Football’s Concussion

Imagine you're a high school student and a great athlete. You're in the middle of a very intense game. With the ball in your hands, you sprint down the line. A defender sneaks up on your side and T-bones you. You finish the game feeling a little pain in your head, nothing worth bringing attention to. The next day you wake up with a terrible headache. After a few hours, you feel a sharp pain in your chest. Dizzy, you know you fall to the ground and die of cardiac arrest. 

This is what happened to Dylan , and one of the many reasons I believe American football is a dangerous sport for young athletes like Dylan to play. CNN Eliot states, “16 year old linebacker dies after being injured in a Sept. 28 game… Dylan’s official cause of death is: Cardiac Arrest, due to, or as consequence of Traumatic Brain Injury [stated Pike County Coroner Terrell A. Moody]” Dylan was a young great athlete and person. He had his whole life ahead of him, and could have done so much if it weren’t for the fact that football is so dangerous. Eliot states, “Dyaln was wearing a brand-new 2018 Riddell helmet, and that that helmet type is the highest-rated that the company manufactures.” If we had better protective gear then football would be safe enough, but even the high quality gear may not be enough to protect players from an injury. I think that until we can make better protective gear, young kids should be encouraged to play another sport that they might grow to love.

A USA Today (AP) article states, “Tyler was found dead in his apartment with a gunshot wound and sucide note.” An autopsy revealed the “[Tyler] had signs of extensive brain damage.” It’s possible for brain damage to cause depression. This, combined with other outside factors such as stress from school, could make depression hard for a young person to deal with. For someone to be in enough pain from a concussion he is willing to kill himself is sad and a reason I don’t like football. 

Alice with TIME states, “Of the students who were still recovering [from a concussion] 88% reported more than one symptom including headache, fatigue, difficulty understanding lessons or problems. And 77% said they had trouble taking notes and spent more time completing homework assignments.” What’s at stake here is that students who have had a concussion, whether it was recent or in the past, can have difficulty in school. Because of football’s high concussion rates and popularity, it can have a bad impact on lots of students’ lives. A student could fail a test because he had trouble concentrating in class because of a concussion caused by football. Our goal should be to stop these concussions, and like I said before I altogether think we should try to avoid having young students and kids playing football.

Zach  from NFL Injury Analytics states, “Because of the number of children who play each sport [(football and women’s soccer)], football is responsible for nearly twice as many concussions each year.” In other words, football is already the most dangerous sport when it comes to concussions, and its popularity means that it will cause nearly twice the number of annual concussions when compared to women’s soccer, the runner up for most concussions in a year.

Jacquline for CNN states, “the three sports with the highest concussion rates were: 1. Boy’s Football, with a 10.4 concussion rate per 10,000 athlete exposures.” In other words, even without looking at the popularity of football, it still has the most concussions per athlete exposure.

Jacquline also states, “When examining concussion incidents specifically in practice, the highest rates were observed in boy’s football with a rate of 5.01 per 10,000 [athlete exposure].” This shows that football itself is a dangerous sport. For players to still have that many concussions in practice where players will not want to hurt a teammate makes the sport dangerous.

Again, I think that the best way to prevent all of these concussions would just be to stop having young kids play football until there is better protective gear. This could be done by trying to have kids play other sports with less concussions and injuries in general. I know football isn’t the only sport with concussions, but the concussions from football are usually more severe than the other sports. I am a soccer player and fan. I admit that watching football with my friends is fun, but it’s not a fast-paced sport at all. You’ll get to see a play last for about half a minute, then stop for a minute. In soccer, the plays generally each last a few minutes.

Zachary on Quartz (a newsletter) states, “An average professional football game lasts three hours and twelve minutes, but if you tally up the time when the ball is actually in play the action amounts to a mere eleven minutes.” To me, it’s a waste of time to watch a football game that lasts three hours, but only see the ball in play for about ten minutes. It’s boring and sometimes you don't even see the ball. Players pile on top of each other and no one knows where the ball is. I don’t think that is entertaining.

If we keep letting football damage young players and students the sport will greatly affect our world. It can lead loved ones to a difficult life and even death. Others can be seriously injured unless we take necessary precautions, and try to find a way to make this sport safe for those who play it.