Football Injury Increase - Free Essay Example

Introduction Attention Getter: Youre watching the football game from the stands. Your teams star running back rushes up the middle with the ball when, smack, hes hit head to head and laying on the ground. He tries to get up but stumbles and falls over. The medics take him off the field and he doesnt return to the game or any game for the new few weeks due to the brain rattling concussion he received. Benefits: This is a a very frequent event that happens on the football field to players every season. In January 2018, The National Football League announced that in the 2017 season there were about 300 concussions reported. You should take in this information about one of the most popular sports in this nation because someone you know probably plays and your kids might play one day too. Thesis: In this presentation I am going to tell you about how the increasing number of concussions in the game of football is causing new rules and more safety awareness. Preview: To start, I will talk about how the number of concussions do to football has increased in recent years. Following that, I will explain how the concussion increase has caused new rules in the game and how it is trying to be stopped with new safety procedures. Main Point 1: The number of concussions in the game of football has increased in recent years. First off it is key to this presentation that you all understand what a concussion is. A concussion in essence is a brain bruise caused from the brain hitting against the inside of your skull. These can be in different ranges of seriousness that go from dizziness all the way up to brain damage. To set up a scenario, imagine dropping a carton of eggs. The eggs themselves are not hitting the ground but they are still going to crack. This is just like the brain when you hit your head in the game football. Recently there has been an increase in the number of concussions in football at all levels. According to the National Football League news report in January of 2018, from 2012-2017, 2017 made up about 20% of all concussions and 2016 made up about 16%. These two years make up 36% of the concussions compared to the 31% in 2014 and 2015. According to the Journal of Neurotrauma published in june of 2018, between all levels of football ranging from pop warner all the way up to the NFL, there are about 100,000 diagnosed concussions every year. This number represents about 5% of all football athletes. Which is a significant amount considering there are about 2.5 millions players in total. Main Point 2: The increased amount of concussions is causing new rules and safety awareness in the game of football. Every season it seems as if more and more rules get added to the game making stricter. the National Football League news report in January of 2018, stated that the NFL has made 47 rule changes since 2002 to protect players. Some examples of the rules include helmet to helmet contact and the crown of the helmet rule. Both rules focus on players leading into contact with their heads down. Dean Blandino, who was an overseer of the NFL officials and now is a Fox Sports Rules Analysis stated in an article presented by the New York Times in September of 2018 that, The new rules are apart of a culture change, and that, He thinks the NFL wanted to take a stance. The game of football is turning over a new leaf to make the game safer. New safety precautions like Heads Up Football have been made to acknowledge the concussions. Heads Up Football is a phrase that is spreading around the game. It is the idea of education the players and coaches on how to play with their heads up in order to prevent head injury. Services for heads up include teaching proper form, understanding how to recognize concussions and how to treat concussions. The American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine did a test that was published by Science Daily in march of 2017. This test shows that sports teams who were thought the Heads Up Football procedures were 1.4 times less likely to suffer from concussions. They were also able to identify more concussions and treat them allowing the players to be released back into play 27% faster than other teams. Conclusion Overall, Review: In this speech I have presented to you the new information on concussions in the game of football. To start, I told you about the increase in recent years, then I told you about the effects it had on the rules and safety procedures. Final thought: With a trend of increase in concussions, we have to ask ourselves will it change or will it stop. Works Cited Heads up Tackling Program Decreases Concussion Rates, Say Researchers. ScienceDaily, ScienceDaily, 18 Mar. 2017, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170318112634.htm. Colello, Raymond J., et al. Making Football Safer: Assessing the Current National Football League Policy on the Type of Helmets Allowed on the Playing Field. JOURNAL OF NEUROTRAUMA, vol. 35, no. 11, pp. 1213–1223. https://www-liebertpub-com.proxy2.library.illinois.edu/doi/pdf/10.1089/neu.2017.5446 2017 Injury Data. NFL Play Smart, Play Safe, National Football League, Jan. 2018, www.playsmartplaysafe.com/newsroom/reports/2017-injury-data/. NFL Releases Injury Data for 2017 Season. NFL.com, NFL News, 26 Jan. 2018, www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000911123/article/nfl-releases-injury-data-for-2017-season. Pennington, Bill. The N.F.L.s New Tackling Rule: The Good, the Bad and the Confusing. TheNew York Times, The New York Times, 10 Sept. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/09/10/sports/nfl-new-tackling-rule.html.