Football and Concussions Go Hand In Hand

Football. The most popular sport in the United States. The amount of children playing this beloved game are, falling? Yes, the number of new participants is declining and with good reason. Obviously football is a physical sport. The point of the game is to hit the guy with the ball as hard as possible and get into the end zone when you have the ball. The important part of that statement is “Hit the guy with the ball as hard as possible.”

Kids start playing full contact, tackle football at the age of 5 and if committed to the game, play until they’re 18 years old. That’s 14 years of taking thousands of blows to the head from another human being. For example, the Virginia Tech Biomedical Engineering Department tracked 19 players at the ages of 7 and 8 during the 2011 and 2012 football season. The researchers tracked 3,061 hits to the head on these players. If you divide 3,061 by 19 for each player, and then 2 for every season, each of those 19 players took an average of just over 80 hits to the head each year. That’s 1120 strikes to the head over a 14 year period if a child were to play from the age of 5 to 18. Also, sixty percent of these 3,061 hits came in practice and 11 of those hits registered at a *G-Force of 80 or greater. To show how dangerous a hit with a G-Force of 80 or greater is, think about this; most hits with a G-Force of 100 or over, are lethal. There are kids out there that are only 20 or less units of G-Force away from killing another child or causing massive brain damage. Death is uncommon in football but in 2013, 8 players died because of blows to the head. Eight is the highest number of deaths since 2001. One death is far too much nevermind 8 but there are being things done to prevent and at least try to limit the forceful impact a person's head takes when hit.

(*G Force is a measurement of the type of acceleration that is caused by mechanical contact-forces between object surfaces, and that indirectly causes weight.)

A pair of Purdue researchers have invented new padding and a new helmet designed to prevent concussions and injuries causing head trauma. Instead of one layer of plastic, like in a normal football helmet, there are two. With shock-absorbing cushioning between the two layers of plastic. The inside of the helmet is also lined with the new padding. The inventors say that the combination of the new padding and the layers of plastic, cuts the G-Forces of the impact in half. For example a hit with a G-Force of 72 would be cut down to somewhere around the area of a G-Force of 36.

Concussions affect the game of peo football as well. Former New England Patriot, Miami Dolphin, and San Diego Charger, Junior Seau, took his life just two years ago because he had severe brain damage from the many hits he took and gave out during his career. When he committed suicide, he shot himself in the chest so scientists could look at his brain for severe trauma. As it turns out, Seau did have major head trauma from clashing heads with other players for so many years.

Another death caused by head trauma in football is the death of former Ohio State football player who just days before dying of an accidental gun shot he fired into himself, told his mother that concussions he had sustained had been clouding his thoughts recently.

If parents are still going to let their children play football at any level, there needs to be stricter safety rules and advanced head protection equipment to keep America’s children safe.

#sport #ball #football #Concussion