How To Avoid Concussions

Hello everyone. I am aware that many of you in this room participate in collegiate sports and many of these facts that I will inform you one you may not like to hear but I feel that it is important for people to know. According to NCAA.org, 10,500 brain injuries have occurred, 3,400 of which have been from football alone. In addition to this, 30% of these have been in females. Brain injuries are extremely hard on the body and can result in life long damage or even death, and it is very important for the student athletes to be aware of these risks and what they can do to prevent them.

Recreational athletes, competitive athletes, high school athletes, college athletes, and professional athletes all have one thing in common: the risk of a concussion. It's impossible to go a season without one athlete from a team receiving a concussion. The more that these concussions are studied, the more we learn about them, such as their detrimental effects on athletes. Because of the risk of health issues and death that come with concussions, doctors, coaches, athletic trainers, and lawmakers are stepping in to protect athletes of all levels from receiving concussions.

Football is one of the most beloved sports in the United States. It is one of the most violent bone crushing sports, leaving players permanently injured for life in some cases. The most common injury that football players suffer from pee-wee through the NFL is the concussion. A concussion is a traumatic brain injury that changes the way your brain works. The effects of a concussion are usually temporary and can result in a full recovery if its minor and treated correctly. A concussion can lead to brain problems later in life, even after a player has finished playing football. This is why people are studying and trying to understand concussions fully in order to prevent and treat future ones. Concussions are very

Football head injuries are a big concern in the NFL and youth football, due to the contact in football there's damage that is done to the brain that can cause health issues to individuals players as they get older, it leads to long term mental problems caused by concussions which is when your brain crashes into your your skull. There isn't a technology that can prevent a head injury one hundred percent. Football head injuries are more commonly found in high school than in college and NFL. The effects to the brain of a football player with a head injury are long term in the end.

An increasingly popular topic in the realm of sports fans has begun to unravel. The National Football League recently has begun to introduce new rules and regulations for their athletes to start abiding by to ensure the continued safety of the player’s health. Although most find this change in the game of professional football as a positive step forward, others see this as a diminishment of the sanctity of NFL football. New rules and regulations that have been introduced into NFL are vital to athletes involved in the sport and help them to play with lowered risks of long term injuries that could possibly affect not only them but also the league in the future as well. The reasons for these

Concussions can occur virtually anywhere, and everyone is at risk of getting a concussion, whether they participate in sports or not. Athletes, who take part in any kind of contact sports, no matter the age level, are all susceptible to suffering from a concussion. Football is one of the sports that expose young athletes to higher risk in getting a concussion. According to Headcase, football is said to have one of the highest concussions rates (64-76.8) when being compared to other sports. According to a study done by Frontline, high school football players are twice as likely of getting concussions compared to college players. In the study conducted, there was a rate of

Getting a concussion in NFL football is completely different than concussions in high school, Middle school, or little league football. After getting a concussion myself and watching “League of Denial” I realize how serious they are and how poorly the NFL treated them. The NFL never had any professionals researching what the long term effects of getting concussions over and over were, They just assumed that it wasn't that big of a deal. They would put people back into the game even after they knew that they had a concussion which put them at a bigger risk than before. This makes me scared because they started to say that high school and middle school football players are allowed to go back into the game after their

In the NFL there are many different types of injuries that occur some more serious than others, however one type of injury sticks out the most when it comes to trauma after they retire, that type of injury are concussions, concussions are a very serious issue because, they can ultimately lead to CTE and the retirement of young players, this ultimately will be the demise of the NFL if something is not done. There are many signs of concussions such as headaches, imbalance, memory loss, and confusion. One of the main issues with concussions in the NFL is the way they are treated, Dr Dias Jr. stated in a recent article he published,” 91 former NFL players

Herm Edwards former football player and coach told SB nation, "If you're injured, you can't play. Hurt? The only guys who don't hurt in football are the ones who don't play,” (Bien). Although Herm Edwards does make a good point, there is a major difference between getting some bruises and permanent brain damage. Football players will not protect brains but a better protocol will. The protocol should reduce the risk of brain damage (Kilgore). Concussions have enough of an impact that they can affect someone long term. It is evident that this is something that in the future a former athlete would regret. Protocol needs to be enforced and more strict if there is any hope of saving these football players from doing something they might

Now I feel that we take care of concussions better in highschool so you wouldn't see brain diseases as much, I wouldn't rule it out fully because it depends on how hard the player is hit and things like that but i do believe we take more time now in making sure the athlete is truly okay and will not have them return to any game and or practice without seeing a physician first.

Football is a very dangerous sport in general so many precautions should be taken to reduce the injury risks as much as possible. The NFL is working on putting some rules together and getting new programs involved but they are not enough to stop the concussion crisis. Along with that, the rewording of the rules they are doing are only making it easier to have evidence on paper that they tried to stop it incase of a legal case. Many players have sued the NFL and currently they are proposing a 765-million-dollar settlement on concussion related issues alone (Family of former San Diego Charger Paul Oliver sues NFL claiming concussions caused suicide). In the 2014 season alone, there were two noted cases of players continuing to play in a game with concussions and head trauma.

First, I am going to talk about the science behind concussions, CTE, and why it is such an issue for a football player. Concussions are very damaging to the brain and experiencing a lot of them can lead to CTE. I will also discuss people that influenced the understanding of concussions and CTE. In 2002, a neurologist named Dr. Bennet Omalu tried to tell the NFL about the brain damage he found while doing a former NFL player’s autopsy, but the NFL did not really listen. In 2009, another researcher by the name of Dr. Ann Mckee tried to get the NFL’s attention about her concerns about football players and concussions as well. The NFL once again ignored these assumptions. However, the NFL did listen to Dr. Elliot Pellman, who told the league as early as 1994, that concussions were not a big problem and just part of the game. I will discuss how NFL players were treated when they got their “bell rung” during a big game; and what kind of medical treatment they

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.

Blankets are put down at 4 p.m. to reserve a seat. Streets become deserted and restaurants empty just before 7:30 p.m. kickoffs” (B. 12). While football is one of the most loved sports; it is also one of the more dangerous. Many football players will endure bone fractures, ankle sprains, and knee injuries, which are very common; but the injury high school football seems to attract the most is head injuries.Head injuries can have a lasting effect on high school players and tend to be very common. Some people consider the players at fault, while others will blame the helmet manufacturing, coaches, or even the parents. High school players are almost always overlooked and many problems can arise. Therefore coaches, players and parents need to take more responsibility and see that there are solutions to prevent concussions and eliminate such a common problem among high school players.

A recent study of college football players has shown that those who participate in high contact sports and have had a concussion before have a 300% higher chance of having another one in comparison to athletes that have never had a concussion before (Jolicoeur et al, 2007). The NFL and NCAA have enacted several rule changes in order to minimize the occurrence of concussions. These new rules, like many before them, have come under the scrutiny of the very athletes that they were meant to protect. The NHL and NHL Players Association in 1997 together created a program in order to get a better understanding of concussions and how to prevent them (Burke et al, 2011). According to Covassin (2008), athletes who have had more than one concussion take a longer time to recover with each concussion that they suffer from.