The NCAA and Concussions

[johnnyzip84]

Timely article from CNN

[Dr Z]

If you watch the video, this is the rule the reporter refers to at the end of the report.

Check out what follows "Once a student-athlete has returned to his/her baseline" under the Return to Play section.

I was considering posting this yesterday, but this topic has become such a pi$$ing match here, that most logic has expired. I only did so today, because of Johnny's topic. I'm sure this will erode quickly.

[Hilltopper]

I think the sport in serious trouble if there is no solution to the concussion issue in the next 10 years. Parents are not going to let little Johnny play and eventually the sport will die out. Only a major advance in protective head gear will change this. Most of the parents of my son's friends who are playing right now regret the day they let their kids start to play.

[johnnyzip84]

I was considering posting this yesterday, but this topic has become such a pi$$ing match here, that most logic has expired. I only did so today, because of Johnny's topic. I'm sure this will erode quickly.

I was hoping that by putting this in a separate thread, the BG thread could be left to discussions about the game. Thanks for posting the additional links that define the NCAA standard. This will likely be fluid over the foreseeable future.

I know we've had other threads dedicated to the future of the game and I've voiced my opinion there that DRASTIC changes to equipment, especially the helmet, might be necessary for the game to survive. These will be expensive measures, but the up front cost will probably pale in comparison to the settlements that will need to be paid for incidents that have occurred over the last 10 years or so.

[Dave in Green]

The really scary part of the CNN story is the part in bold below:

Dr. Robert Stern, of the Sports Legacy Institute at Boston University, was part of the team that studied Owen Thomas' case. He said he was shocked to find CTE in Thomas' brain since he never had a documented concussion.

Stern thinks Thomas instead had several subconcussions, which do the same damage as a concussion but have no symptoms.

No symptoms make it silent and dangerous.

"These football hits are around 20G per hit," Stern said. "... That's probably the simplistic equivalent of a car driving 30, 35 miles per hour into a brick wall. Imagine that 1,000 to 1,500 times per year. That repetitive force to the head with the brain moving inside."

The more players practice with contact, the more susceptible they are, Stern said.

It's great that they can monitor players with concussions and not send them back on the field until all the symptoms are gone. But what about all the players with undiagnosed subconcussions that have no symptoms to monitor? They're sent right back out on the field where another big hit could cause catastrophic damage.

[Balsy]

This is the most disturbing thing I've heard in weeks. It literally made me want to throw up.

[GP1]

I've voiced my opinion there that DRASTIC changes to equipment, especially the helmet, might be necessary for the game to survive.

I think the NCAA has done a good job with process changes to address this problem. By process, I mean the protocols in place AFTER the possible concussion event.

In my opinion, they have neglected the structural changes necessary to help lessen concussions. Here are some structural changes that would help reduce the need for concussion protocol procedures by helping to reduce the event itself:

1. Players are unnaturally heavy, oversized and unhealthy. Weight limits placed on players similar to pee wee football to reduce the amount of force (force = mass x acceleration) they can produce are important. Five year implementation plan for this because it would be hard to get all the weight down in a short period of time. The average high school offensive lineman is too fat for his body type and is being set up for a lifetime of health issues due to his physical condition.

2. Eliminate the three point stance. It is a technique that causes you to start with your head in front of your body, with a guy in front of you with his head pointed towards yours. We are trying to protect the head for crying out loud.

3. The defensive line must line up one yard from the ball like in the CFL. Smaller linemen will be required to be more nimble.

4. Allow multiple receivers to be moving prior to the snap and towards the line if they want to pause the defense.

5. Serious PED programs year round to eliminate unnatural strength.

The game will survive, but if the answer has to be more than process AFTER the event. There must be systematic changes.

[Dave in Green]

Now that there's some science involved in examining the effects of football on the human brain, a lot is going to come out that we never imagined. I know a lot of people don't like to jump to links to read long pieces, so I'm going to copy a healthy chunk of a scientific article below while staying within fair use standards. But anyone who's really into football should follow this link and read the whole thing:

The third group constituted a completely unexpected and previously unknown category of players who, though they displayed no clinically-observable signs of concussion, nevertheless showed measurable impairment of neurocognitive function (primarily visual working memory) on neurocognitive tests, as well as altered activation in neurophysiologic function on sophisticated brain imaging tests (fMRI).

Indeed, researchers found, the players with the most impaired visual memory skills were not those in the concussed group but from the group which, in the preceding week, had experienced a large number of subconcussive hits - around 150 hits - mostly in the 40 to 80 g range.

The Purdue researchers suspect that the functionally, but not clinically impaired group comprise players who experienced neurologic trauma arising from repeated, sub-concussive head collision events, each of which likely produces sub-clinical stress on neural tissue in the brain.

