sports injuries

I agree that contact sports can be risky especially when bigger and heavier bodies are playing the sport. In hockey past finding a player weighing over 200 lbs (90kgs)was the exception not the norm. In football, players over 100 kgs or 220 lbs. were not the norm. Nowadays players weights are compared to refrigerators, freezers or brick walls.

Because its super bowl time south of the border we concentrate on that sport and its injuries. But are concussions a hidden injury not properly reported by coaches, trainers or parents or an injury only a few athletes in contact sports experience?

Concussions weren't even mentioned when I played football, soccer or hockey. When I played football the protective gear was rudimentary, very basic. Nowadays, players are covered from head to toe like the Michelin character, almost unrecognizable but much safer.

Rugby, played with very little protection must have a higher degree of injuries than football, but does playing with full protection mean players hit harder and more dangerously?

In hockey the ice surface or playing surface has been reduced to accommodate more spectators to this gladiator sport. This allowed for heavier and larger players while reducing the number of smaller finesse players. The hits are harder so rules continue to be made to reduce the most dangerous of hits. But still, with a more open and larger playing surface would we see the type of hits that saw Crosby bent over on the ice? Even the Olympics has embraced the smaller surface for spectator pleasure which in IOC terms means more dollars for the organizing committee's budget woes.

Are concussions that common? Is football that dangerous? What about skiing, snow and skateboarding?

According to Sports Medicine Injuries Prevention, running is the sport that has the most injuries. Concussions do not even make the top ten sports injuries in their list but this may be due to under or non-reporting.

Knees, ankles, leg, shoulders and head injuries in that order are the top five sports injuries for football.

There is enough evidence and understanding of childhood physiology to warrant no contact for kids still in their bone development (growth plate) stage.

The risks and danger that younger people take with a variety of "x-game type" sports these days makes one think a career in orthopedics, neurology and sports medicine should be high on a list of high school graduates thinking of their future.

I pity these x-game kids when they reach 40. Hell, 30!

Let's outlaw "contact" sports

"....what parents will allow their sons to play tackle football anymore? Especially when there are lots of other sports alternatives that aren't dangerous?"
Exactly, so let's create a list of sports that have caused concussions and ban them, shall we?
Hockey, lacrosse, football, basketball, baseball, soccer, rugby, skiing, snow boarding, bicycling of any kind and we can always add to the "prohibited list" in the future, should a concussion show up in an unlisted sport.
Better yet, let's contain our children in foam rubber, hypo-allergenic rooms until they reach the age of adulthood. That way they'll be "safe".
OR we could go to all the hassle and trouble of TEACHING them common sense, TEACHING them self-reliance, self-preservation, self-esteem, self-respect and self-criticism so THEY can decide for themselves where they fit in the REAL world?
Naaaa, it'll never work. All we'd have then would be a bunch of self-reliant, independant-thinking achievers. No good would EVER come of that!

Injuries

Back during the NFL player's strike of the 90's, Sports Illustrated published a set of statistics on NFL players that've stuck with me ever since:
Average salary of NFL players: $160,000
Average time in the league: 3 years
Average amount of disability when leaving: 45%

football vs rugby and the "sweet science"

5 - 25 % of rugby players will suffer a head injury, including concussions. In the NFL the concussion rate is 61%. On e way to reduce this would be to revert to the leather helmets of yesteryear. This has been bandied about but dismissed because there is no way to make this type of headgear where, wait for it...the team logo will stand out! I really wish I was making this up, but alas, it's true. Using leather helmets and more of a scrum like configuration when lining up could possibly reduce the rate of injuries. This is simply conjecture on my part as I'm no expert in this field. And maybe it would also help pick up the pace of the NFL game. Rugby is much more exciting. As for the comments re: smoking and boxing, these two words should never be used in the same sentence. Smoking, as a Brown and Williams executive once said, "is for the stupid, the ignorant, the weak and the poor." Nuff said. Boxing on the fringe? Tell that to Boxing promoters and HBO when Manny Pacquiao, Mayweather Jr., or one of the Klitschko brothers is fighting and they sell out a 20,000 seat stadium and hundreds of thousands of PPV slots. The biggest threat to Boxing comes from the UFC and that's more a generational thing. No, the "sweet science" is alive and well.

There is nothing quite like

There is nothing quite like football in organized sport, and I don't believe there will be anything like it in the foreseeable future. No player, at any time, can single-handedly take control of a game. However, each player is alone on every play, each with an explicit task that only they can accomplish, or fail to. Football is a team of players winning or losing individual battles. But again, success, and failure, is wholly dependent of a diverse assemblage of such players, of drastically differing physical size and speed, working in concert. Not to mention the depth of strategy and technique. Like wrestling, football is about positioning and leverage, like boxing it is about intimidation and endurance, like basketball it about momentum and bravado, and like baseball it about technical skills and sustained strategy.

