The Effect of the Instant Replay on NFL Officials Essay

Even though some people believe that the NFL does not need stricter rules to help prevent concussions, stricter rules are definitely needed. According to Casebook in Is Football Too Dangerous, Several NFL players have committed suicide over the last few years, and medical evidence suggests that brain damage-the consequence of years of violent on-field collisions and concussions. This evidence shows that multiple blows to the head have caused CTE in former NFL players that have played a role in their deaths. CTE is a progressive degenerative disease of the brain found in people with a history of repetitive brain trauma (“What is CTE?”). How many more deaths are going to happen to former players before the NFL make the current rules stricter? The NFL can make the current players safer for their futures outside of football. The evidence is there to show why the NFL needs to make stricter rules.

In 1994 the NFL adopted placing radio transmitters in helmets. Paul Brown, Head Coach of the Cleveland Browns in the 1950s, who is arguably the most remarkable coach in NFL history. He was a football genius. Coach Brown, first implemented radios into his quarterback’s helmet in 1954, which was an enormous technological advance in football. Although it was advanced, it had one substantially excessive flaw because the Cleveland Browns used Police frequencies. Otto Graham,Cleveland’s quarterback, once jogged to the sideline to declare to Coach Brown that someone had been stabbed! Despite the incident, it didn’t stop Paul Brown in forever changing the game of football. Surprisingly, the NFL adopted the technology forty years later in 1994! In 2015 the NFL changed the rules so that any coach that calls plays has a radio headset to communicate with the play caller on both sides of the ball. This change allows coaches to call in plays anytime on both offense and defense. The complexity of the game changed due to Helmet communication. Besides updating the player and coach communication, the NFL changed the rule on chop

Among the terms of the agreement is that the settlement is not to be regarded as an admission of guilt by the league." The NFL knows of the dangers the players are in. The rules change but the equipment increased. Without more or better equipment the players are still in danger. In a PBS Frontline documentary about injuries in football Dr. Robert Stern said," In football, one has to expect that, almost every play of every game and every practice, they're going to be hitting their heads against each other. That's the nature of the game. Those things seem to happen around 1,000 to 1,500 times a year. Each time that happens, it's around 20 g or more. That's the equivalent of driving a car at 35 miles per hour into a brick wall." The players in the NFL know the risk of playing but it is up to the NFL to make the sport safe for the players. Many people may argue that since the players know the risk and they are paid for their athletic performance is ok. However you cannot put a price on a person health. There is no way of rationalizing the behavior of the NFL. Yes, the athletes are paid to perform, but it is up to the NFL to make the sport safer. The NBA has increase rules and is aggressively making the sport less physical. In a Radio interview with XTRA 910 a Phoenix, AZ, Former NBA player, Robert Horry said, "… If you

The spectator of this sport has an obligation to the players of the sport, to make sure that the organization is protecting and looking out for them. Yet not only should the viewer be held accountable for the lack of communication in consequences between the player and the pro scene, but the organization of the NFL needs to make sure that their players have a full understanding of what is going on and how they need to protect the players. The current situation that is understood, contents contain implied knowledge that all parties of this table are in uniform knowledge and agreement to what comes of playing football. Finally, this should also happen at the youth level when kids are just getting into the sport, as it would better inform the parents and the kid if they understood the full

Here is why. In 2015, the NFL diagnosed 271 players that had concussions. There has continued to be an increase in the number of concussed players over the past several years. With the continual increase in concussions over the years,it is a reasonable question to ask whether the NFL is doing enough to protect their players or not. I am going to start this issue by discussing a movie I am sure you have heard of. Concussion. A Forensic pathologist named Dr. Bennet Omalu was the first doctor to discover chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in the brain of former Pittsburgh Steelers' center Mike Webster, who was 50, when he committed suicide. Dr. Omalu made the bold statement that football is the reason that Webster had mental issues, and ultimately the reason for his death. There continued to be a trend of NFL players passing at a young age due to mental health issues, and Omalu was certain that all of it was because of football. He examined the brains of these players and found correlations in their brains that suggests that the repeated blows to the head they received during their career caused severe damage. As you can imagine this discovery was a huge threat to the NFL as people and players saw this evidence and couldn't help but be scared about the outcome football has on an individual. The NFL basically just tried to cover up clear facts stated by Omalu, but eventually it became to evident to ignore. This movie made a large issue in the NFL apparent to many people and creating a film to do so was a very effective platform for displaying it. To make a long story short, since this discovery in 2002, there has been a drastic change in player safety rules, concussion protocol and guidelines, and strictness of teams to follow such protocol and guidelines. In

“Particularly given modern technologies that increase the ability to view controversial plays from multiple angles, and ease communication between officials” Berman claims. Not to mention they’ve even made headquarters for it “Professional sports leagues have taken steps to ease this dissension by creating headquarters for all the replays across the league” Berman continues. So it seems it’s not only the fans who want accuracy.

