’s just a matter of degree.”)
My question is why do we have to wait for all the answers before we act? The growing mound of research we have is certainly overwhelming. We didn’t wait until we had all the answers on cigarettes and lung cancer before we took action as a society.
One thing seems clear. We need to move the focus of the concussion discussion in this country from the NFL — and even the college game — to the high school and youth levels. As a whole, children between the ages of five and 18 certainly don’t have the full capability, or level of maturity, to unilaterally give their consent to playing football.
This one’s on us. We need to stop avoiding the issue and have a serious discussion about it.
According to public health researchers Lewis and Gregory Margolis, “Football-related head trauma and concussions have raised sentinel alarms, so all who care about children and young adults must not remain silent as this epidemic spreads.”
What we need is a national town hall meeting on football, concussions and brain trauma so we can collectively address this issue head on. And who better to host and televise such a town hall than ESPN, the “worldwide leader in sports”?
After pulling out of its production partnership with PBS’ Frontline on the League of Denial documentary in order to protect its relationship with the NFL, ESPN owes us one.
Ken Reed is Sports Policy Director for League of Fans
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"How We Can Save Sports" author Ken Reed appears on Fox & Friends to explain how there's "too much adult in youth sports."
Ken Reed appears on Mornings with Gail from KFKA Radio in Colorado to discuss bad parenting in youth athletics.
“Should College Athletes Be Paid?” Ken Reed on The Morning Show from Wisconsin Public Radio
Ken Reed appears on KGNU Community Radio in Colorado (at 02:30) to discuss equality in sports and Title IX.
Ken Reed appears on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour (at 38:35) to discuss his book The Sports Reformers: Working to Make the World of Sports a Better Place, and to talk about some current sports issues.
- League of Fans Sports Policy Director Ken Reed quoted in Washington Post column titled "What happened to P.E.? It’s losing ground in our push for academic improvement," by Jay Mathews
League of Fans is a sports reform project founded by Ralph Nader to fight for the higher principles of justice, fair play, equal opportunity and civil rights in sports; and to encourage safety and civic responsibility in sports industry and culture.
Vanderbilt Sport & Society - On The Ball with Andrew Maraniss with guest Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director for League of Fans and author of How We Can Save Sports: A Game Plan
Sports & Torts – Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director, League of Fans – at the American Museum of Tort Law
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