Jay Evensen
  • Front Page
  • Opinions
  • Second Thoughts
  • Portfolio
  • Awards
  • About

Football will never be a safe sport for competitors

8/5/2014

1 Comment

 
Picture
Last month, California lawmakers passed a bill limiting full-contact football practices for middle- and high-school players to two 90-minute workouts per week.

Not long after, the Utah High School Activities Association implemented a new rule requiring all athletes to have yearly physical exams, rather than only one during their high school careers. Coaches are to take special care to avoid heat-related 

stress among players, and they must be first aid and CPR certified.

Nothing says autumn is approaching quite like the annual concern for the safety of young people engaging in what has become the national pastime. With some sources estimating the number of annual concussions attributable to football at 140,000 (no one can be sure because the injury isn’t always diagnosed or reported), this is not a minor public health concern. Neither are the many other injuries tied to the sport.

And yet, kids keep lining up to play.

The trick is to separate facts from feel-good political acts. In this case, score one for Utah, at least for not imposing meaningless rules.

In California (and several other states with similar laws), a bunch of politicians with no special medical or athletic qualifications are imposing an arbitrary rule. Utah is probably being a bit more realistic.

Bart Thompson, assistant director of the Utah High School Activities Association, told me the extra physical exams have little to do with concussions. They are primarily to guard against heart problems — sudden cardiac arrest due to undiagnosed heart conditions.

This doesn’t mean, he said, that Utah officials are unconcerned with concussions. The rules already require coaches to be aware of the symptoms. It just means officials don’t want to impose rules that are meaningless.

Thompson said most Utah high schools don’t do much tackling at all during the week, once the season starts. To limit teams to two 90-minute full-contact workouts is to prohibit something that isn’t happening.

Experts say a lot of brain injuries occur during practice, but no one seems to know where to draw the line between the type of workout needed to teach safe tackling and excessive hitting.

Concussions result from sudden accelerations. The brain, like Jell-O, gets sloshed against the skull. Thompson said it can happen even when a player doesn’t get hit directly in the head.

Modern helmets “are designed to prevent a skull fracture, and they do a tremendous job of that.” They don’t prevent concussions, however, any more than headgear protects boxers from being knocked out.

All of which means it’s not so easy to limit head injuries in a sport where hitting and knocking other players down is fundamental.

A lot of this discussion echoes the ghosts of 109 years ago, a time when the sport’s brutality threatened its very existence; ghosts of people such as Teddy Roosevelt, or Professor Shaller Matthews, dean of the divinity school at the University of Chicago.

He was quoted in 1905 by the Chicago Tribune as calling football “…a boy killing, man mutilating, money making, education prostituting, gladiatorial ‘sport.’”

I don’t think many people would echo that today. But consider that, one year later, newspapers hailed the fact that “only” 11 players died during the 1906 season, with only 103 seriously injured.

Nearly 40 years ago, I played my senior season of high school football, ending grueling practices under the relentless sun in Phoenix. Our coach called us names for complaining about heat or thirst. Water was for wimps. If you got your “bell rung,” you were supposed to “shake it off” and get back in the huddle.

Despite all this, we eagerly showed up in August to make the team, just as young men showed up in 1905, knowing they might die for the sport. The game isn’t going away. Its collisions are as impossible to extract as it would be to remove eggs from a baked cake.

Coaches today know how to recognize symptoms. Kids aren’t deliberately dehydrated. The culture is changing. The trend is good.

But the reality is there is no way to make a full-contact sport completely safe.

1 Comment
Soccer Jerseys in Philly link
9/5/2014 10:22:01 pm

You can even made a bet if who's going to win or who will be the top player of the game.

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    RSS Feed

    Search this site


    Like what you read here?

      Please subscribe below, and we'll let you know when there is a new opinion.

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

    Picture

    The author

    Jay Evensen is the Senior Editorial Columnist of the Deseret News. He has nearly 40 years experience as a reporter, editor and editorial writer in Oklahoma, New York City, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. He also has been an adjunct journalism professor at Brigham Young and Weber State universities.

    Archives

    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012

    Categories

    All
    Campaign 2012
    Congress
    Crime
    Culture
    Iran
    Oil And Gas
    Poverty
    Steroids
    Taxes
    Utah
    Washington
    World Events
    World Events

    Links

    Deseret News
    Newslink
    Marianne Evensen's blog

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.