On a scaled-down football field in the heart of Chicago's Grant Park, 6-foot-3, 294-pound defensive lineman Robert Nkemdiche and two dozen other NFL superstars-in-waiting are teaching nearly 100 shrieking, gyrating boys and girls that football is a fun--and safe--game. Pharrell's "Happy" blares over loudspeakers on the eve of the NFL draft, a three-day event that will transform 31 first-round picks into millionaires and dozens of other later-round selections into very wealthy young men. But for these draft prospects seeking a spot on a 53-man NFL roster, putting personal safety first isn't so easy. And that's a price they're willing to pay. "At the end of the day, the game is a dangerous game. It's a collision," Nkemdiche said after the 6- to 14-year-olds taking part in the NFL's youth football clinic finished their running, catching and tackling drills, posed for a group selfie and headed for …show more content…
Concussions and repeated head trauma have been linked to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease also known as CTE. It has been diagnosed in the brains of 88 of 92 former football players examined after death. A study published in the Journal of Neurotrauma last month was even more troubling, finding that repeated blows to the head that fall short of concussions can be just as damaging, if not more so. That's largely why Borland chose to retire from the NFL after just one season, despite the fact that it meant forfeiting future earnings and repaying a portion of his signing bonus. After contacting the leading neurologists in the field, he concluded that there simply were no guarantees for his long-term health as an NFL player. Tarpley concluded the same, explaining on his Instagram feed that he was leaving a game he loved "to preserve my future health" after suffering the third and fourth concussions of his career in a single NFL
CTE is a brain disease found in individuals with annals of head trauma. It has specifically been found in athletes with numerous concussions. So far it can only be diagnosed in the deceased, but Dr. Julian Bales and his staff in UCLA have discovered symptoms in living players such as Hall of Famer Anthony “Tony” Dorsett, Hall of Famer Joe DeLamielleure, and NFL All-Pro Leonard Marshall. CTE can cause memory loss, dementia, depression, suicidal thoughts, cognitive and emotional difficulties (Waldron par 1, 2, 3). Is it a compelling issue? A total of 171 concussions were reported in the NFL in the 2012-2013 season; 88 thus far in the 2013-2014 season (Frontline pt). Those are just numbers in the professional level. There are thousands of kids playing football either in youth, middle school, high school, or college level. The diagnosis is currently in progress, researchers are optimistic this could lead to a legitimate treatment, how to manage, and hopefully a cure. Furthermore, this can also possibly lead to an answer to a connection between football and chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Junior Seau, Mike Webster, Terry Long, and Justin Strzelczyk (all of whom are dead now) are all men who played in the NFL for an extent period of time. This is not the only thing they have in common. These former players had an uncustomary
His former wife, Pam, tells how he took a knife and slashed all his football pictures” (Mihoces). He died September of 2002 and the narrator of a Frontline special on his life said, “The news that day would start a chain of events that would threaten to forever change the way America sees the game of football,"(Mihoces). His brain was examined to find out more about his disabilities and their relation to football.
They are: cerebral neurasthenia, chronic traumatic brain injury, chronic brain injury, compensation hysteria, concussion neurosis, delayed traumatic apoplexy, dementia traumatic, encephalopathy traumatica, litigation neurosis, postconcussion neurosis, post concussion syndrome, post-traumatic concussion state, post-traumatic head syndrome, post-traumatic psychoneurosis, terror neurosis, traumatic constitution, traumatic encephalitis, traumatic encephalopathy, traumatic encephalopathy of boxers, traumatic hysterias, traumatic insanity, traumatic neurosis, traumatic psychosis, and chronic traumatic encephalopathy. (2) Dr. James Noble, a Columbia University neurologist who was invited to write an editorial to accompany the article, said he hopes this case will bring attention to amateur athletes who may be at risk for CTE even if they don’t play professionally. But Eric Nauman, a professor at Purdue a member of the Purdue Neurotrauma Group, said while the case provides more evidence of the danger of repeated impact to the head. Researchers should also be looking for cases of CTE in individuals without obvious symptoms, Nauman said. Toward the end of his time on the field, he felt his brain slowing down and knew something was wrong. He saw himself in the stories of former NFL
"From what I've researched and what I've experienced, I don't think it's worth the risk” (“Chris Borland”). This quotation from former San Francisco 49er, Chris Borland, exemplifies the concern for the increase in occurrence of concussions in the National Football League. A concussion is defined as “a type of traumatic brain injury caused by a blow to the head” (“NFL Concussions”). The debate on who is truly responsible for the injury’s increasing presence in the NFL continues to be disputed in the league today. Whether the blame is to be placed on the administrative personnel of the league or the players and their actions, change is the one common denominator in the stances taken by both sides. The National Football League is not doing enough
After his retirement, he was suffering from amnesia, depression, and dementia. He lived out in his old pickup truck and died of heart attack at the age of 50. The problem was that after the examination, I did not find any abnormalities of the brain whatsoever. I decided to do a self-financed, independent research and analysis of his brain tissue. It costed me a fortune, but it did pay off and I did make a startling discovery. Mike Webster suffered from a degenerative brain disease which I later named CTE. After I presented my discovery to the public, many fans loathed me and I was officially fighting a war against the NFL. In June of 2007, I was invited to a NFL concussion summit and I was planning to present a medical paper I had written back in 2005 on CTE. When I arrived at the summit, I was informed that I wasn’t allowed to speak. I was really disappointed, but Julian Bailes a friend who also assisted me in the discovery of CTE, presented the paper. Unfortunately the paper was turned down and the committee said that there’s not enough evidence and our research was fallacious. Despite the NFL’s denial, I continued to push forward and put more effort into examinations on former players, which costed a lot of money and time. I performed further autopsies on Terry Long, who played eight seasons in the NFL, and Justin Strzelczyk, who played nine seasons and passed away at just the age of 36. Both of these players suffered similar
Concussions have been shown to be the cause of chronic traumatic encephalopathy or “CTE”, which has led to player suicides and other debilitating symptoms after retirement, including memory loss, depression, anxiety, headaches, and also sleep disturbances. “In CTE, a protein called Tau forms clumps that slowly spread throughout the brain, killing brain cells. CTE has been seen in people as young as 17, but symptoms do not generally begin appearing until years after the onset of head impacts.”(What Is CTE). This is why people are studying and trying to understand concussions fully in order to prevent and treat future ones. Concussions are very serious and shouldn’t be taken lightly which is why it has become a major topic in football. As much as professional and young athletes want to prove their toughness and continue to play, new research is proving that concussions are far more dangerous than anyone could have predicted.
