- Carl Peaslee on Summer Stories Series: "The form is fixed now. It is at the bottom of the post...."
- Kelsey Brown on Letters to Freshmen: The High School Sweetheart: "I believe what she meant was that if you are consumed by your relation..."
- missed the point on Letters to Freshmen: The High School Sweetheart: "I think my name says it..."
- in a relationship on Letters to Freshmen: The High School Sweetheart: "why can't someone feel satisfied with their relationship and be happy ..."
- Jillian on Pimp My Campus: "oooh, new walkway! so excited to see it when I get back!!..."
Football and Brain Trauma
The Stags football team is a solid 3-3 this year. I wish them the best for the rest of the season, but what concerns me even more is the long-term neurological health of the players, particularly the linemen.
Malcom Gladwell’s provocative New Yorker article“Offensive Play: How different are dogfighting and football?” makes quite a bold comparison, as the title suggests. I’m not going to defend the comparison because I think the issue of consent makes all the difference in the world. Even if one ignores the wrongheaded comparision, however, Gladwell’s article is worth reading because of its insightful and disturbing coverage of the neurological damage suffered by football players. In particular, the descriptions of ex-NFL athletes who have suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive neurological disorder caused by repeated brain trauma, is harrowing. Thankfully, the risks of concussions have received considerable media attention and have made athletes, coaches, and trainers more aware of the difficult ethical question involved in deciding how many concussions should a player suffer before he calls it quits.
The neurological dangers associated with football, however, are not limited to the highly visible incidents of concussion. As Gladwell writes,
“A football player’s real issue isn’t simply with repetitive concussive trauma. It is, as the concussion specialist Robert Cantu argues, with repetitive subconcussive trauma. It’s not just the handful of big hits that matter. It’s lots of little hits, too.”
If these little hits can add up to damage as well, football players at all levels of play may be suffering ongoing brain trauma without even realizing it. Data that comes from examining the University of North Carolina’s football team suggests that in an average football season, a linemen could get struck in the head a thousand times. Thankfully, Division III football most likely involves fewer such blows to the head, but by how much is anyone’s guess. These hits matter because Cantu says that people with CTE “aren’t necessarily people with a high, recognized concussion history. But they are individuals who collided heads on every play—repetitively doing this, year after year, under levels that were tolerable for them to continue to play.”
I believe the dangers associated with college football should not be underestimated, but it seems plainly obvious that the degree of risk assumed by the sport is comparable to other popular activities on campus. Basketball, softball, soccer, baseball, and rugby all have moderate-to-high incidences of concussion. Furthermore, as the number of serious alcohol poisonings at CMC can attest, irresponsible partying on the weekend could very well be considerably more dangerous than college football. Clearly, CMC students could very reasonably decide that engaging in a sport they love is worth the expected danger.
What the high incidence of brain damage should make us wonder, however, is why our society so strongly encourages young men to join the sport in the first place. I love football as much as the next college male and this article was inspired after the agony of following the 49ers defeat to the Texans on Sunday. At the same time, I very much wish that I had been given more information about the dangers of the sport before I played high school football. At least in my experience growing up, parents, peers, coaches, and trainers simply never discussed the neurological dangers associated with subconcussive trauma that are inherent in the game (ignorance of the issue is most likely an important factor here). Furthermore, given that one study found that the greatest incidence of concussion was at the high school and collegiate division III levels, we should not fall into the trap of thinking that only multi-million dollar star athletes are exposing themselves to serious risk. Football is a beloved American institution and I don’t expect it to decline in popularity anytime soon, but as a society let us at least be realistic about the dangers of the sport and maybe be a little more proactive in telling our children about those dangers.
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Charlie Sprague
I love to debate, but I hate it when people take arguments about their politics personally. I love to travel for free. It's one of the best things I've gotten from my CMC education. Sunday is often the most frustrating day of my week (I'm a 49ers fan).