More concerning, "these players not only may be representative of the group associated with ‘unreported' concussions, but also are also likely to meet the criterion" for inclusion in a group which, because they suffer repetitive, sub-concussive blows to the head, may be at increased risk of further, long-term brain injury, such as CTE, said the study.

Linemen most at risk

The group of functionally, but not clinically impaired, players were also different from the group of concussed players in a number of important respects:

* They experienced a significantly higher total number of collision events than any other group;

* They were primarily linemen, who experienced helmet-to-helmet contact on nearly every play from scrimmage, often to the upper forehead above the facemask. "These are the kids who put their head down and take blow after blow to the top of the head," said Eric Nauman, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and basic medical sciences, who leads Purdue's Human Injury Research and Regenerative Technologies Laboratory. As a Sports Illustrated cover story on the study put it, "It wasn't the rare, excessively violent collision between the wide receiver and the free safety, the Patriot missile intercepting the Scud, that mattered most, but rather the milder, more frequent kind of hits that replicated two adolescent rams knocking heads." The Purdue results are consistent with the findings of a 2010 study of college football players reported in the Journal of Athletic Training [2] that head-impact exposure differed significantly by position, with linemen (both offensive and defensive) and linebackers receiving more impacts per practice and games than other positions, while lineman, linebackers and defensive backs recieved more impacts to the front of the head than the back, with quarterbacks experiencing a higher pecentage of impacts to the back of the head compared with the front; and

* They experienced more higher magnitude (more than 80g) collision events directed to the top front of the helmet - impacting parts of the brain involved in working memory, including visual working memory, a form of short-term memory for recalling shapes and visual arrangement of objects such as the placement of furniture in a room - while the concussed players tended to take heavy, high velocity hits to the side of the helmet.

[GP1]

Good post Dave. If anyone could get up close to a linemans helmet and see the damage on it, they would understand what a beating their heads take on every play. Force = Mass x Acceleration, we know the following....lineman are stronger than ever for natural and unnatural reasons. They are also faster and quicker off the ball than ever. That's all it takes to increase the Force.

The concussion protocols are what I like to call "The Lawyers Answer" to concussions. They are process changes to protect the players and teams.

The link you post to above must be "The Scientists Answers" to concussions. They need to look at not only the damage to the body, but how the damage takes place and why it takes place. This is where the structural changes must come in to play.

At some point, someone is going to read the science and say, "Maybe the three point stance is part of the problem. Let's get rid of it."..... "Maybe linemen are producing too much force, let's make them smaller." ...... "Maybe the linemen being so close to one another at the start of the play isn't a good thing. Let's separate them a little."

[Balsy]

Good posts Dave and GP1.

I think as fans, who are not involved with the game directly or the science behind protecting players, we have the moral obligation to keep ourselves in check. There is a culture around football that is fueled by the fans, and I believe we need to reframe from becoming hyperbolic whenever it concerns players. We have the moral obligation to remind ourselves that these kids, who give us entertainment, are people who have to live with the injuries that they may sustain from playing the game.

As fans, instead of pressuring coaches to play our best players all the time, we should be pressuring coaches to protect them at all costs. Winning isn't everything, especially when it comes to the health and wellbeing of our players.

The changes in football are going to come from us, the fans.

[Dr Z]

Players are unnaturally heavy, oversized and unhealthy.

Yesterday Andy Russell was talking about how the rules changed the size of the linebackers. They used to want to stay lighter.

[GP1]

Yesterday Andy Russell was talking about how the rules changed the size of the linebackers. They used to want to stay lighter.

I find it interesting now that the size of LB is going down because of the rule changes. This is a good thing.

I find his comments about "sissify" the game comments foolish though. We hear this a lot from old timers. I ignore them because most don't understand the modern game. Case in point, what does Mike Ditka offer in terms of explaining the modern game to ESPN viewers?...and Tom Jackson for that matter. An athletic contest is about people displaying athletic ability, not reaching out and grabbing people, which takes very little athletic talent. Case in point, old men at strip clubs. The Mel Blount rule introduced athleticism into football and forever made the game more athletic. There was one player though who completely thrived after the adoption of the Mel Blount rule.....Mel Blount. He made more Pro Bowls after the bump rule (3) than before (2). He was able to do that because he had the athletic ability to adapt to the rules that his peers did not have.

Getting back to concussions, I think things like eliminating the three point stance, forcing the d-line off the ball one yard, weight limits, etc. would make the game even more athletic because we would see much more mobile players on the field and we would also see a safer game. I don't buy that rule changes would make the game worse. Eventually, those who can't adapt to the rules will phase themselves out of football and those who can adapt successfully will be the people we see on TV.

Not sure how the elimination of the three point stance would work though. Maybe the moving the line one yard off the ball and keep the three point stance is the answer, or the other way around. Do one or the other.?.? What do you do about the center who has to stand with his head in front of him to reach the ball? Lots to think about and the people in charge of the NCAA and NFL need to hunker down and start thinking.

