The Baltimore Ravens’ Super Bowl victory over the San Francisco
49ers is making headlines today. But it’s only a momentary
diversion from what has been, and will remain, the NFL’s dominant
storyline: the increasing awareness of head injuries, the
escalating debate over what to do about them — and the growing
sense that football’s long-term survival may hang in the balance.
It seems everyone has an opinion about violence in football,
including President Obama. He told the New Republic a
couple weeks ago that though he is a “big football fan,” if he had
a son, “I’d have to think long and hard before I let him play
football” because of the physical toll of the sport.
Ideas about how to reduce head injuries range from the mundane
(more sophisticated helmets) to the radical (position weight
limits). Here’s an idea that belongs in the latter category: take
the helmets off completely.
The idea might sound crazy at first, but I’m not the only one
who thinks less protection may mean fewer head injuries. Hall of
Fame former Dallas Cowboys Quarterback Troy Aikman has suggested
that ditching helmets could cut down on head injuries, as have
future Hall of Fame Wide Receiver Hines Ward and former 10-year NFL
Quarterback Sean Salisbury.
The one thing everyone can agree on is that concussions have
become a major problem in football.
The number of players with concussions listed on weekly NFL
injury reports has swelled in recent years. According to Concussion
Watch, 170 players were listed on injury reports for
concussions during the 2012 season, nearly double the 92 reported
in 2009.
Similar increases have been reported at lower levels of
football. At the youth level, more than half a million concussions
are
reported every season.
Concussions occur when the brain slams against the skull.
Symptoms include dizziness, blurred vision, and loss of
consciousness. Long-term effects include impaired judgment, memory
loss, poor impulse control, dementia, and depression.
A 2007 study by the University of North Carolina’s Center for
the Study of Retired Athletes
found that the rate of diagnosed clinical depression among
retired NFL players is strongly correlated with the number of
concussions they sustained.
The authors found that 20% of the nearly 600 ex-players who said
they’d sustained at least three concussions were determined by a
doctor to be depressed. That was three times the depression rate of
players who had not sustained concussions.
The suicides of several prominent former NFL players have been
linked to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive
degenerative disease found in ex-players with a history of multiple
concussions.
A 2012
study of nearly 3,500 ex-pros found that they were three to
four times more likely than the general population to die from
brain diseases.
Thousands of former NFL players have sued the NFL, accusing it
of hiding information about the dangers of concussions.
In recent years, the NFL has begun implementing mandatory
guidelines for removing injured players from games and timelines
for when they’re allowed to return.
But many concussions don’t ever make the injury reports. Some
players don’t realize they’ve been concussed, and many others don’t
reveal their concussions for fear of being taken off the field.
The 49ers’ veteran starting quarterback Alex Smith had led his
team to the top of its division and was second in the league in QB
rating when he suffered a concussion in mid-season. During his
league-mandated sit down, back-up Colin Kaepernick took over the
starting role, and Smith rode the bench for the rest of the season
as Kaepernick catapulted to stardom.
When it was revealed that New York Jets Quarterback Greg McElroy
had hid a concussion suffered in a game late in the season, nobody
was surprised, least of all his teammates. As the New York
Daily News
reported, “Every Jets player the Daily News spoke with and
chose to comment said he would consider hiding his concussion.”
The NFL stands for “National Football League” but it also stands
for “Not For Long” because any player unwilling to play through
pain and risk long-term injury for a chance at short-term success
won’t remain in the league for very long.
There is little evidence that today’s helmets prevent
concussions. In a 2011 review of the academic literature on helmets
and concussions titled “Helmets and Mouth Guards: The Role of
Personal Equipment in Preventing Sports-Related Concussions,”
researchers
found that “the hard-shelled helmet… may not be best suited for
protecting against the lower forces that also include a component
of rotational acceleration, which are believed to cause the
majority of concussions.”
The authors concluded: “At this point, there is little evidence
supporting the use of specific helmets or mouth guards to prevent
concussions outside of specific sports such as cycling, skiing, and
snowboarding.”
A better solution may be for players not to wear helmets at all.
A study
found that the Australian Football League, whose players don’t
wear helmets or any other padding but do nearly as much hitting,
reported 25% fewer head injuries than NFL players.
Another idea would be for players to wear leather helmets, as
players did in the first half of the last century.
The hard-shelled helmets (made mostly of hard plastic with some
metal and rubber) in current usage are great for preventing skull
fractures and brain bleeds, but they don’t do much to prevent
concussions.
A 2011 study published in the journal Neurosurgery
simulated on-field collisions for both kinds of helmets and
found that the century-old leather helmets were at least as
good as the newfangled kind in protecting against concussion from
routine football hits.
Over time, getting rid of helmets or using leather helmets would
change players’ behavior. Because helmets are the hardest things on
a player’s body, they make for convenient weapons, and players
routinely turn themselves into human missiles by launching
themselves helmet-first into ball carriers.
The hard-shelled helmets give players a false sense of security.
They make them think they are protected from injury, which
encourages them to play recklessly. As Troy Aikman, who retired
after suffering eight concussions, has
written:
I’ve said the best way to eliminate head injuries is to take
away helmets. Players would be a lot less willing to jump in and
stick their heads in if their noggins weren’t protected. I used to
say that tongue-in-cheek. But I’m starting to believe that’s a
pretty good idea.
It’s similar to the logic that explains why more access to birth
control sometimes leads to more unintended pregnancies. In both
cases, the “protection” gives people an illusion of
invulnerability, which often leads to more and more reckless
behavior. Just as there is no such thing as safe sex, there is no
such thing as safe headfirst tackling.
Without modern helmets, players would be forced to tackle
properly, with their knees bent, chests up, and, most importantly,
heads up, and generally to be more careful on the field.
As a bonus, without those big bulky helmets, players would
become more recognizable to fans. They’d be more marketable for the
league and more attractive as endorsers. Given the sway that money
has in football, it is this last byproduct of ditching helmets that
gives me hope that the idea will at least be considered.
Photo: UPI
