Double Hit

Back in mid October, when the 2010 season was well on its way, there was a controversial hit that took place between Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver DeSean Jackson and Atlanta Falcons cornerback Dunta Robinson.  Robinson put a helmet to helmet hit on Jackson that knocked both players out of the game in the second quarter.  This hit left implications on both players.  DeSean suffered a concussion and Robinson suffered a head injury.  It was a very scary site to see as both players laid on the field for several minutes before they were helped off of the field by team doctors.  Robinson's hit on Jackson was a prime example of the "illegal hits" the NFL is trying to resolve in regards to the hard hit issue, especially prevalent in the 2010 season.  He was also flagged on the play for hitting a defenseless receiver.

Kevin Kolb, the Eagles back-up quarterback, suffered a concussion earlier in the season.  He had a few things to say after the game to help out his teammate DeSean Jackson and also mentioned how serious concussions can be.  Kolb said, "take it seriously because it is serious."  Kolb wants his teammate to know that this is a serious injury.  Not only does this statement from Kolb show the criticalness to concussions but it also shows how serious some players are taking it.  A player saying this really helps show how severe this concussion issue is and how some players are taking note of it.

This problem is still a prevalent one in the league.  Even though the season is over, the NFL needs to take up this time off to try and find ways to resolve this issue.  They have already made great strides towards resolving the issue by fining players more frequently who have executed "illegal hits" and by flagging more players to try and prevent these hits from occurring as much.

Concussions on a Different Level

As I've been talking about, concussions have been detrimental to football, especially to its players.  Just recently, I found an article on football that shows the damage and side affects concussion have been having on a different age group.  An age group that's not the normal 30+ and retired but the age group that consists of teenagers playing football at the high school level.  I found out that there was an extraordinarily amount of concussions happening to high school players.  I always thought of concussions as something that only happened to older people because I didn't think that young teenagers had the ability and power to place hits on other players that could cause a concussion like NFL players or even college players.  But boy was I wrong.  This article I found presents data that I found overwhelmingly unbelievable.  In 2008-2009, studies showed that there were over 400,000 concussions involved with high school athletics, most of which came from football.  That number seems extremely large to me.  I mean that's almost half of a million teenagers or students that suffered a concussion.  Not to mention, the link concussions have had with other problems like depression and dementia.  But these kids are suffering concussions at this early of an age.  Research tells us that once a person suffers from their first concussion, they are four times as likely to receive another and the number only increases from their.  Take for instance NFL quarterbacks Troy Aikman and Steve Young.  Both are hall of fame quarterbacks that had amazing careers but careers that may have ended sooner than expected because of the concussions they received playing the game.  Aikman suffered from 10 concussions during his 12 years in the NFL.  Young didn't receive as many as Aikman but he took four concussions during his last three seasons (source).  These concussions are presenting a huge problem and the fact that their happening to teenagers in high school makes the problem more critical.  The thing that's the most frightening about concussions is the difficulty in diagnosing a concussion.  Someone may hit their head really hard and suffer a concussion but have no idea that they actually had a concussion and they may suffer brain damage or impairment later in life because of it.

Huge Concussions

Concussions are quite the attraction in football right now.  Now that this seasons over, I wonder what the NFL will do to help prevent concussions from happening.  I've recently just tapped into some numbers that I think will be quite a shock for some people as they were for me.  From recent reports, it appears that more than 61% of former NFL players suffered from a head injury of some kind.  Some of those players even said that they weren't even sidelined after receiving the hit.  I can think back to a few major players that ended their careers because of the amount of concussions they were receiving every season.  Troy Aikman and Steve Young are two hall of fame quarterbacks that ended their careers early because of the number of concussions they had taken during their football career.  Aikman retired after 12 seasons of work and undertaking 10 concussions during those seasons.  Young retired after having 4 concussions in 3 years.  These are just the numbers to some famous players.  Players are receiving unfair treatment after suffering a concussion during the game.  A number of players have said that they were told to go play again even though some players felt some tingling, discomfort, and pain after undertaking a concussion.  Some players after the game were so demoralized that they couldn't even dress themselves.  Their have even been some links to players getting Alzheimer's from the concussions they had playing football.  The links to brain damage and concussions is starting to become overwhelming.  The NFL needs to take a more hands on approach to help this growing problem that will only get worse if left alone.  Players cannot be allowed to go out on a field and drill someone with 300lbs of force directly to the head.  Concussions are becoming an even larger problem in the NFL.  Something needs to be done so that players can know that their safe on and off the field and when their not even playing the game anymore.
http://www.cbc.ca/sports/story/2001/05/16/nfl-concussions010516.html