The Risks Of Concussions In Football

To begin, should football even be played? It’s a fun sport, of course, however, every single player on the field is at great risk. In football, it’s extremely difficult to “play safe” considering how fast paced it is during a play and attempting to “play safe” will most likely have an impact on how well you perform therefore many people don’t even attempt to play safe and that’s where concussions occur. Concussions damage your brain permanently regardless of how severe the concussion is. Now, how do these concussions affect your brain? Well, when I got my first concussion I felt drowsiness and sensitivity to light and I missed a couple of football games because of my throbbing headache. But as a football player, you are always told to play through injury and that’s also a big issue. Repeated blows to the head can result in; loss of consciousness, confusion, amnesia, ringing, nausea and much more. Even though a player may have these effects they will continue to play on because they are too caught up in their pride. A concussion has many negative effects on your brain, so how many can you take before they become fatal?

To continue, a concussion can actually cause a person to die. And in football, it happens every fall. This year a Georgia high school football player (Dylan Thomas) who was only sixteen years of age suffered a hit to the head in a game that knocked him unconscious on the field, once he was awake he told coaches his head hurts and proceeded to the sideline and when Dylan was on the bench he fell to the ground and said “I can’t feel my body” then lost consciousness again. He was later taken to the hospital but died the next morning due to a head injury. This isn’t the first case of game-related deaths in football, in fact. Last year, of the 4 million young people who played organized football, 13 died from the sport, that may not be a big number but then again these are children and I couldn’t imagine my own son dying from playing a game that doesn’t matter. To prevent head injury professional and college football administrators have been pushing to create a safer way to play by creating new helmets and gear to make the players more protected, on the other hand, there’s not much you can do considering the fact that the players are only getting bigger and faster so that means the collisions are only going to get bigger and faster so “new and improved” gear will not matter at all. Athletes die from concussions on the field but what about when they’re off the field?

Washington State quarterback Tyler Hilinsky died in January by suicide. Later studies showed Hilinsky had the brain of a sixty-five-year-old man when he died, he was only twenty-one. That seems to be very odd, that a twenty-one-year-old man had a brain approximately three times older than his age. Tyler had what is called Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy or for short CTE. CTE is a disease caused by repeated head traumas that can cause a multitude of symptoms; impulsive behavior, depression, substance abuse, memory loss, dementia, and suicidal thoughts or behavior. CTE typically only occurs to athletes that are retired or had concussions eight to ten years in the past so think about how bad Tyler’s concussions must have been and how many he’s suffered in such a short time. CTE is also a very frustrating disease to track considering you can only find out if someone has CTE after he or she have already died and the reason why is because “the only known diagnosis for CTE occurs by studying the brain tissue after death. Concussions are non-structural injuries and do not result in brain bleeding, which is why most concussions cannot be seen on routine neuroimaging tests such as CT or MRI”.

In a brain Microtubules (fragile transportation system) help distribute chemicals and minerals throughout the cell, neurons have a special transportation system, made up of tiny tubes called microtubules. These tubes run the length of the cell, helping materials from one end make it down to the other end. They hold Tau proteins that are supposed to modulate the stability of axonal microtubules, however, if the microtubules break down, these Tau proteins float freely inside the cell and sometimes change their shape (phosphorylation), causing them to clump together. When all this Tau is clumped it spreads and causes CTE. Enough on what causes concussions and CTE, how can we prevent it?

Ultimately, preventing concussions in football is impossible, the players are too big, too fast. However, we can reduce the number of people getting concussions and CTE. To begin, children should have to be thirteen to fourteen years old to play tackle football. As of now, parents are allowed to put their kids into tackle football at the age of only five years old, the earliest a person should start playing tackle football is twelve. Studies showed “athletes who began playing tackle football before the age of twelve had more behavioral and cognitive problems later in life than those who started playing after twelve. As a parent why take the risk?

There is still flag football in the spring and summer so there’s no missing out on football. Looking at it from a different angle there should be a law against how young a person starts playing football considering how dangerous it is. Last year, doctors at Wake Forest School of medicine used advanced magnetic resonance imaging technology to find that boys between the ages of eight and thirteen who played just one season of tackle football had diminished brain function in parts of their brains. To solve this issue, just make the required age to register for tackle football either thirteen for fourteen to reduce the number of hits a person will take in his career.

Finally, I’ve personally dealt with concussions and they are not pleasant what so ever, enough of them can damage your brain permanently or even kill you and preventing them is nearly impossible. The concussions I have received stumped my aggressiveness in football for a while making me afraid to tackle or even get tackled at a fast speed, Dylan Thomas died in October 2018 due to a heads injury in-game and concussions cannot be prevented considering the size and speed of players not to mention the age people start tackling which increases the chance of building up CTE in a person's brain. Which all does mean that concussions are a big deal and cannot be prevented.