There needs to be more safety in the NFL because of the immediate dangers of concussions. According to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, “a concussion is an injury to the brain that results in temporary loss of normal brain function.”(AANS) The most common symptoms are confusion, dizziness, headaches, memory loss all of which can have lifelong effects. Concussions are a serious injury because it can do a lot of damage to the brain; therefore, there needs to be a way to limit the blows to the head that causes them. If one gets a high number of concussions, then there is a high chance of their life being affected in a negative way. A report published by the NFL states that the number of concussions in 2016 was 244. That is a decline from 2012 when there were 261 concussions. The decline shows that there has been some progress in reducing the amount of concussions in the NFL, but there still are 244 players being exposed to the symptoms that can be an occurrence for their whole lives. The NFL needs to do more to protect its employees from concussions via safety rules. A major problem is the concussion protocol. The NFL states that if a player exhibits symptoms during a game, then they “must be removed and evaluated by the Club medical team,” (NFL Concussion Protocol 4). This seems like a good rule, but there is a lot of gray area in this rule because a team can have an examination, but they can falsely claim that the player does not have a concussion and place him back in the game. In an article for USA Today, Jarrett Bell writes about a play where Indianapolis Colts quarterback, Jacoby Brissett, was hit in the head and it seemed that he would not come back, but the Colts cleared him after one play with no concussion. In the article, Chris Nowinski,

The NFL needs to realize how bad this is getting and how much it affects the lives of these players. Some protection against mild TBI(traumatic brain injury) are helmet standards, Biochemical testing, head-down tackling, impact velocity, and performance of newer helmets. These things are being used to try and help these concussions, but they are not fully working considering that the NFL still have many concussions a year. These people are still having the after effects of these concussions. The NFL needs to put more money into this research and help the tests that

Although making helmet to helmet hits illegal will cause lower body injuries, helmet to helmet hits should be illegal in the NFL for two main reasons. First, Helmet to helmet hits causes concussions, but most importantly, after retirement, players who received several concussions develop serious medical conditions. All this proves that the NFL is doing a good thing for the players and what they are doing is going to help the players in the future. It is proven that players who received concussions during their career develop brain damage after they retired. After doing all the research on this topic, I would have to agree with the NFL by making the Helmet to helmet rule in play in order to decrease concussions, even though the players may dislike

This is very reassuring that rules in the NFL can be changed with the votes of staff and an offseason to implement them. There are many remaining factors to the solution such as enforced suspensions and enforced fines on the players doing the damage, Ryan Wilson an NFL analyst states in his article,”Burfict has now been fined or suspended eight times in 53 games and it's cost him a whopping $805,000”(2). This is one of the many players constantly being fined and never changing. The league also could definitely use more time in order to help injured players and help diagnose concussions and other medical emergencies, Stated by Jason La Canfora,”The league needs medical timeouts because in the case of Chargers safety Jahleel Addae -- who returned to a Thursday night game in October numerous times and then was later diagnosed with a concussion that would keep him out for weeks -- is one that I won't soon forget, and one that seemed preventable with a beefed-up system”(3). This

There are more calls for football to be banned, with many citing numerous safety issues. It is yet to be seen how the league will operate in the future. Hopefully, the NFL can do even more to protect its players in future. This investment is a step in the right direction, both for the league’s image and more importantly player

Throughout history in the NFL, head injuries and fixing those problems have always been hidden from the athletes because of the NFL striving to make a large profit instead of caring for the players. With this being an ongoing problem between NFL players and the NFL itself, many past and current players are digging deeper to find the truth and statistics continue to show how serious this problem actually is. When the lawsuits first began to come known to the public, the NFL agreed to pay over seven hundred million dollars to compensate former players suffering neurological injuries. Many believe the NFL offered this so quickly, hoping to avoid a potential public relations nightmare. The NFL, a ten

If you asked people what the most overblown, ridiculous controversy the NFL has been involved in, most people would agree it’s Deflategate. While it took over two years to settle the case, the losing party, being Tom Brady and the Patriots, seem to have come out on top in the long run seeing how the NFL has dealt with discipline in a very sporadic way since. So my question is, “was the NFL justified in making the disciplinary decision that they made, and has that decision affected controversies after Deflategate?”

NFL teams are too lax on their concussion protocol examination after a player’s head has been hit helmet to helmet. The NFL has protocols for injuries that any player suffers. The main one is the concussion protocol. It’s when a player is hit helmet to helmet. It’s in play due to the fact that players that have suffered a head injury have developed Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). It creates brain tumors that spread and kills your brain

Rules and penalties are known in advance by everyone and they are fair, consistent, and immediate. This attribute was imposed by the “referees” that were constantly walking around to make sure that the house was up to par.