Recent
9 Comments
2009-10-27
12:28:22
Good article but this should be a non issue. There are special helmets made which drastically limit concussions and brain trauma. Yet players and coaches for HS to NFL teams don't enforce or even encourage use of these helmets http://newsblaze.com/story/2006010906001600010.mwir/topstory.html). Peyton Manning has been wearing one for years but I can't think of any other prominent NFL players who wear one.
What is worse in the NFL at least, is coaches will often inject their players with pain killers and allow their players to play with major injuries, even when medical staff recommends making them sit. Then the average consumer thinks that these players are "tough" when in reality, they are making risky and stupid moves.And then there are the players who are too embarrassed to tell a coach they are injured. I don't think this is a major issue in d3 sports but I could be wrong.
Personally I think all HS to Pro football teams need to 1) use safer helmets and 2) have a doctor on staff who independently can access players and who has final say on who can or cannot play.
2009-10-27
14:12:11
http://www.mahercorlabs.com/news/article-20090831.htm
The latest research peer reviewed by the Academy of Sports Dentistry and a Harvard MGH specialist, suggests a retainer like Mouth guard used in the NFL and with such programs as the University of Texas, should be considered as part of a return to play protocol. One concussion and your six times more likely to have another, this protocol identifies and corrects a known link to the concussion origin. www.mahercor.com
2009-10-27
19:03:25
I think there's two ways to read this. On the one hand, this is a sincere effort to spread new knowledge about the risks of a dangerous sport. But on another reading, Charlie you seem to betray a desire to expropriate all the risk out of life. Sure football is a dangerous game. Perhaps kids aren't being warned enough about that. But I think we need to be sure that we don't focus on the risks of life to the exclusion of its rewards. The caricature of our generation is that we've been protected from birth from the realities of the world (the "me" generation). At CMC, that's very often true. So I'd say that while there is a risk inherent to playing football, there is also a risk to turning kids into little bitches that are afraid of their own shadow.
Personally, I love playing football, and there isn't a doubt in my mind that I am not only a better person but intellectually more able--concussions and all--as a result of playing the game.
2009-10-27
22:56:34
Patrick, darling, I am concerned when you say that you are afraid that we have focused too deeply on risk and not enough on reward. I think that, in fact, the reward for football is often highlight (ex. NFL pay). We can not reasonably request highschool students (or pop-warner football) to make the decisions that benefit their long term health without regulating the sport.
I am glad to see that you appear to have made it through at least 8 years of playing football without much noticeable brain damage. I hope you can make it through senior year the same way.
2009-10-28
13:40:55
One who has never played Offensive Line will never know--much less understand--what it means to be a member of the International Brotherhood. I wouldn't trade my seven years in the trenches for anything in the world--even Atwater's boyish good looks.
Few are called; fewer are chosen.
2009-10-28
15:32:04
I'm glad you value the football experience so highly. You need to be so defensive; I think Charlie was merely pointing out that bonding with your fellow men in brotherhood and bashing people's heads are not mutually exclusive.
Moving from the feudal system to football has been a vast improvement; the ideal would be if society could value more highly a status game that gives the players that bonding experience without the increased risk of Alzheimers, cognitive impairment, etc.
While we're on the subject, football also discriminates in favor of men that are large and/or very fast, like Shawne Merriman. An ideal status game would discriminate among the participants in some more equal way.
2009-10-28
19:21:29
"An ideal status game would discriminate among the participants in some more equal way."
How are we supposed to discriminate in an equal way? Isn't the point of discrimination, of competition to demonstrate that some people are better than others?
I don't mean to come across as defensive, but I do find it a bit patronizing when intellectuals talk about football-type virtues as these cute little ideals that we can achieve without all the head bashing.
2009-10-28
15:32:31
You *don't* need to be so defensive. Sorry.
2009-11-08
21:45:04
"While we're on the subject, football also discriminates in favor of men that are large and/or very fast, like Shawne Merriman."
lol... isn't this how most sports "discriminate" against athletes... assuming that sports can take part in the action "discriminating". Atwater is right, the point of sports/competition is not equality; in fact it is the exact opposite. The value of competition is to not only better oneself, physically (including speed and strength), but to better one's character and "heart", and will to win. In life there is no such thing as equality, only determination to be the best.