Football is one of America’s favorite sports. It originated from soccer and rugby. This kind of sport is very competitive. The main point of the game is to score points by carrying the ball from a starting point to a 100-yard long by 53-yard wide field into a marked zone. Each team has a Y-shaped structured called the field goal the players. The game is divided into timing sections ranging from 12 to 15 minutes quarters. Often times, the players become violent during the game. This happens when they have to tackle each other for the ball. During this tackling period, players injured, but like anything in life it possesses risks known to the athletes before signing a contract with the NFL’s (National Football League) owner.
It was also discovered that in relation to that, one in every 20 NCAA football players will be diagnosed with a concussion per season. A shocking fact is that more concussions are received at the high school level, than the youth and collegiate levels combined and doubled. Concussions have become such a fear, that NFL players are retiring and giving up millions of dollars just to prevent themselves from getting them. Chris Borland, a former linebacker of the San Francisco 49ers retired after last season to, what he claimed, do what was best for his
Since much of a player’s life is manage by his team, whenever a player obtains an injury, all of the player’s medical treatments are handled by the team and the team doctor. Furthermore, the organization is required to report that an injury has occurred and the type of injury. The doctors responsible for treating the players should be focused on regaining the player’s health and strength so the player can continue with his life and football career as quick as possible with no long term effects. However, this idea does not seem to be a reality among NFL teams. Many NFL doctors have been obeying the directions of the same stingy owners that neglected Dexter Manley. With this direction, NFL doctors have been losing sight of any concept of ethics, and the doctors have been aiming to get the players back on the field as soon as possible. This aim does not solely affect the treatment of players, but also the reporting of injuries. For example, Calvin Johnson, an All-Pro wide receiver and future Hall of Famer for the Lions, could not even count the number of concussions he has had. In fact, when he was asked about whether or not he had an exact number he answered “It’s simple to get a concussion, you know. … I don’t know how many I’ve had over my career, you know, but I’ve definitely had my fair share” (qtd in “Calvin Johnson’s Retirement”).
Several conditions can occur when the brain gets continual damage and does not have the adequate time to heal in between injuries. One of those conditions is called Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is a progressive degenerative disease which can only definitively be diagnosed postmortem, most frequently occurring in people with multiple concussions in their lifetime. The research into this condition began in 2002 and is relatively new and since it can only be studied after death, it has been harder to study. The Boston University School of Medicine began studying the brains of deceased former NFL players and published a study on CTE in 2016 that showed that 90 of the 94 brains they studied had CTE. Former NLF player’s families have sued the NFL due to injuries sustained during their careers that lead to their deaths. There was a settlement in 2013 with over 4500 player’s estates. But football is not the only sport that is effected by repetitive concussive brain injuries, but it is the large number of NFL injuries that is bringing this extreme medical topic to the forefront of the news.
Chris borland recently left football after signing with the NFL for only one year because he deemed it too dangerous. He is not the only one either. Corey Robinson, son of a football hall of famer, left football for the same
I conducted research regarding head injuries such as concussions in athletes and came across to find many sources have said the leading cause of death from sports-related injuries is traumatic brain injury. Traumatic brain injury can happen when the head suddenly and violently hits an object, or when an object pierces the skull and enters the brain tissue. A concussion is a part of traumatic brain injury which happens a lot in sports like football. According to a report made by NCCSIR, several football players associated with brain trauma complained of headaches or had a previous concussion before deaths. There have been suggestions made that the cause of concussions in football players happen because of many hits over time not by a single
Later on, in the publication Omalu also stated, "We herein report the first documented case of long-term neurodegenerative changes in a retired professional NFL player consistent with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). This case draws attention to a disease that remains inadequately studied in the cohort of professional football players, with unknown true prevalence
Over the past several years, concussions and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) have become hot topics in the world of football. The long lasting effects of concussions and CTE experienced
Football is a fun sport to play for kids in high school and in college. Football is too dangerous to play in high school because you can get injured, lose a career, and get disease call C.T.E When kids play football, they think they won’t get hurt but they do. There’s other sports out there to play but they rather play football. That’s why people shouldn’t play football at all.