Who's To Blame For Football Players?

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 the 1920’s, football players actually died on the field! Insufficient protection and rules against hits, which are banned today, resulted in the death of players. Football rules have changed drastically from the 1920’s through 2016. In the past few decades, NFL owners meet annually to discuss and vote to implement new rules. Three changes to the 2016 NFL football rules, Point After Attempt (PATs), coach to player communication, and chop blocks affects the way the game is played.

Safety and equipment have come a long way in football in order to prevent brain injuries. A very important piece of equipment used to prevent brain trauma is the helmet. The helmet has evolved a lot over the years, even more in the past decade. The Helmets main purpose use to be just to stop skull fractures, then they added the facemask to prevent facial injuries. Concussions are more of a recent concern (Hand 1). Overconfidence in the helmets' protective power prompts many NFL athletes to deliver and accept hits that would have killed players of previous generations. Now the helmet is being revolutionized. Helmets aren't only being created to stop skull and face fractures but they are being created to help prevent brain damage such as concussions now. Helmets have gone through testing to see how to design a better preventative helmet. These newer helmets are being designed to reduce the amount of force that is being applied to the head by a hit that is received (Vandantam 2). Virginia Tech football has been monitoring helmet collisions since 2003, courtesy of Dr. Gunnar Brolinson. Dr. Gunnar Brolinson has outfitted the teams helmets with six sensors and a small antenna that records and transmits data to a computer on the sideline. This information collected is crucial because it will help find better ways to design a helmet that will prevent concussions(Goldman 1). Equipment isn't the only important part of football that can help prevent concussions.

American football has been around since the early 1900's. The players tackle each other until one is on the ground. Football has always been a full-contact sport. Throughout the years injuries have stayed part of the game and the NFL has taken their time to increase player safety. The NFL should increase player safety because of the injuries have occurred. Some of the injuries may be lifetime injuries. Serious brain injuries have been linked to football as, well as heart issues and other permanent heath problems.

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

It is to me understanding that each and every NFL football player is taught everyday to play hard and hit hard. NFL players know that they are taking a massive risk of getting injured every time they step a foot on a football field, whether it be for a game or just practice. If you have the football in your possession, you should be able to take a hit anywhere on your body, even if it is on your helmet. There is no point in time where a line should be drawn. If a player makes helmet-to-helmet contact unintentionally, he should not be fined as much as if it were intentional.

The NFL has established a strong set of rules through the years focused on player safety, designed to promote fair competition while attempting to minimize risk of harm to the player. While many of these rules have focused on reducing contact to the

Helmets are a major guideline that needs to be improved because a helmet is there to protect the head and prevent concussions but it doesn't seem to be doing a good job. Now there's always that question of “why don't we just make the helmet better and more equipped to prevent concussions?”, well we've had football around for years now and if it hasn't been done yet I don't think it will ever be done. According to the North Eastern Undergraduate Writing Journal, since the 1970s, helmets have been made with a polycarbonate shell, a steel face mask, and padding which is just foam and inflatable air bladders. Even though modern helmets maybe more

A great majority of kids and adults football careers are ending shortly because of brain damage and concussions. To this day scientist and people in sports are trying to find a way to decrease the number of brain damage and concussions. There been so many head injuries in the game of football. It got real serious over the past 20 years. In the NFL and College football league, players and coaches can know if someone have a concussion because of the technology they have at the game. It’s mandatory for every team in college, and in the NFL to have doctors and the technology they have at each game they have.

There’s a small amount of data that current sports helmets for youth cut down the risk of brain injuries, according to a national academy of sciences published the year before. Concussions noted in the National Football League are rising dramatically, likely because of a decreased stigma in noting them. Brain injuries reported every week increased by 67 percent from 2009 to 2012.

The league is not changing rules or trying to change the game; the rules already account for devastating hits. The NFL focuses on stricter enforcement of the existing rules and elevated levels of discipline. The league remains concerned with their players and officiating in a way that will protect them. Stricter enforcement at the national level will help protect younger players, those against argued that coaches should be teaching proper technique at all levels, and that will bring the rate of concussions way down.

Playing football is not like playing other sports. Athletes in all kinds of sports risk injuring themselves, but in football, a lot of the risk comes from other athletes. While there are many ways to be injured playing football, one of the worst is head-to-head targeting. This has been a problem in football since the beginning of the game, especially, when equipment was not very protective. Over the past eight years, the National College Athletic Association (NCAA) has implemented rules and penalties specifically designed to protect players and to hopefully reduce the number of bad head injuries (Marshall). The NCAA is doing the right thing by protecting players from severe injury by calling and enforcing targeting penalties.

the NFL has provided a new set of rules to prevent concussions. This rule is called targeting, this means the a player that is tackling cannot lead with his helmet. This rule protects the hitter and the ball carrier. but some people think it's making football less aggressive. Other people think it’s a good idea because it could save their lives and the game that they love most. The referees are taking on more responsibility to protect the players. The families of some players have sued the NFL because there loved one has died due to concussions.

Most old timers and even some of the generation that remember the middle 90’s to early 2010’s football would almost always say that was the greatest time to watch football because the athleticism of the players was not very far behind the players now and they could still do all the hitting they wanted. Many younger people who were probably only babies during those times and are only familiar with today’s football would almost one hundred percent say today’s NFL is the best it has ever been. The player’s on the field are the best they have ever been as far as complete players but these rules the NFL are putting into the game are affecting the attention span of watchers, people love seeing these huge hits a lot of these players have during games, but then they are let down by the refs and the league by them giving them either a suspension or a fine. Watchers of the NFL would love nothing less than them to just adjust the rules so the game can be at least a little more aggressive than it has been in recent memory. There are players out there in the NFL that

Football can be a very dangerous sport. And although those who play the game believe that they are being protected by the helmets that they wear, the truth is that this may not be the case. In a recent study released by the American Academy of Neurology it has been found that “protection against concussion and complications of brain injury is especially important for young players, including elementary and middle school, high school and college athletes, whose still-developing brains are more susceptible to the lasting effects of trauma”(Science Daily, 2014). The study also found that standard football helmets worn by the majority of players on the field today, only reduce the risk of traumatic brain injury by 20 percent compared to not wearing a helmet at all (Science Daily, 2014).