Answering a Question

Jordan Rugg

Mr. Dilbeck

English 1100

10-28-13

            The National Football League has been around for nearly one-hundred years, and the sport itself is even older. There have been many rule additions to this great game over the years including the two point conversion and the coach’s challenge to name a few. Many of these rules have drastically improved the game and in some cases added a new level of excitement for fans. That being said, the NFL’s most recent rule additions that deal with player safety have greatly diminished the games excitement. These new rules put immense amounts of pressure on referees to penalize any defensive player who makes a hard hit whether the hit was technically legal or not. This has caused fans much disgust and distress as they watch the very hits that were once glorified in football be met with harsh fines and penalties. The fact of the matter is, these rules would have been appropriate in the seventies, but with all of the advances in modern medicine and the enormous checks NFL players are receiving these new rules are nonessential. In addition, players going into the NFL know what they are signing up for and have the freedom to choose a different profession other that football if they so choose. The NFL’s overly protective rules regarding player contact are not only unnecessary in the twenty first century, but if left unchanged will undoubtedly ruin one of America’s greatest past times.

            The reasoning for these new safety rules is largely due the declining health of professional football players from the 1970’s era. Many players from the seventies are currently battling health complications due to repeated head injury. There has been multiple law suits filed against the NFL that are designed to compensate for the medical bills these players have to pay. While these law suits are justifiable due to the improper protocol that was used with injured players, that does not mean that the NFL is still using these same protocols. In the current rulebook, it states that any player that suffers a concussion is forced to sit out the game following the injury. This is much safer than how concussion were handled decades ago when players were allowed to play as soon as they said they were able. Furthermore, the long term affects of football related concussions have been closely documented allowing doctors to make better medical decisions than in years past. In addition to teams changing the way they handle injuries, the helmets and pads being used today are far more superior to the protective equipment used in the seventies (Viano, Halstead, par. 1). It was only in the late nineties when the NFL began to fully understand what the main cause of football related concussions was (Post, et al. 653). It was discovered that the key to protecting players from concussions was to create a helmet that reduces the rotational acceleration of the head (Post, et al. 654). This new found information coupled with the idea that: by increasing the size and weight of the helmet less force will be imposed on the head, engineers were able to greatly improve football helmets (Viano, Halstead, par. 1). In 2008 alone, Riddell was able to create a helmet that reduced the probability of a concussion by thirty percent (Hunt 4). This great feat was accomplished by designing a helmet that was centered around the heads center of gravity to help reduce the amount of rotational acceleration on impact. While these new pads and helmets do not make head injuries in football a thing of the past, they do make the sport much safer to play as well as help maintain NFL player’s health from the neck up.

            While the advances in protective equipment often make the headlines, the leaps that have been made in the medical field are just as important to keeping players healthy. A great example of this is the invention and perfection of magnetic resonance imaging (Prasad 533). The MRI machine was created in 1973, but as with any new invention was not as useful or accessible in its early years (Prasad 533). Today, the use of the MRI has been a key asset in protecting NFL players from increasing the severity of their head injuries. MRIs allow doctors to get a better idea of the severity of an injury and proscribe the proper treatment and mandatory rest for a player (Prasad 537). The MRI would have been very beneficial to players in the seventies and most likely would have kept certain players off the field that did not belong there due to extensive head injury. Unfortunately, many players played through concussions making the damage much more severe. Another sign of how far treatment of football injuries has come is that tearing an ACL is no longer a career ending injury. Many players have torn their ACL, or other major ligaments, and still were able to have very successful careers after surgery. While at the surface level this breakthrough in surgery appears to have nothing to do with the NFL’s newest player safety rules, it actually is a rebuttal to one of the NFL’s biggest claims. The NFL continuously shines light on the fact that players from the seventies who received career ending injuries are currently experiencing difficulties paying their medical bills. With the great advances in ACL surgery, doctors allow players to stay in the NFL longer so they can accrue a larger capital.

            While the changes in protective equipment and medical treatment sustained from 1970 to present are quite visible, they pale in comparison to the increase in the average NFL player’s salary. What once was a twenty-five thousand dollar check for a year of play is now a staggering two-hundred thousand dollar payment from team to player. It is also important to note that this average factors in bench players who never see action, so it is easy to suggest that the average for active players who are susceptible to injury get paid much higher salaries. This large increase in player salary suggests that inability to pay for medical bills down the road will no longer be an issue for players. For some, this still does not fix the fact that some players still sustain life long injuries. This is a valid point, but it is very important to note a few things about this concern. Most importantly, these players are being paid to entertain. The amount of money that players get paid paired with the price that fans pay to attend football games, which is one average the most expensive sporting event to go to, these fans should be entirely satisfied. Instead, many fans find themselves aggravated when referees continuously penalize hits in the most notorious contact sport in America. If the NFL’s rules continue to get stricter, it is not ridiculous to conclude that football may lose its popularity as hard hitting, the very thing that gave football its fame, is outlawed.

            The NFL is in danger of ruining one of the greatest past times for Americans and many others around the world. The notion that the NFL would try to expel hard hits from a game that built its reputation off that very thing is ridiculous. While player safety is important, it has already been heavily addressed and improved. But yet, cases of players who played over forty years ago are seriously affecting the rulebook for the current league. This notion makes no sense and would usually be dismissed as irrelevant. Nonetheless, the fact that the equipment players wear and the treatment they receive is being ignored and the NFL continues to focus on acute outdated cases. If the NFL does not stop their campaign to increase safety in one of the most unsafe sports, there is no question that the game will lose a large amount of excitement for many devoted fans. One must beg the question, if the NFL continues to monitor how hard a defensive player hits the opposition are speed limits in NASCAR soon to follow?

Works Cited

Hunt, Margaret W. "Helmet Design Reduces Concussions." Advanced Materials & Processes 167.2 (2009): 4. EBSCO HOST. Web. 28 Oct. 2013.

Post, Andrew, Anna Oeur, Blaine Hoshizaki, and Michael D. Gilchrist. "An Examination of American Football Helmets Using Brain Deformation Metrics Associated with Concussion." Materials and Design 45 (2013): 653-62. Electronic Journal Center. Web. 28 Oct. 2013.

Prasad, Amit. "The (Amorphous) Anatomy of an Invention: The Case of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)." Social Studies of Science 37.4 (2007): 533-60. Ohio LINK. Web. 28 Oct. 2013.

Viano, David C., and David Halstead. "Change in Size and Impact Performance of Football Helmets from the 1970s to 2010." Annuals of Biomedical Engineering 40.1 (2012): 175-84. Springer Link. Web. 28 Oct. 2013.