All that said, football is

All that said, football is not a contact sport. It is a collision sport. The fact that a game so dynamic, strategic and personal is framed within the context of violence is why it is so often compared to war. And while I do not make the claim that such a comparison is an admirable one, and neither do I say that the game of football is even deserving of a comparison to the act of war, it carries many of the same hallmarks.

The degree of head trauma in

The degree of head trauma in organized football is not because football is an inherently violent game, the degree of head trauma in organized football is a direct effect of the increasing size of players over the last 30 years, and the manner in which they are coached to hit from the day they strap on the equipment. The average NFL player in the 1940s and 1950s was nowhere near the same size as the behemoths that currently fill professional and university rosters. Whether this growth is due to changes in what we're been feeding ourselves in the west, or reflective of advances in exercise science, I don't know (perhaps that's a better area of focus for you journalistic inclinations) but a knock-on effect of bigger players has been bigger hits. Football didn't change, the size and speed of the players did.

Commiserate with bigger

Commiserate with bigger players has been the evolution in football equipment. New helmets and more durable padding which were intended to better protect players actually enabled them to play with more abandon. You could call it the Jevon's Paradox of the Football World. More protective equipment produced a counter-intuitive resulted, where instead of players being better protected you created players who tackled and blocked with less physical restraint. Football didn't get more violent, better designed equipment made players more violent. Trot down to a local sporting goods store and ask to see a current Revolution Football Helmet with a 1970s version Riddell, you'll see my point and get a change to exercise that journalistic inclination of yours as well.

In large part due to the

In large part due to the above stated influences, the coaching of football has changed in the last several decades to encourage dangerous and harmful methods for tackling and blocking, and it is here where all of your infantile worries can be addressed. If you hand a hockey stick to 7-year old and simply tell him 'play', don't be surprised if he begins slashing and hacking with the impromptu weapon quite quickly. However, after years of sound coaching about the proper way to handle a hockey stick within the rules of hockey, the inclination to hack and slash is coached out of the player creating a safer game. Diddo with football. By coaching kids about holding and clipping (blocking in the back), they have a mental aversion to do it because it goes against a coached-in habit of how to play the game. The same for violent and dangerous tackling and blocking, by coaching pee wee and high school players to NOT lead with the head, to NOT cut-block below the knee (feel free to find out what a cut-block is), and to NOT headhunt through the secondary (again, look up the terms), after several years you change the accepted patterns of how the game is played, and create a safer game of football, which is in fact, the same game of football as it has always been.

Lastly, the fact that you

Lastly, the fact that you don't actually 'get' the entire C'mon Man dynamic just proves you`ve never been in a football locker room, which is worlds apart from basketball and...ahem...the noble and laudable contest of...volleyball, and moreover, co-opting your infant son into the title of your piece as needing some sort of paternal protection against a sport (which he may, as I did, fall in love with at the beginning of adolescence) that you yourself have next to no experience with is both cheap and unprofessional in an opinion piece.

And Football as a

And Football as a working-class passtime? Perhaps you should have visited Vancouver College, one of the most respected high school football programs in the Lower Mainland, and one that repeatedly produces University calibre athletes.

Enjoy the big game on Sunday...if you can stomach its atrociousness that is.

equipment

I've heard that the equipment can be a major part of the problem. When you feel invincible you'll take more risks. Look at high sticking in the NHL - now that kids grow up with full cages. Maybe if football went back to leather helmets?

Rugby injuries

Grumpy is an over 50's, rugby player and has played the game since 1971.

In rugby, head injuries do happen and are mainly due to a collision on the field or a hard tackle with the head hitting the ground.

As rugby players wear little or no protection, we tackle differently and must 'wrap' the player with our arms and it is illegal to tackle football style. This means with a proper rugby tackle there is no head to head contact (of course in a hard hitting game this may occur but it will give the tackler the same risk of injury) and less chance of head injury.

The scrum is different as the front row binds in, taking contact on the shoulders, rather than the head. As an old prop, I can assure everyone that one doesn't last long in a scrum head-butting.

In junior rugby (13 - 19) the general rule is, the first head injury (depending on severity) no play or practice for two weeks, with a return to the game only by doctors note. Second head injury - season done!

As a general observation, I am appalled at the number of children injured in soccer, most by sliding tackles.

All sports have a degree of risk and I even know of a volleyball player who has brain damage after slipping during a game and banging her head on the gym floor! Football, it seems, takes all injuries, including head injuries to a higher plain and the authorities running football are ignoring the serious consequences of just not head injuries, but all injuries as well.

stefan le fanbois deloox

I don't know stefan, your own argument smacks pretty strongly of blindered bias and the prejudice of the gleefully unrepentant jock just itching to don the strip and the strap.

I played football for a time in high school back in the school year of 71-72. I eventually quit because of the degree of violence, the embarrasing jingoistic foolishness (Rah Rah us we be winners; kill the other team of loathsome losers; hiss booh bah....), and odd ersatz semi-homo-erotic fog simply repelled me.

