Head Injuries a Challenge to the Sports Industry?

Head Injuries a Challenge to the Sport Industry? You Betcha!

Most of you will know by now that recent research studies and media coverage by programs such as 60 Minutes are shedding new light on the risk of young football players suffering from concussions and then later in life learning there was significant scarring of their brains.

The concussion part is not new and most men who have played football at the high school level have known someone who suffered a concussion. The rate of concussive injury increases, of course, if football is played at the faster, harder-hitting NCAA level (particularly Division 1) or in professional football via the NFL or CFL.

In a different age, the concussion – having your bell rung – was a virtual badge of manhood. It took tough dudes to play a sport where helmet to helmet contact was a by-product of a game so physically angry that protective headgear was ultimately invented.

The Wikipedia sound bite on helmets runs as follows: “One of the first instances of football headgear dates to 1896 when Lafayette College halfback George "Rose" Barclay, began to use straps and earpieces to protect his ears. Many sources give credit for creation of the helmet to Dr. James Naismith, inventor of basketball. Additionally, other sources credit the invention of the football helmet to U.S. Naval Academy Midshipman Joseph M. Reeves (later to become the "Father of Carrier Aviation"), who had a protective device for his head made out of mole skin to allow him to play in the 1893 Army-Navy game.”

This heady material all came to mind for me recently as I toured the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Ohio. At Syracuse, we have the Hall of Languages. In Canton, they essentially have the Hall of Helmets where you can clearly see the way the football helmet has evolved from padded leather and nose shields to energy wedges, air cushioning and complex face guards.

But those of us who work in this industry mustn’t believe football is the only sport where head injuries are possible. Baseball and lacrosse players have been killed while playing and soccer players use their heads on corner kicks and direct kicks all the time. Sports where bats or sticks are used for contact (ice hockey, field hockey, lacrosse, baseball, softball) or where fighting is the principle act of the sport (boxing, MMA, tae kwon do) or sports where athletes are thrown to the ground (wrestling, judo, sumo) all run the risk of physical injury and potential head trauma.

I doubt any in our field would suddenly call for the termination of contact sports so I think we all must seek ways to make sports safer for the youth and high school participants. It seems unlikely anyone would want football/soccer (in any form) abolished or the head ball outlawed in soccer (especially since the players can’t use their hands as it is). But let’s also be honest that this issue is not going to go away with logic that runs along the lines of “kids need to tough that stuff out” or Hell, when I was playing …”

Like cars without seat belts, smoking and steroids, the greater good must always be sought. And despite spirited rebuttals, that undoubtedly will come from good and informed folks, change – where brain damage is possible – is generally a foregone conclusion.

Or as the great singer-songwriter Sam Cooke once noted, “a change is gonna come.”

By Rick Burton
David B. Falk Professor of Sport Management
Syracuse University