Editor’s note: This commentary is by Walt Amses, a writer and former educator from North Calais.
[A]ugust slipped through the screen door while we were busy trying to absorb as much of this summery summer as we could. As specks of red and yellow begin to adorn the crowns of sugar maples and evenings are noticeably shorter, it can only mean one thing: Brain injury season is right around the corner. As college, high school and even elementary kids head off to football camp or endure two-a-day practice sessions weeks before Labor Day, the National Football League has already begun its annual propaganda campaign, misrepresenting the results of a study designed to reduce both injuries and concussions that has been adopted by schools across the country, including those in Vermont.
Heads Up Football has been touted by the NFL and USA Football — youth football’s overseeing body — as reducing injuries by 76 percent and concussions by about 30 percent and has been marketed to parents and leagues across the country as a huge step toward making football safer. The only problem is that the program does no such thing according to an investigative report by the New York Times, which found that “Heads Up Football showed no demonstrable effect on concussions and significantly less effect on injuries overall.” In 2015 every high school in Vermont implemented Heads Up tackling techniques presumably based on the bogus research used to sell the program nationally.
Although erroneously convincing potential players and their parents that football has been made much safer is certainly bad enough, the real problem is that the focus on concussions glosses over the kind of intense contact that occurs on almost every play, which is essentially the object of the game. Head injuries do not have to rise to the level of a concussion to cause problems for players. Repeated sub-concussive blows to the head have been demonstrated to be dangerous to young brains, causing damage to the brain’s protective barrier as well as changes to the brain’s structure and function.
This kind of sleight of hand can be expected from the $12 billion a year super corporation that is the NFL, but when it comes from a Vermont football coach it strikes much closer to home and consequently, is more troubling. Last spring the head coach of a Chittenden County high school football team, in a commentary on VTDigger, touted the Heads Up program among a host of other changes — all quite commendable — to reduce injuries and make the game safer for all Vermont players. He rightfully pointed out the benefit of sports to an increasingly sedentary population of children and teens, the character built through teamwork, and the leadership skills that a player can develop through competition that generalize to real-world situations.
Stopping there would have been prudent. Instead he went on to suggest that “contrary to popular belief, football is not as dangerous as people may perceive it to be,” contending that “in many cases it is safer than other sports and activities,” citing football as causing fewer emergency room visits than such sports as soccer, baseball, hockey and even swimming. He also said that those reports received far less press coverage and that concussions in football are “highly scrutinized and dramatized in the media.”
Although erroneously convincing potential players and their parents that football has been made much safer is certainly bad enough, the real problem is that the focus on concussions glosses over the kind of intense contact that occurs on almost every play.
The coach’s statistics are misleading and soundly contradicted by the American Pediatric Association, LIVESTRONG and a host of other organizations that confirm football is by far the most dangerous sport, accounting for far more head injuries than any other. But, considering the way Heads Up was presented, it’s understandable how he might have been influenced by its promotion. And again, head injuries do not have to meet the criteria of a concussion to be dangerous, particularly if they happen on a repetitive basis like they do in practically every football game, at every level of competition.
Research conducted at the Cleveland Clinic found that college football players can experience significant brain damage solely due to continuous head collisions, even when concussion doesn’t occur. After taking blood samples and conducting cognitive tests on 67 college players before and after games in 2011, 40 of the players — those who had taken the heaviest hits — had heightened amounts of an antibody connected to brain damage. These abnormalities were then confirmed with brain scans.
Although none of the players had a documented concussion for the duration of the study, more than half showed signs of brain damage similar to traumatic brain injury patients. A study on high school players completed in 2010 came to a similar conclusion: Players who showed no clinically observable signs of concussion were found to have measurable impairment of neuro-cognitive function after repeated sub-concussive contact.
Even NFL players, according to research, who began playing football before the age of 12 appeared to be more likely to suffer debilitating conditions in middle age including early onset dementia and memory loss.
But football certainly isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and the vast majority of high school and college players will not wind up in the NFL. Efforts to make it safer, particularly for younger players, are necessary and laudable. But coaches and officials need to be more responsible about downplaying the risk, creating a false sense of security where there should be heightened vigilance. Football is every bit as dangerous over the long term as perceived, and portraying it any other way is doing a disservice to athletes and their parents.
