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<\/a><\/p>\nIn ancient Rome, within the walls of the Colosseum, gladiators would fight to the death in front of thousands of observers.\u00a0 Crowds would boo and cheer, the mead flowed, and food was distributed.\u00a0 The climax of these events would be the death or serious injury of one of the contestants. \u00a0If this type of event sounds familiar, it should.\u00a0 However, our modern-day “gladiators\u201d are professional athletes, and rather than fighting with swords, America\u2019s gladiators play football.\u00a0 As former NFL player Howie Long once said, \u201cBaseball may be America\u2019s pastime, but football is America\u2019s passion.\u201d\u00a0 Every week in the fall, millions of Americans fill stadiums and tune in on television to watch their favorite high school, college and professional teams compete in a sport that President Teddy Roosevelt once considered banning because of its excessive violence.\u00a0 While instant death on the football field is certainly not as common as it was in the Colosseum contests, recent research has shown that football may have serious, and sometimes fatal, long term consequences.<\/p>\n
Owen Thomas had a bright future ahead of him. \u00a0A student at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and the starting linebacker on the football team, Thomas tragically ended his own life in September 2010 at the age of 21.\u00a0 An autopsy revealed that Thomas suffered from a progressive brain disorder called Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE, which was first discovered in the early twentieth century.\u00a0 Doctors found that the disorder results from repetitive blows to the head, which is why doctors originally dubbed CTE \u201cPunch-drunk Syndrome.\u201d\u00a0 The disorder is very much like Alzheimer\u2019s Disease in that it causes deterioration of the brain including slurred speech, memory loss, and behavioral changes. \u00a0The doctors who preformed the autopsy on Thomas have said that, given the disease\u2019s link to depression and impulse control, CTE might well have played a role in his suicide.\u00a0 CTE was originally believed to be confined to former boxers.\u00a0 However, recent autopsies of former football players, both professional and amateur, have indicated that there is a link between football and the disease.\u00a0 These recent developments indicate that the \u201cbig hits\u201d or even the normal \u201clittle hits\u201d associated with football could lead to the development of this disorder.\u00a0 This linkage is supported by a number of studies conducted on former NFL players.<\/p>\n
In March of 2007, the University of North Carolina\u2019s Center for the Study of Retired Athletes found that of the former NFL players who sustained three or more concussions on the field, 20.2% of them reported being diagnosed with depression.\u00a0\u00a0 In November 2009, the University of Michigan\u2019s Institute for Social Research released a study of former NFL players that had disturbing findings.\u00a0 The study found that of former NFL players over fifty, 6.1% had been diagnosed with dementia, Alzheimer\u2019s Disease, or other memory-related diseases.\u00a0 This percentage is five times higher than the national average for that age group.\u00a0 The study further found that in players between the ages of thirty and forty-nine, the reported rates of dementia, Alzheimer\u2019s Disease, or other memory-related diseases were nineteen times the national average.\u00a0\u00a0 These findings, compounded with our understanding that sustained multiple mild traumatic brain injuries (which are virtually unavoidable in football) have long-term consequences, suggests that the United States, which has approximately four-million high school and youth players, might be on the verge of a public health crisis.<\/p>\n
In light of these new developments, the helmet industry has come under greater scrutiny.\u00a0 The helmet industry is subject to no government or independent oversight.\u00a0 Helmet manufacturers have no safety standards to meet.\u00a0 The only standard in the industry is one provided by the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment, or NOCSAE. \u00a0The NOCSAE standard requires that both new and used helmets protect players against skull fractures.\u00a0 However, this doesn’t necessarily prevent CTE; the force required to cause a player to sustain a concussion is significantly lower than the force required to cause a fractured skull. In January 2011, the NOCSAE announced that it would update its current standards, but thus far has not done so.\u00a0 However, even if the NOCSAE were to update its current standards, most experts believe that no helmet can be developed to fully prevent concussions in football.<\/p>\n
To make the game safer for players, there must be major changes to the game itself.\u00a0 America cannot afford to wait for an entire generation of football players to develop the harsh long-term effects associated with the game.\u00a0\u00a0 While the game of football without concussions is currently inconceivable, a safer brand of football is.\u00a0 The question that both football fans and policymakers need to answer now is, “How do we develop a game that doesn\u2019t compromise the future health of its players?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Michael Galligan (’11) In ancient Rome, within the walls of the Colosseum, gladiators would fight to the death in front of thousands of observers.\u00a0 Crowds would boo and cheer, the mead flowed, and food was distributed.\u00a0 The climax of these events would be the death or serious injury of one of the contestants. \u00a0If this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/policyvoice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/policyvoice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/policyvoice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/policyvoice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/policyvoice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/policyvoice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":674,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/policyvoice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions\/674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/policyvoice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/policyvoice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/policyvoice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}