[johnnyzip84]

Below is a link that provides some low-level discussion of the physics involved in sports injuries, without getting too deep into the details.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC155415/

I think many of GP1’s proposed structural changes clearly address many of the items discussed in the paper.

I’ve always viewed the possibility of reducing the local deceleration experienced by the brain during football collisions (impact loading) as offering the most benefit going forward. As stated in the paper, the cushioning INSIDE of the helmet there for this purpose. It’s also the season why we see energy absorbing devices every day in automobile (collapsible steering column, etc.) and highway design (collapsible barriers). Clearly this current approach, focusing mostly on energy absorption on the INSIDE of the helmet, does not reduce the decelerations enough to prevent frequent concussions.

This is why I have wondered if we’d ever see an attempt to take the current helmet technology and introduce external (OUTSIDE of the helmet) energy absorbing devices to possibly reduce brain decelerations. I envision something as simple as relatively stiff foam surrounding the current helmet.

Taking this to an extreme, if players had 10 inches of such foam surrounding their existing helmets, I believe the maximum decelerations experienced by the brain could be greatly reduced. Of course, this would present a bit of a spectacle and probably turn the game into something other than what we know as football. But perhaps there is a happy medium where decelerations could be reduced in this manner (external energy absorption) without changing the game too drastically. The whole helmet style trend would have to take a back seat in this approach, I’m afraid.

I think I should patent this. It’s even possible that a retrofit of all of those existing helmets out there might prove to be quite lucrative.

[zippy5]

I don't know if I'm against the 3 point stance removal, I just.. can't really envision football without it. Would make sense, they'd be in a less vulnerable position. As for starting a yard further back, no thanks. That would make it less safe in my opinion, giving these guys running starts at each other. I think the closer they are, the less force they'll have when they hit.

[Captain Kangaroo]

I don't know what topic I'm more tired of hearing...ebola or concussions. Probably concussions.

[Hilltopper]

I don't know what topic I'm more tired of hearing...ebola or concussions. Probably concussions.

Your son doesn't play football does he? I'm glad mine quit after the 7th grade. He only had 2 concussion type hits. After the second one, he decided he was done with football. Two of his friends at Green have been knocked out cold this season and had to be carried off on a backboard and take an ambulance ride to the ER. Luckily neither one suffered a serious neck injury. Both are done for the season and their parents are happy they don't have to worry anymore.

[Captain Kangaroo]

Your son doesn't play football does he? I'm glad mine quit after the 7th grade.

Nope. Baseball and basketball.

I played endless football as a kid. Last tackle football game was at age 26 in the local Thanksgiving "Turkey Bowl." Absolutely loved the game. Still do.

But I was never hit by someone like James Harrison in his prime. That might have changed my love for the game.

That all said - I am tired of the concussion conversation.

[Balsy]

That all said - I am tired of the concussion conversation.

But it's an important conversation that we need to have. We NEED to talk about this as fans, before we rush to conclusions about what is going on with our favorite team or the adults involved.

[GP1]

As for starting a yard further back, no thanks. That would make it less safe in my opinion, giving these guys running starts at each other. I think the closer they are, the less force they'll have when they hit.

It's one yard (one step), not one mile.

[zippy5]

It's one yard (one step), not one mile.

That's a relief, a mile+ long football field would be boring. The linemen wouldn't even make contact that far away.

[K92]

That's a relief, a mile+ long football field would be boring. The linemen wouldn't even make contact that far away.

You're horning in on Zipmeister's territory there, Z5.

[Captain Kangaroo]

But it's an important conversation that we need to have. We NEED to talk about this as fans, before we rush to conclusions about what is going on with our favorite team or the adults involved.

It's played out. People need to take it to WebMD.com...this site is for discussing Zips athletics.

At least there is now a dedicated thread to the subject, and the other threads won't get hijacked by it. Maybe this is the solution. Thanks JZ84.

[Balsy]

It's played out. People need to take it to WebMD.com...this site is for discussing Zips athletics.

At least there is now a dedicated thread to the subject, and the other threads won't get hijacked by it. Maybe this is the solution. Thanks JZ84.

I disagree. People need to think rationally, and have rational conversations with other rational adults about what to think/do...NOT get all hyperbolic and freak out.

I didn't know what was going on, but rationally was able to figure it out because I live by lex parsimoniae.

[Dave in Green]

LeBron James told ESPN.com on Friday that he does not let his sons, LeBron Jr. and Bryce Maximus, play football.

When asked whether the reason for his decision was the health dangers related to football, James replied, "Yes."

Link

[Ando]

so does anyone else agree that doctors have became soft now a days

cant even watch becker anymore without the underlying existensial angst that "smoking is bad". get this pc mumbojumo outta here, i say