Making Football a Safer Sport

Statistics show that football injuries lead to long-term brain damage due to the high concussion rates. Building different types of helmets will help the concussion rate in all football associations. Some players may die to the brain damage, or if not death then will experience brain disorders. Getting hit in the head in football may lead to brain trauma and increases the risk of brain disease. There have been stories of college athletes who have died from brain injuries all starting from minor concussions. In order to make football a safer sport, all football corporations must implement new rules and equipment to be able to play the game.

One major way the football corporation can prevent injury is by creating enhanced football equipment. In a research, medical technology protocols protect players of all ages by doing not only annual concussion exams, but after every game played. In new creation, certain prototypes of the new helmets are proven to be able to sustain heavy blows to the head and neck area. The use of a neck pad should be mandatory for all players because not only is the concussion a frequent injury in football, spinal cord injuries have been proven to be frequent. The NFL is starting to spend millions of dollars in research to be able to manufacture new safer helmets. Inside of this new helmet will be next level padding and advanced chinstrap clips. The earpads will no longer easily pop out and the helmet will feel lighter, as well as some of the helmets will have their own built in neck pad. The NFL association is also building safer shoulder pads so the players will not sustain major damage on giving and receiving contact.

Football associations around the world need to change the rules on how to properly form tackle. There has been too many situations and occasions where both players have been severely hurt or just a single player. Either way there needs to be tackling protocol and coaches need to reteach proper form. Some of the rules already implemented in the NFL is hitting a defenseless player, they call it targeting. That is grounds for automatic expulsion out of the game. Most of the time most players do not mean to hit other players neck level or higher, but it all happens in certain situations and scenarios. As a defensive player it is proven very difficult to be able to tackle an offensive player if they are running very low, because that is how injuries happen. They defensive player can either not go low and cause a helmet to helmet collision or risk getting ran over with a knee straight to the helmet. Either way that is one difficult situation in football. NFL association has been making progress in creating new rules to prevent major injury for players.

The type of brain injuries players suffer from playing the game of football is life threatening and most of the time, players cannot do anything to prevent it. Injuries do not always occur because of how a players tackles another, it all depends on how much a player can take. How much damage a player can sustain is key to playing the game of football. The NFL knows about the injury rate and how much damage the sport can cause a person, and yet has not changed any crucial rules to affect the game(Resnick 1). Most associations are starting to find out that youth football can be a tremendous cause to injury later on in life. The human brain ??” the most complicated and powerful organ on planet Earth ??” is squishy. And when a person hits their head hard, the brain can bounce around and twist in the skull( Resnick 3). Though the NFL has made rules to stop the helmet-to-helmet rule, it has not changed the way players have hit other players over the years(Resnick 4).

Though not having proper equipment and rules are pretty bad in the game of football, a high percent of players do not suffer injury playing the sport. Especially at the children level, they should not have to stop playing the sport because it builds not only teamwork, but it can build character. Some children were born with talents and are able to avoid bigger hits and not sustain any damage. For example Alvin Kamara is one of the best ever at avoiding all tackles. Therefore he does not get injured. At the end of the day you cannot change the original game of football because everyone knows the risk of it, and if it is a problem then a player does not have to play.

To conclude this paper, statistics do show that equipment and rules not only injure players but it hinders players from making certain plays. NFL association has made certain changes and they should continue until the game becomes safe for everyone to have fun and compete at the same time.

Cite this page