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Researchers are working to make football safer at all levels of play
By Katie Reilly
Elliot Smalls hasn’t missed a football season in 20 years.
The former Chowan University starting running back has been playing football since he was 5 years old. And while his size and skills have changed, there’s a lot that has stayed the same.
“I’m still in love with the game,” he said.
But something that’s changed, Smalls said, is the increased awareness of head injuries that often come as a consequence of playing football.
“I think the danger of the sport has always been there, but now we’re more prone to actually get symptoms recorded, so a lot of parents are kind of freaking out about their kids playing, but I honestly think the danger of the sport has always been there,” he said.
College athletes suffered 10,500 concussions on average each year between the 2009-10 and 2013-14 academic years, according to Datalys, the firm that tracks NCAA injury data.
An estimated 3,417 NCAA football players per year reported concussions during that time — more than the total in any other NCAA sport.
Kevin Guskiewicz, co-director of the Matthew Gfeller Sport-Related Traumatic Brain Injury Research Center at UNC, said though panic about the injury has increased recently, there are no more concussions occurring in the game today than there were years ago. But he said there are more concussions being reported, treated and studied than ever before.
“We live in this sport-crazed society — and that’s a good thing — physical activity keeps people healthy,” Guskiewicz said. “But on the flip side, there are injuries that come with playing a sport and staying physically active. So we’re really trying to keep things in balance and keep people physically active, but keeping them safe.”
Though he’s devoted his time to researching head injuries, Guskiewicz hasn’t shied away from the sport. He said all three of his sons have played football — and endured a lot of lecturing from him about how to play safely.
He sees the Gfeller-Waller Concussion Awareness Act, signed into law in North Carolina in 2011, as one example of important progress. And his research on sport-related brain injuries is also being used to change the rules of the game.
During summer 2014, the NCAA and the Department of Defense launched a joint $30 million initiative to research concussions and promote the safety of student-athletes and service members. The organizations are touting the initiative as the most comprehensive concussion study ever conducted.
UNC is one of four universities involved in the study’s advanced research core, with experts at the Matthew Gfeller center surveying UNC athletes in seven contact sports through 2017.
The task at hand
Smalls remembers the first time he felt symptoms of a concussion. Playing for Southeast Raleigh High School, he took a hit, felt the side of his face go numb and couldn’t see anything for a moment.
His coach had always advocated aggressive play, so Smalls recovered and continued. He never sought treatment — then or in college.
“I know a lot of stubborn players that — they love the game so much, they don’t want to just pull themselves out, and that’s not the safest thing in the world. But it’s kind of hard to tell a kid — this is all they know — ‘Hey, you need to sit out because of your health.’ It takes a lot of courage to really do that,” he said.
Smalls said the responsibility and loyalty he felt to his team made him want to avoid sitting out of a game, which is why he kept quiet.
“We actually lost a game in college because one of our significant players started throwing up — and that’s one of the symptoms — so they assumed that he had a concussion, although he passed every other test,” Smalls said. “So they made him sit out for a week. He couldn’t play. Then he went to the hospital, and they said that he never had a concussion.”
Smalls’ case of non-reporting isn’t unusual. An estimated 47 percent of athletes don’t report feeling symptoms after a concussive blow, according to the Sports Concussion Institute.
As researchers and sport scientists work to make the game safer, newly imposed safety measures could be colliding with America’s steadfast love of football.
“At the NFL level, it’s a highly skilled game, but it’s also violent, and a good part of its appeal is the violence. It’s a controlled violence, a choreographed violence, but it’s violence none the less,” said Richard Crepeau, a professor of sport history at the University of Central Florida.
“Violence and sport do go together to some degree. There’s a certain spectacle to the NFL. It’s spectacle, it’s violent, it’s attractive, and, of course, it also demonstrates a very high level of the ideal of the masculine, and it’s sold in that way as well. It’s the male sport,” he said.
Crepeau — whose book, “NFL Football: A History of America’s New National Pastime,” explores the growth of the multi-billion dollar league — said changes to the game at the professional level will come with challenges due to the specific appeal it’s cultivated.
“If you roll back the violence, the question is, ‘How far can you roll it back without affecting the appeal of the game?’” he said. “They have a very, very delicate task at hand.”
‘Better than a game’
Guskiewicz is optimistic about the changes that are making the sport safer. He emphasized balance — of responsibility, preparation and caution.
“There are very few catastrophic injuries in a given year at any level of play. Some years there may be 11 or 12. Some years there might be 14 or 15. The vast majority of those are in younger athletes. You have to remember that there are hundreds of thousands of more youth and high school athletes than there are collegiate or professional because very few make it up to that level,” he said. “But the younger athlete has a brain that’s still developing, so it’s more vulnerable.”
Crepeau said the concern about safety at the level of the NFL will likely impact how the game is played at the high school and collegiate levels — which means new research by Guskiewicz and others could affect players at all levels.
“Football definitely gives us the most trouble, and we see football players pretty frequently when they’re in their full-contact practices or during the season,” said Corey Rodrigo, research coordinator at the Matthew Gfeller center.
Rodrigo said the center’s helmet sensors enable them to measure forces — how hard players are getting hit, how many times and in what direction — and, from there, piece together what needs to change.
Guskiewicz wants to provide athletes with a chance to learn how to play in a game-day situation while also minimizing the amount of contact during practices.
Smalls, 25, still gets headaches at times, though he said he doesn’t think his years of taking hits have affected him much. But he has different advice for a younger generation of football players, whom he hopes feel less invincible than he did.
“(I thought) ‘I can handle it. I can handle it all.’ And that may be — that could’ve been my downfall, and that may be the next player’s downfall. But I do caution a lot of players to, as soon as they get a symptom, to tell the trainers because it was very dangerous for me to ignore that and not tell anyone,” he said.
“The future’s a lot better than a game.”
Anatomy of a football helmet
Interactives by McKenzie Coey and Josie Hollingsworth
Sources: Journal of Athletic Training, Livestrong Foundation, New York Times
Art Credit: Cliparts.co
Featured image taken by Hannah Doksansky – Northwood High School faces up against Cedar Ridge High School in the 2014 fall season.
