Concussions In Professional Sports

According to Daniel Flynn, the NFL has made vast improvements in safety to prevent concussions. The NFL has implemented a stricter concussion protocol. The NFL concussion protocol watches for players on the field to have any contact to the head, and show symptoms of a concussion. The player that shows symptoms will be pulled off the field and evaluated by a team physician and an independent neurologist. Then, if the player is suspected to have a concussion, he will be taken to the locker room to be evaluated further. If the player is not diagnosed with a concussion, he can return to

In Belson’s article, it is explained that concussions diagnostics and review on the field of the NFL are lacking. This is due to referees and coaches misrule of “St. Louis Rams quarterback Case Keenum, who was not removed from a game despite being disoriented after being knocked to the ground.”(Belson, New York Times, 4 February 2016). Now the NFL’s senior vice president of health and safety policy will have team doctors and league medial personal meet and discuss if they should implement or change rules for safety of the

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

There are many rules set in football to prevent concussions in the NFL. “Once a medical professional or team diagnoses a concussion, the team must develop a treatment plan to manage concussion symptoms.”(Boriboon)

An estimated 1.6 - 3.8 million concussions are sustained each year in the United States, due to recreational sports injuries. (What is a Concussion?, 2016) Ten percent of athletes in contact sports sustain a concussion in a year. Brain injuries cause more deaths than any other sports injury. In football, brain injuries account for sixty-five percent to ninety-five percent of all fatalities. Football injuries associated with the brain occur at the rate of one in every five and-a-half games. In any given season, ten percent of all college players and twenty percent of all high school players sustain brain injuries. (What is a Concussion?, 2016) Eighty-seven percent of professional boxers have sustained a brain injury, five percent of soccer

For many years, the NFL claimed to be working on ways to prevent concussions and other severe injuries; nevertheless, the numbers are continuously rising. Over the preseason and regular season, diagnosed concussions increased 15.6 percent from 2016 to 2017 (243 to 281) and 22.7 percent from 2013 to 2017 (229 to 281) (Maske). The NFL has previously taken measures to lower the numbers, 47 rule changes since 2002 to strengthen the league's medical protocols and protect players from concussions, but those measures were not enough. In 2010, the league expanded its rules to prevent "defenseless" players from taking hits above their shoulders in order to protect them from blows to the head. Also in 2010, the NFL made a rule declaring the ball dead

“Meh, what’s some brain damage gonna hurt”, was a quote that ultimately lead to the death of John McCrae athlete, Rowan Stringer. She was known to be a “leader” and an “amazing rugby player” on her school varsity rugby team according to various sources. The concept that shocks me the most is that she died from second impact syndrome, revealing her brave, yet poor decision that resulted in her unfortunate death. As you can see, concussions can be life threatening. In order to appropriately handle a concussion, one must be aware of the symptoms of a concussion, how to deal with concussions, and the consequences of concussions.

According to SCI, a concussion is defined as a complex pathophysiological process that affects the brain (SCI, 2016). A concussion is commonly known as a mild traumatic brain injury, often sustained in sports, falls, motor vehicle accidents, assault, and other incidents (Cornell, 2015). A blow or jolt to the head that disrupts the normal function of the brain (Brainline, 2015).

Athletes around the world come together every day to compete and with competition comes injuries. Athletic trainers are typically the first responders to assist the athletes and provide diagnoses and treatment. Although injuries are always going to happen the main responsibility of an athletic trainer is to prevent them from happening. There are a wide range of possible injuries in which an athlete can get into, concussions are one of the most common types of injuries during sporting activities. As a matter of fact, concussions occur at a rate of 1.6 to 3.8 million per year during sporting activities (Broglio). However, these figures fall short as there are many concussion injuries, which are unreported by either athletes or coaches and often

Recently there has been a focus on concussions in contact sports, primarily football. Collaboration between athletic associations, safety councils, and the national football league has developed policies on how to provide a safe environment for athletes. The first goal is prevention of head injuries in contact sports, and the second goal is to identify and respond quickly to head injuries in order to diagnose in a timely manner.

“1 in 5 concussions are caused by a head to surface impact.” (NA, November 2015).

This experiment is a descriptive research study that was used to see the amount of knowledge and amount of education college coaches have been given on the topic of Concussions. To see if coaches know the signs and symptoms of a concussion, how to identify if an athlete has concussion symptoms and if the coaches know the recovery protocol for an athlete to return to play. For this experiment, 28,183 coaches of division l, ll, and lll, colleges all over the country were sent an email asking to participate in this study to see how much knowledge and education they have on concussions. This lead to some limitations because they can only do the study on the coaches that choose to participate. But of those 28183 asked, 1818 coaches responded

The National Football League, or NFL, has recently started enforcing strict rules regarding helmet to helmet hits; they are now fining and suspending players who commit vicious tackles or helmet to helmet hits. Many fans, players, and coaches complain against the helmet to helmet rule and grown upset about these newly enforced rules, while many still have favor for the new rule. This latest dilemma stirred up various amounts of controversies around the news and public. Several meetings and discussions took place on how the officials should officiate and make the decisions of how crucial and legal the degree of the hit made on the field. These new rules and fines should remain in the NFL to help ensure the

From the multiple tables above, you are clearly able to get a very good understanding on how concussions are caused within the NFL, the types of plays that most frequently cause concussions, and what the NFL along with the team doctors are doing to help protect these athletes short and long term. As we can see from the first table, the difference was extremely miniscule. This is not to say that these rule changes were a waste however, I strongly believe that the NFL anticipated larger declines in concussions when making those rules but were unsuccessful. In the beginning of my paper my hypothesis was that increased discussions and increased protocols amongst team physicians would have a dramatic impact on the number of concussions per year.

In recent years the NFL has added several safety regulations in order to protect players’ heads’ and better identify/react to concussions. One of the biggest issues in the past was that concussions were not properly identified so players would continue to play with them. This would result in further injury, and as we saw down the road, long-term issues. That is why the NFL created their “concussion protocol” in order to prevent this from happening. The concussion protocol is broke down into 5 steps: