There’s little doubt that football remains the king of sports in this region. Events of the past weekend — high school and college championship games — provide solid evidence to support that contention. If additional validation is needed, one need only to remember that faithful followers of University of Tennessee football filled Neyland Stadium in Knoxville for every game this year, despite the team’s so-so record. If there’s a problem with football these days, it is with the increasing physical toll the game takes on those who play it.
Hardly a game passes these days without play being stopped for trainers and medical personnel to care for an athlete knocked senseless by a hard, but legal, tackle. That’s true at all levels of the game — middle and high school, college and professional. There are reports, as well, of kids being concussed in youth league games. The rising incidence of concussions understandably prompts concern about preventing the injuries and about their short- and long-term consequences.
Prevention is difficult. The number of concussions in football (and, to be fair, in other sports, too) is a direct result, experts say, of the size, strength, weight and speed of the modern-day athlete. Their increased mobility and power have eclipsed the ability of the best-engineered equipment to acceptably protect players from direct and indirect blows to the head. The result — woozy players, concussions and the risk of permanent impairment — is readily apparent.
Concussions, of course, are not new to football. What’s new is the knowledge of how dangerous a concussion can be. For too long, a possible concussion was treated cavalierly. It was not unusual for a football player to be told that a concussion was similar to any injury that could be overcome by “toughing it out.” How wrong and how dangerous that attitude was has become apparent in recent years.
A growing number of studies indicate both the immediate and cumulative toll of concussions. Some studies indicate that it can take several days or longer for an athlete to return to normal mental function. Others show that suffering one concussion increases the likelihood of suffering an additional one and that repeated concussions require increasingly longer recovery periods. More frightening still, research indicates that the damage caused by concussions can have a lasting effect. Those are horrible prices to pay for engaging in sport.
Major efforts are under way to address the risk of concussions. New recommendations govern how soon a player can return to a game after suffering a concussion. Rules now protect players and penalize those who deliver blows to the head. Equipment manufacturers are working diligently to produce more protective headgear. Still, the chances that concussions will be eliminated completely are dim. If that’s the case, additional efforts are required.
Parents, coaches and medical personnel should work in concert to reduce concussions and other injuries. If that means employing unpopular rules to protect players or to determine when and if someone injured can return to play, so be it. Football is popular, but that popularity should be tempered by an awareness of the constant risk of serious injury to those who play it.