Safety Rules and Measures in Professional Football

Is pro-football too lethal for the players and does it make too much money for the NFL to be disbanded? Football came from the ancient Greek game called harpaston, which was a very rough and brutal game. The only rules were that points were awarded when a player would cross a goal line by either kicking the ball, running the ball across the goal line, or throwing the ball to a player that is across the line. All the other team had to do was stop the team with the ball by any means possible. Fast forward to England where the game became so popular that the kings banned it to keep the interest on traditional sports of England. In the 1830s, eighteen foot goal posts were in use with a crossbar ten feet off the ground. The crossbar was added because of the rule that a goal could only be scored if the ball passed over the crossbar from a kick. This was to make scoring easier and to avoid the horde of defenders clogging up the mouth of the goal. The offside rule was also created here to keep the teams apart, and the ball could not be passed forward yet. By the mid-1860s, football came to America. Football was born in America on November 6, 1869, when Rutgers and Princeton met for the first intercollegiate football game. Twenty players was the max number of players on the team, and it was more rugby than modern football. Football’s history is full of constant rule changes. The changes in rules were to bolster the excitement of the game and to make the game safer. In 1905, President Roosevelt tried to help save the sport with the colleges Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, because of concern about the increasing brutality of football which led to it getting banned by some colleges. This is because 180 players suffered injuries and 18 deaths were reported from the brutal mass plays that become normal practice. At a meeting between the schools, the group appointed a seven-member Rules Committee which became the NCAA. This group legalized the forward pass. Officials of the game of football has always tried to make the game safer. Pro-football is not too dangerous and should not be banned because of the new advancements in equipment, changes in rules for safety, and research on how to prevent concussions and other body trauma.

The helmet that can save football is being made in Sweden it can save football because of the way it will change the impact of a hit. On average athletes in the U.S. suffer 3.8 million sports-related concussions each year. “Pro football players receive as many as 1,500 hits to the head in a single season (Foster 2).” That equals 15,000 hits in a 10-year playing career not counting college and high school. The consequences are concussions and permanent brain damage. However, Swedish scientists have made a helmet that could protect everyone. Following their lead, other companies have come up with new designs. Technology that could help with this exist, helmets can be modified to help put this problem behind them. In December of 2010, Bill Simpson, a car racing safety equipment maker, happened to be at one of the Colts games where a player got a concussion and was helped off the field. After the game, he asked his friend, the offensive coordinator, what happened to the player. Simpson is known as the godfather of safety in auto-racing so he saw a chance to help a friend and ran with it. Simpson thought he could make a better football helmet, so he did. By 2011, the Colts were wearing an experimental version of the helmet. Simpson released his finished SGH helmet in October 2012. Simpson said that his helmet uses a composite shell made of carbon fiber and Kevlar with an inner layer of adaptive foam made of styrofoam-like beads. Simpson’s designs are better than the mainstream helmet makers: polycarbonate shells filled with various densities and thicknesses of padding. The Swedish helmet is the weird looking Guardian Cap which is a padded sock that slips over a helmet adding better protection. However, the most used helmet is a bright yellow layer of molded plastic attached with small rubber straps between the padding and the head. This is the Multidirectional Impact Protection System (MIPS). The idea is that the plastic layer sits on a player’s head allowing the head to float during an impact, which can reduce some of the rotational force before it hits the brain. In a normal hit there are about 170Gs of linear force, and it rotated 14,100 radians per second squared. With the addition of the MIPS layer, it had a rotation of 6,400 radians per second squared, a 55% reduction. This shows that if this would have been a football player, he would have walked away from a game ending impact without a concussion. This is the first of many changes to make the game safer.

