Unlikely Advice from a Retired College Football Player
By: Carson Cooper
I awoke on the field with the team trainer standing over me, cutting my jersey away. I had others surgically removing the face mask from my helmet and bracing my neck.
When they saw my eyes open in a groggy state and I tried moving, they told me, “Don’t move! Your neck could be broken.”
This was the result of sustaining a helmet-to-helmet collision in one of my high school football games in Bentonville, Arkansas.
The only thing I remember from that moment was catching a pass from the quarterback, my body going limp to the turf, and hearing the southern crowd of 15,000 gasp in unison- then lights out.
I was rushed by ambulance to the hospital. After enduring multiple tests such as CT scans, X-rays and MRIs, the diagnosis was that I had sustained severe whiplash and a severe concussion.
That concussion kept me out of commission from school and football for three weeks.
My football career was cut short from concussions. Over the course of my 10 years playing football, I had accumulated six diagnosed concussions, two hospitalizations, and been knocked unconscious twice.
I decided to step away from the game after my freshmen year of college because I did not want to be in a wheelchair by the time I was 30, and realized that my brain being in a healthy state was far more important than risking my livelihood just to play a game that I had no professional future in.
Despite all of these reasons to shy others away from the sport of football, I actually recommend the opposite. In regards to the, “Should I let my kids play football?” debate, I say, “YES!”
Absolutely, football is a dangerous game. But, not everyone is going to have the injury woes that I and many others have suffered. The game of football teaches young men about life lessons and discipline more than any other setting could.
Concussions are a serious injury and should not be treated lightly. Even a mild concussion, if mishandled, can cause serious effects on a person that may result in permanent brain damage, or in extreme cases, death.
Many seem to think the information being brought to light about concussions is grounds for the cancellation of football. Parents are pulling their kids out of the sport. Participation in high school football is at its lowest level since 1999–2000 (1,002,734).
Participation has been on the decline at the youth and high school levels over the past decade. This is in part due mainly to the exposure of concussions and the discovery of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE).
The media has certainly shed light onto the dark side of concussions and how an athlete exposed to this head injury is at risk for severe brain deteriorations.
We’ve come a long way since the NFL cover-ups of CTE and ‘rubbing some dirt on it.’ The current state of knowledge of concussions is not favorable. No one can truly measure the amount of blows to the head the brain needs to endure in order for a long-term brain injury like CTE to be caused.
The concern is that there is no way of knowing just how many concussions are the causation of CTE- is it one or multiple?
“There’s just not amazing science in the field in general,” said Dr. Torres of NYU.
“So you have to decide which not-so-great science are you going to follow.”
As a parent of a child who wants to play football, it is important to make an educated decision and educate your child for what they are getting into.
The biggest takeaway from educating your children about concussions is not to scare them. If you scare an athlete, that makes them play timid and fearful of getting hurt, and that mentality actually leads to them getting hurt.
A lot of the time the player doesn’t even know he has a concussion and this also leads to underreporting of the injury.
There is no definitive way to know exactly how the brain is being strained, and there is no definitive way to know when the patient has made a full recovery from a concussion.
What makes concussions deadly is when an athlete is misdiagnosed or doesn’t report it right away and proceeds to go back out into the field of play. When that happens, another blow to the head is certain grounds for a deadly situation.
We know concussions are not completely unavoidable. There is no known football helmet that will protect a player undoubtedly.
Sure, a helmet significantly reduces the chance of a concussion, but the fault lies within the helmet itself-within one’s skull.
“But the helmet won’t stop your brain from bouncing around the inside of your skull like a rubber ball thrown hard into a cardboard box,” experts say.
“Shake an egg hard enough and the yolk will scramble despite the shell remaining intact.”
Dr. Bennett Omalu said, “Even if they aren’t diagnosed with concussions, the repeated brain trauma of subconcussive hits could cause irreversible brain damage.”
Over time, those hits to the head for a football player add up and those can be just as damaging as suffering a severe concussion.
“There are studies that show no effect from the age a player started playing to their outcome in terms of their mental cognition,” said Dr. Alissa Wicklund, concussion specialist at the Orthopaedic and Spine Center of the Rockies in Fort Collins, CO.
“There are other studies that show contact sports before the age of 12 are detrimental. There’s evidence both ways and the answer is, we just don’t quite know yet.”
The most desired things to know about concussions are currently unknown (prevention and long-term management). There is evidence pointing in multiple directions and one cannot accurately come to a definitive conclusion of whether one concussion is just as damning as multiple.
With all of these known and unknown factors, I still believe that playing football is essential to a young man’s development.
Football helps with their confidence. It helps teach concepts and life lessons such as being a part of a team, selflessness, accountability, learning how to cope with losing, how to win graciously and brotherhood.
What one gets out of the sport of football is well worth the risks involved.
