SmashMouth

American football: One of the country’s favorite pastimes is also one of the most dangerous.

Characterized by hard tackles and intense speeds, the sport is conducive to a number of serious injuries, but there is one that has received a substantial amount of attention: mild traumatic brain injury and concussions. In 2012, the National Football League (NFL) experienced a total of 189 concussions during their regular season, translating to more than 11 concussions each week.

And those are just the statistics for professional players. College players experience an average of 2.5 concussions for every 1,000 “game-related exposures,” and 25,000 players between the ages of 8 and 19 are taken to emergency rooms for concussions each year. With the rates of these head injuries either increasing or stabilizing over the past 50 years, many health experts have started referring to this football trend as the “concussion epidemic.”



So what is the solution? As more people turn their attention to this problem, an increasing amount of focus has been placed on the football helmet. Many experts claim that it’s failing at its job; not only does the helmet’s design fall short of proper concussion protection, but some say the presence of the head gear may actually encourages players to hit with their heads.

This argument has led some player advocates to offer up a drastic solution: Banning football helmets altogether.

It’s a radical idea, but they claim that discussion on the topic is needed – in order to spark a paradigm shift in the way the game of football is played.

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