I had had a similar experience with hockey in the mid 60s, that also contradicts your clearly jockish-tinted perspective in that rather than wanting to high stick and attack my opponents at the first opportunity (as you claim), my intent, at all of 6 or 7 years old was to play the game. However, I was sidelined by the coach who felt I was too much of a sissy specifically because I would not try to hit my opponents with my stick at the first and every opporunity or to slam them with all the mighty vigour of my tiny tots musculature could afford into the nearest wall. So I call foul on your happy misperspectives.

As has been stated, football is not a contact sport, it is a collision sport that somewhat melds into a blood sport. Love it all you want, but fanbois lust and the passion to pat husky fannies and plastic helmets doesn't change its realities.

cboo44

You still need better head and neck protection.

A documentary on the subject that includes interviews with people who have debilitating concussion induced injuries may be a start. They should have no trouble finding punch drunk boxers.

How they let that sport continue to exist is beyond me.

Two words...

Flag football!

I've extenseively played both rugby and football

at very competitive levels, and I can say without prejudice that football hits, particularly those to the head are much higher in football. I have seen evidence of measured forces exceeding 200x the force of gravity (for a split second) with equipment placed in US college players' helmets. Measured forces of NFL athletes colliding are often the equivalent of literally driving a car at 50kph into brick wall. I have been concussed and/or knocked out several times, and doled out my fair share of the knocking as well back in my football days...

Rugby (as previously mentioned)is a game of possession, not inches. Sure there are bone crushing tackles, but without helmets, head-to-head contact is almost always inadvertent. Of course there are concussions in rugby, but much fewer than in football. The most dangerous part of rugby is in the front-rows of the scrums, where the pressure exerted from 8 powerful men vs. 8 powerful men starting from 1m apart is amazing- over 800kg (1700lbs) of pressure across the front rows' necks and shoulders is generated at the professional/international level.

Admittedly, there is a primal satisfaction which comes from playing a game in which one must physically dominate an opponent (in addition to using skill and tactics) in order to win- and in rugby, you celebrate your efforts by buying your opposite a pint after the game.

That said, I would love for my son (when he gets old enough) to play rugby, and would not hesitate to allow him to play football, either. IMHO, the key is education and to closely monitor any injuries that arise from participating.

Would I be disappointed if he came home and said that he wanted to become a figure skater? Probably, (due to several reasons including the astronomical costs, goofy politics and goofier outfits), although I would still support him regardless of my own personal opinions, as at the very least he'd be participating in something active. Not necessarily a sport... but something active.

On a side note...

I also coach rugby, and at the risk of sounding like my dad, kids today are soft as a kitten on a down pillow. While I don't mess around with concussions and make sure that my boys are thoroughly evaluated and take at the very least the minimal recommended recovery time after a knock, I have literally had kids miss a game of rugby for a mildly sprained finger- on several occasions. There is currently a global decline in the attendance of youth team-sports. Why, I don't really know- could be being mollycoddled by hyper-protective parents or the addictiveness of video games, or the fact that kids are becoming less and less coach-able (possibly due to their parents brushing their hair and calling them special for too long). While the above is all just speculation, I do know that kids are getting fatter, lazier, softer and much less likely to actually commit to sport than they did 10 years ago which truly is a tragedy.

Better gear and much better coaching...

Snert, you are dead on when you say better equipment is needed. I saw a feature on Marketplace that studied the impact resistance on hockey helmets Vs. lacrosse helmets. Both are similar in nature, yet lacrosse helmets have to undergo a drop test that is two times the height of hockey helmets.

Going back to leather helmets or less facial protection doesn't help either. One of the reasons for facial protection is to prevent eye injuries. One only has to look at the work of Dr. Tom Pashby in hockey to see that.

Where youth sports often go wrong is in allowing absolute idiots access to our kids through coaching. Some times we allow the hometown hero superstar once he returns home to sell cars because for some reason we believe that being a player equates with coaching skill. Wrong!

As John Greg has alluded to above, many of these coaches really turn kids off sport because of their myopic thinking and straight male hegemonic thinking.

Anyway, a good coach teaches respect for your opponent and proper, safe techniques for body contact.

I played and coached

City league in Montreal.

As others pointed out the size and strength of players has increased.

I was taught and teaqched proper tackling technique; also hitting with the head only is a penalty!

It comes down to paid atheletes doing whatever it takes to win-get the opposing player out of the game with a 'clean' hit.

Same things happen in hockey.

The pro atheletes say they don't intentionally try and injure the opposing player; but if it means winning a championship and a pay raise......

Parenting

I won't get into the football debate, only that it will be interesting to see how the writer will "control" his son, when the boy is a teenager. Unfortunately, when they get into high school the boy will make choices, not all of which the writer can control...so it may be the writer is faced with (as an example)..do I want my son playing football, or skateboarding, or whatever,( where his peers or positive, or doing none of the "dangerous" sports, or much of anything and hanging around with kids who maybe are not so positive. Authoritarian parenting doesn't work so well on teenage boys!