NFL’s safety campaign includes rule changes to make the game safer. It is the latest in a series of changes to make the violent sport safer these rules are trying to discourage certain kinds of hits. Jim Gossett is paid to watch football games as an athletic trainer and injury spotter for the NFL (Perrone 2). This season he is able to actually stop the game. The League is giving spotters the power to call a medical timeout. Football is becoming a safer game than it has ever been. The health and safety concerns of players is predominate, and implementing the medical timeout proves this. The timeout rule provides an extra safeguard for players. The trainer in the press box is now able to stop the game to tell medical to check out a player. Experts are saying that the recent rule changes have made football safer. The key rule changes are moving up the kickoff line to reduce returns, providing rules to protect defenseless players, eliminating blocks from behind, and a much stricter concussion examination and return-to-play protocol.

NFL concussion research improves to better understand how to prevent more. To understand why helmets are not better at reducing concussions first people must know what the injury is. It is basically invisible (Foster 3). The most advanced medical- imaging technology is not good enough to create a physical picture of the injury. Concussions are caused by two different forces, linear and rotational acceleration. Linear acceleration is a straight line of force from the point of impact, which is what causes skull fractures. Rotational acceleration occurs during hits at an angle from the brain’s center of gravity which is a factor in most hits. Most hits are off-centered because the human head is not square, so most acceleration is rotational. The human brain is an irregularly shaped blob of Jell-o inside a shell lined with ridges and cliffs. After a tackle, the blob moves irregularly. Rotational forces hurt nerve cells more than linear forces. It does not only stretch, but twist as well which leads to a greater chance of nerve damage. The brain is moved millimeters on impact, but this small movements cause nerve strain and damage neurological functions. The number and kind of hits it takes to cause a concussion is unknown. Concussions of NFL players is a prevailing issue which has gotten a great deal of attention. There is a 35% decline in concussions during the regular season from 173 in 2012 to 112 in 2014. Nable was hired to be the sport’s senior medical expert. Nabel supported medical research for improving player safety, gaining a better understanding of behaviors and physical health, and increasing communication in regard to the health and safety of NFL players. They are taking on concussions with the help of rule changes and enforcement, injury protocols, and improved equipment. Technological advances have centered around helmets. The Helmet Testing Study is led by Dr. Jeff Crandall, who is chairman of the NFL’s Engineering Subcommittee. He tested the helmets by strapping them to test dummies and had them endure impact velocities that mimicked on-field collisions. He then put out a list of the top ten helmet designs that passed the test.

Football’s most dangerous practice is not being taken care of by officials. Over the course of their athletic career, players sustain more hits in practice than in games (Football’s 1). Other research shows blows to the head can impede academic performance. A single season can lead to brain abnormalities. The NFL’s news of head injury gets worse and worse. New research examined the brains of 91 dead football players and found CTE in 96% of them. The study also found that 40% were linemen, which bolsters early evidence that repeated minor blows to the head could be more dangerous than a single violent hit. The problem is that most coaches cannot recognize a concussion, and players are too stubborn to tell about a concussion so they can stay in the game. Football is violent, and none of these steps will prevent injuries. Coaches and officials need to know how dangerous hits to the head can be.

A beloved American tradition, that is usually followed by a heavy cash flow, is the Super Bowl. This is hosted by the National Football League, which allows then to control what plays before, after, and during the Super Bowl. Ad spaces for this years super bowl went for as much as $5 Million dollars and spectators were willing to pay $4,600 minimum for game day tickets at secondary merchants.

The NFL’s naysayers have only grown, this has caused the league to be able to deflect some of the concerns over the impact the game has on the player's health by expanding the resources they put into research. Even though these measures have been taken, 87 out of 91 former NFL players have been diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, also known as CTE. This counties to trigger debates on the fate’s game in the future, whether it be in peewee or the pros. Even after more than 5,000 ex-players sued the NFL, saying it hid the dangers of head injuries, the league has so far denied claims the sport is dangerous. League Commissioner Roger Goodell doubled down on the game’s safety. Doctors have known about CTE since the 1920s, when it was primarily associated with boxers and referred to as “dementia pugilistica,” according to Robert Stern, director of clinical research for Boston University’s Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center. The link between CTE and football didn’t pick up steam until 2005 when forensic pathologist Bennet Omalu published research following his diagnosis that retired NFL star “Iron Mike” Webster had CTE.

