Is Football a Dangerous Sport?
By Alan C.
The great sport of Americans, football, has been in American culture for years and it keeps growing, but many retired players are now speaking out against the NFL and telling the truth on how football is a very dangerous sport at any level and age.
Studies made have shown that athletes that play football are know to get chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, which is a deadly brain disease that can develop from the repetitive tackles and hits to the head.Players that get concussions repetitively can suffer from headaches, memory loss, depression, and even death.
In some high schools, the equipment that students receive is not always safe since the school doesn’t have the money to renew defective helmets and old destroyed shoulder pads all the time.
You may think that helmets can protect your child and keep them safe, but the helmet isn’t 100 percent guaranteed that it can protect your head.In studies researchers tested different brands of helmets.Regarding the rate of concussions, Xenith brand helmets have over a 6 percent concussion rate, and Schutt headgear has over 8 percent concussion rate, and Riddell has over a 9 percent concussion rate. These numbers may not be enough, but when you think of all the children that play football, the numbers really make a difference. It’s one of the many reasons on why children should not play football.
It’s suspected that ever head to head collision generates sub-concussions, which means many of the players are getting injured almost every play that they are involved within game and practice. In doing this, it’s slowly damaging the brain without the victim suffering the symptoms of the trauma.
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Football is a brutal contact activity and this is accepted by everyone that watches it. Professional athletes accept this risk in exchange to have a chance to a big pay check and to pursue a livelihood they desire and love. High school and college athletes willingly do the same thing without getting paid.
An item posted by Patrick Redford of Deadspin notes that only 37 percent of all the high school football programs have athletic trainers on the sidelines. That is a very low number, and if the NFL cares about the long-term health of the sport, then the NFL will need to try to find some kind of of way to fix it and increase the percentage numbers.
Another reason is that many of high school games are played in rural areas And in many cases paramedics are stationed in the ambulance and may not be aware of the best possible techniques for helping a player whose injury maybe be serious. Which is why the paramedics who are at high school games sometimes don’t move as fast as when players get injured in the college and NFL level.
In all, yes football is a dangerous sport and maybe people should steer away from football not because of the dangers of the sport but because of the methods for ensuring that an inevitable injury doesn’t become a worst-case scenario.
By Alan C.
