Football is a game that has been ingrained in American sports for nearly two centuries and has gained popularity and recognition each year since its existence. Since the very beginning of the 1920s, the National Football League was established and since then it has provided entertainment every Sunday to millions of Americans across the country. Of course, to play professionally you have to play at the collegiate level and the National Collegiate Athletic Association quickly created a football division in 1978. Naturally, over the years this type of sports entertainment has grossed hundreds of millions of dollars and has established itself as one of the most important. of the most successful companies. As you might expect, these large companies tend to promote all the positive aspects of their business and sweep anything negative under the rug. Head injuries, also known as concussions, are exactly the type of negative attention that has plagued college and professional football for years and can no longer be hidden. From former NFL players such as Junior Seau and Frank Gifford to college football players such as Tyler Hilinski, head injuries have caused or contributed to the deaths of many of these football players over the years. With the emergence of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) seen in retired NFL players over the years, a national debate has raged about what the NFL and NCAA can do to help prevent and reduce the risks that these fatal head injuries occur so often. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay For my extended essay, I will try to explain the extent to which college and professional football have played a role in causing these concussions and what they have tried to do to prevent these kinds of head injuries. head. I will talk about the origin of football and the risks it involves. According to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, football was established on November 6, 1869, with William "Pudge" Heffelfinger being the first professional football player (Birth of Professional Football). In 1892, these athletes received a “gaming performance bonus” which amounted to only $500. Football originated from a combination of soccer and rugby which achieved global success in countries around the world. When football was in its infancy, safety was the last thing on players' minds. In fact, rugby, the game from which football originated, is one of the most dangerous sports in the world. It is played without any helmets and still consists of the same hard hits as the NFL today. It was not until the 1920s that this form of protection, in the form of a leather helmet, came into widespread use in football. These leather helmets were of little or no use as they offered virtually no protection except for soft leather padding. These “helmets” also did not include face masks that would protect these players from any quick hits to the neck and head. . To make matters worse, these helmets were optional and weren't even required for these players. Fortunately, professional football leaders saw their mistakes and decided they needed to improve the safety of these players. To accomplish this, John T. Riddell introduced the first plastic helmet in 1939. This change is considered temporary because plastics became rarer during World War II and when plastic blends began to degrade, these helmets started to break during gamesand broke. in pieces. For this reason, these helmets were banned for a year but were reintroduced a year later with the improvement of the plastic padded helmet. Even though these small improvements were made, there was still one major element of the helmet that was not added: the face mask. Without these masks on the helmet, these players suffered multiple injuries such as swollen lips, bloody noses and black eyes. This single bar face mask was considered a success and by 1942 it was mandatory for all professional players to wear these masks during matches. Over time, the game also adapted and the single-bar face mask would not be enough in the ever-changing violent context. soccer game. Today, helmets use cutting-edge technology to protect these football players to the best of their abilities. These helmets have become more than just protection, but have become a piece of technical equipment. The technology inside the helmet has been improved with the addition of foam padding and plastic pads which were invented to absorb shock from impacts and help the helmet fit as best as possible. The exterior of the helmet has also seen some big improvements, with the outer shell being polycarbonate over an aluminum slate that sits atop a thin layer of leather. Contrary to popular belief, the development of helmets has not completely eliminated all head injury problems, quite the contrary. Head injuries are a growing concern in football and the NCAA and NFL are partly to blame for some of these problems. As noted in the article "The Evolution of the Football Helmet", in the summer of 2011, a lawsuit was filed against the NFL by 2,000 former players, alleging that the league was not doing enough to educate players on the neurological risks linked to the game of football (Stamp 2012). Some of these mental problems range from dementia to depression and even early onset Alzheimer's disease. The problem with the NFL is that it creates all these great rules about how you must attack another player without malicious intent or even where you are allowed to hit these players, but it has virtually no rules on the helmets themselves. In fact, according to the National Operational Committee on Standards of Sports Opinion (NOCSAE), there are no guidelines determining what type of helmet these athletes should wear. This leads to all types of gamers wearing the desired type of headset to suit their personal needs. The NFL is no better off either, as only the rules for these helmets focus solely on the facemask and chinstrap. Because of these different types of helmets worn by different athletes in professional football, some may be better equipped than others to take these concussion-inducing hits. The NFL has begun to take small steps toward improving the safety of the modern football player. The two manufacturers that are now used to make helmets for professional football, Riddell and Schutt, were created to prevent concussions which, research shows, typically come from hits to either the side of the head or the back. jaw. They also implemented a new system whereby, after receiving severe blows to the head, they must undergo a brief examination on the sidelines. Although all of this new technology has been created with the goal of preventing these head injuries, the same question remains: How can the NCAA and NFL continue to prevent these types of head injuries? To fully understand to what extent theHead injuries are dangerous, you need to know the real scenarios that happened to some of these footballers and changed their lives forever. One need look no further than the case of Mike Webster, also known as Iron Mike, who was a Hall of Fame center who played for the Pittsburgh Steelers. At his peak, he was easily one of the best players to ever play the game and was virtually unstoppable. When he retired in 1990, the only thing that could not be stopped was his constant mental and physical deterioration which led to his death at the age of 50 on September 24, 2002. In an article written by The Atlantic , he cites how Webster suffered throughout his post-career life, leading him to participate in absurd things such as living out of his van, putting himself on the bench to relieve his chronic pain, and even trying to patch his bones together. rotten teeth with super glue (Laskas 2015). Webster's story is so fascinating that Jeanne Marie Laskas published a novel which was later made into a film called "Concussion" which explains Webster's fall and how these head injuries shortened his life. Dr. Omalu, a foreign doctor from Nigeria, is the person who discovered that football causes these types of life-threatening injuries and shed light on the fact that football is not as safe as the league would like to tell you . More than 60 years later, the NFL still struggles with these same issues and continues to downplay the negative effects of head injuries on the game of football. As noted in a research paper conducted by Boston University, CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, is a progressive degenerative brain disease found in people with a history of repetitive head trauma (often athletes ), including symptomatic concussions as well as asymptomatic subconcussive hits. to the head that do not cause symptoms (Moran 2017). There are a multitude of symptoms associated with CTE, including memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, and many others, just to name a few. The Boston University CTE Research Center is quick to note that there is a common misconception that if you have a concussion, you have CTE, but that is not always the case. CTE is acquired following multiple or repetitive brain trauma. Although the exact number of blows to the head needed to suffer from CTE is unknown, it is unlikely that a single blow to the head will cause you to suffer from this condition. The unfortunate side of this disease is that it currently has no cure and can only be diagnosed after death with a procedure called post-mortem neuropathological analysis, according to research done on the neuropathology of chronic traumatic encephalopathy ( Pathol 2015). Through this process, CTE was discovered in the brains of many of these former professional football players such as Junior Seau, Dwight Clark, Bill Bryant and many more. Through research, we better understand what this disease really is and how it affects the brains of athletes over the years. It has been scientifically proven that these hits to the head and neck are indeed the cause of CTE in these players, but only one group seems to vehemently deny this: the NFL. The NFL is one of America's top 4 sports and brings in hundreds of millions of dollars each year through revenue and entertainment provided by players. According to the "Top 10 Most Watched Sports Events on American Television", the Super Bowl still remains the most watched event each year and the game's popularity seems to be growing more and more..