The prominence of head injuries is becoming more and more common each year. Players from different sports leagues, including the National Football League, are voicing their outrage on the lack of protection from concussions and other head injuries and are now shedding light on the all-important issue of player safety. This controversy has become so popular that it was even made into a movie released in 2015. Head injuries in sports are perilous and scientists and players are now highlighting the dangers of unsafe play.
Injuries in sports can happen at any level of the game, ranging from youth leagues to the major leagues. However, one sports injury is becoming more frequent and more serious: concussions resulting from head injuries. According …show more content…
The league has recently announced that it will require an athletic trainer to sit in the press box and keep in contact with team doctors on the field and notify them when a player is suspected to have a suffered concussion. The goal of the added athletic trainer in the press box prevents confusion of a certain hit on a player or the type of injury received. (Associated Press). The NFL is also participating in the Head Health Challenges, which is a three-step collaboration with General Electric and the sportswear company Under Armour. The program is meant to “advance the development of technologies that can detect early-stage mild traumatic brain injuries and improve brain protection.” The combined companies pledged a total of twenty million dollars to fund the technology and research over the next five years (Faloyin). The NFL is not the only organization trying to prevent concussions: an associate professor of neurological surgery at the University of Washington, along with some colleagues from a Seattle-based university have created a helmet, the Zero1, that is designed to “address not just linear forces acting upon football players’ heads but also angular and rotational acceleration” while traditional helmets “were originally created to address skull fractures and to prevent subsequent subdural and epidural brain hemorrhages.” The Zero1 helmet has a soft outer shell that is meant to slightly change shape as it absorbs a hit with a rigid layer underneath the soft shell. Despite its state of the art design and benefits, the helmet costs more than fifteen hundred dollars, which is over one thousand dollars more than traditional helmets. The research received funding of $750,000 from the Head Health Challenge Initiative and the helmets will soon be present in the NFL
Injuries in sports can happen at any level of the game, ranging from youth leagues to the major leagues. However, one sports injury is becoming more frequent and more serious: concussions resulting from head injuries. According …show more content…
The league has recently announced that it will require an athletic trainer to sit in the press box and keep in contact with team doctors on the field and notify them when a player is suspected to have a suffered concussion. The goal of the added athletic trainer in the press box prevents confusion of a certain hit on a player or the type of injury received. (Associated Press). The NFL is also participating in the Head Health Challenges, which is a three-step collaboration with General Electric and the sportswear company Under Armour. The program is meant to “advance the development of technologies that can detect early-stage mild traumatic brain injuries and improve brain protection.” The combined companies pledged a total of twenty million dollars to fund the technology and research over the next five years (Faloyin). The NFL is not the only organization trying to prevent concussions: an associate professor of neurological surgery at the University of Washington, along with some colleagues from a Seattle-based university have created a helmet, the Zero1, that is designed to “address not just linear forces acting upon football players’ heads but also angular and rotational acceleration” while traditional helmets “were originally created to address skull fractures and to prevent subsequent subdural and epidural brain hemorrhages.” The Zero1 helmet has a soft outer shell that is meant to slightly change shape as it absorbs a hit with a rigid layer underneath the soft shell. Despite its state of the art design and benefits, the helmet costs more than fifteen hundred dollars, which is over one thousand dollars more than traditional helmets. The research received funding of $750,000 from the Head Health Challenge Initiative and the helmets will soon be present in the NFL