“It took the diagnosis in a professional football player, after death, to make this more of a salient topic, even though we’ve known about it in boxers for so long,” said Stern. CTE is a degenerative disease that’s similar in ways to Alzheimer’s disease, but also different from other brain diseases in that it’s neither a brain injury nor cumulative. “The thing with CTE that’s different with Alzheimer’s and other degenerative diseases is that we know the thing that gets it started — exposure to repetitive head impacts,” Stern said. “CTE is a brain disease that gets started early in life.” Symptoms of CTE include cognitive impairment like memory and multitasking; mood problems like depression and apathy; behavior changes like aggression and impulse control; and, most rarely, motor problems like body tremors or difficulty making facial expressions.

First ever international division game was played in the United Kingdom, which was possible because the NFL’s 2015 London schedule included a handful of international first. Games in London will be played on consecutive Sundays for the first time due to this. October 2015 is when the first game was played by the Miami Dolphins and the New York Jets at London’s Wembley Stadium. Jets Chairman (CEO) Woody Johnson stated, “We are honored to represent New York, New Jersey and the National Football League in London, and for the opportunity to showcase this organization on a global stage… playing in Wembley Stadium gives us a chance to welcome ever more fans, all over the UK, to Jets Nation.” The Jacksonville Jaguars hosting the Buffalo Bills on October 25, will showcase the first-ever live stream of an NFL to a global audience. In 2015 the International Series will conclude in Week 8 with Kansas City Chiefs hosting the Detroit Lions on November 1. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell stated “They’re responding to the game better than we ever dreamed, with more enthusiasm and more passion.”

Using public money for sport facilities and events is a worldwide incident that can occur at any level of government. The Portugal government spent around $732 million to host Euro 2004, (Economic Impact of Sport Stadiums, Teams, and Events). Seven new stadiums were built using public money in a country roughly the size of Indiana. Portugal's spending was looked at as a joke compared to the cost associated with the 2002 world cup, which was hosted by South Korea and Japan. Japan’s facilities that they built cost around $4.5 billion, included 7 new stadiums and 3 renovated others. South Korea spent $2 billion on 10 new buildings. But, the olympics cant even compare to these numbers. In Greece, the government spent 12.8 million to hold the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. The Chinese government invested over $43 billion for the Beijing Games in 2008.

Obviously this type of spending is going to take some planning; this means cities take on the constructions projects long before they are given status to host. In the 2002 Salt Lake City began working on distributing the money from public spending. A portion of state and local sales tax revenue was diverted to fund the construction of bobsled, luge, speed skating, and the ski jump facilities. Even though they started in 1990, they were not awarded the title of host until 1995. The facilities all eventually hosted professional baseball or football teams. From 2000 to 2009, 31 major league stadiums and arenas opened up across urban America. This was roughly $8 billion dollars. This type of spending has generated a great deal of attention in top-level professional teams. These are rarely built to attract new teams, most of the time they are built to replace existing facilities. Former home of the Bengals and MLB Reds, Cincinnati’s Cynergy Field, was replaced by two new stadiums built with over $600 Million in subsidies from Hamilton County. There were also multiple facilities built to replace Three Rivers Stadium and Veterans Stadium. The cost of football/baseball stadiums are about $300 million dollars higher than those for basketball or hockey arenas.

The safety level of the game is steadily increasing every year with all the changes made. New helmets are making the game safer along with other equipment changes. The rules of the game are constantly changing to make injuries less likely. The NFL is now researching injuries caused by the game and better ways to avoid them. Football is no longer too dangerous to play because of the new helmets, new rules, and understanding the injuries caused by the game.