ESPN Article Suggesting that the NCAA should limit contact in spring
The title says it all.
The article indicates that the NFL is going to eliminate all pads and contact during the nine week offseason practice program, and that the NCAA should significantly reduce the amount of contact allowed during spring practice.
A couple of weeks from now, newly drafted former college players will join their NFL teammates in the NFL's nine-week offseason practice program. But not a single player will wear pads or have live contact during any of those practices. The NFL doesn't allow it. The league determined that it's not good for the long-term brain health of its players to have that offseason contact.
Why do this? Because it's necessary. According to medical experts, every block and every tackle in the spring is one more hit that brings a player closer to having long-term brain damage. Each tackle and each block jars the body -- much like being in a car crash. Each time that happens, the brain hits the inside of the skull. (It is difficult to determine the actual amount of contact players have during practices since it varies by coaches, drills and repetitions for players. Some research suggests that the number approximates an estimated 200-plus hits per game.) The cumulative effect of all those crashes over time creates the risk of long-term brain damage. As a result of this, the NFL eliminated live contact during the offseason last year in order to reduce that risk.
What pisses me off is that factory workers are in an industry that is inherently risky to contract carpal tunnel, which has crippling long term effects. Coal miners work in an industry that turns their lungs into tar globs. Fishermen work in an industry where stumbling could kill you. Bloggers run a huge risk of Vitamin D deficiency, asthma, and rickets. I work at a hospital. At any minute I could contract some sort of bizarre flesh eating bacteria.
Why does the government and media insist on marginalizing those risks, yet scream bloody murder at sports? I thought this was a free country? If the idiot Flying Wolenda's (sp?) can walk around 600 feet above Earth on a piece of floss, then get off the back of those who hit each other for a living. Or force boxers and MMA fighters to start fighting solely with feather pillows.
Dammit.
the NCAA doesn't at all act like they're employing factory workers or coal miners, so if they want to keep their status quo it might be best to side with caution in everything they do. Obviously that doesn't apply to the NFL, though.
Then colleges should do away with the ROTC, as you are more likely to be shot after graduation. I understand that the ROTC is more a needed service and football more a casual passtime, but the point still stands. As long as everyone is on board about the risks involved, let them do it.
I can understand pee-wee and high school regulations, as those deal with kids. But everyone on a college team is by definition an adult. So they can make grown up decisions whether the risks are worth the reward. Who here wouldn't jump at a full football scholly at Michigan? Are we all aware of the risks. Done deal.
Should we do what we can to minimize the risks? Certainly, but eventually it will change the game to a point where it may end up becoming obsolete.
First, the scholarship funding is coming from an outside source instead of the school itself. Second, ROTC is a training program; unless you start having cadets (or midshipmen) leading tactical exhibitions on university property, it's not the same at all. Third and most importantly, an ROTC cadet that is totally disabled during summer training is treated very differently than whatever medical scholarship and immediate care the NCAA will offer for a football player paralyzed during a game.
Unless the NCAA wants to start treating their players as employees (like the DoD does with ROTC scholarships), they're much better served by exercising every caution they can. They won't survive otherwise.
Sorry, but that's just ridiculous. We are aware that there are risks, yes, but we are still learning just what they are. Were we worried about sub-concussive blows a decade ago, a year ago? I don't think very many were. Some people don't seem to be today. Beyond that, a step to limit hitting in spring practice sounds like an excellent example of how to reduce risks without changing the game.
Every player in the NFL for as long as it has existed has known there was risk of career and even life ending injury, and those risks were far higher than for non-football players. Come on. Look at Daryl Stingley in the 70's getting parlayzed, or Mike Utley, and there are many other examples of terrible injuries happening. Sure, head injury concerns are newer, but they are just part of a broad injury risk that every adult knows he takes on when he plays.
These are not the same kinds of risk, though. The Daryl Stingley type injuries are very rare. There is a difference between assuming the risk of a serious, but rare injury as opposed to serious injuries caused by an accumulation of normal hits. It's a little like flying in an airplane. We all know the plane could crash and most will assume that risk because it's so small. If we learned that there were also toxins in the air inside the cabins with serious risk to prolonged exposure, would we just write that off in the same way?
In a similar vein, players might be well aware that suffering multiple concussions is dangerous. They also can have reasonably expect the opportunity to retire before it became too big of a risk for them. Certainly we have seen examples of that. Especially college athletes might trust the team doctors to protect them. The danger from repeated sub-concussive injuries isn't really comparable in terms of seeing an increased risk. Plenty of former players are now wondering what damage they might have unknowingly suffered.
Football has taken measures to minimize the likelyhood of spinal injuries like Stingly's. They have taken steps to protect players who may have suffered concussions. Why shouldn't they try to lessen the risk from sub-cussive injuries?
But we learn about prolonged risks in different fields every day. Would I have chosen to sit at a desk the majority of my day if I realized it was a major contributer to heart disease? The risks of sitting at a desk all day may in fact be as dangerous as football. There will always be new risks to evalutate. Maybe typing in caps all the time will be linked to higher rates of cancer. Who knows, maybe being in management raises testosterone levels and leads to higher rates of spousal abuse. Maybe humans are allergic to fresh air. Maybe water causes cancer.
I'm just saying that people deteriorate as a rule. Many things we do in excess turn out to be bad for us. We overturn a new stone every day in this field. Eggs are good, eggs are bad, wait no eggs are good.
I guess I'd just like to give people the option to slowly incapacitate themselves in a way they see fit. It's going to happen to everyone no matter how risk averse they are.
The big issue lurking in the background and which has the potential to completely change the landscape is the question of liability. We can discuss the topic ad infinitum, but when a university gets sued by a former football player exhibiting the problems some of the NFL players show later in life, and never played pro ball, that will be the game changer. How many universities will want to expose themselves to the potential liability that they could face? I'd bet not many.
Playing sports has an inherent risk, including death and paralysis, but death is almost unheard of except when there is some underlying condition and paralysis is rare. I don't know the statistics, but I get the feeling that the number of NFL players with ALS-type problems which are maximally life-altering is very high.
My hope is that someone comes up with equipment which will significantly mitigate he problem, but as this SI piece points out, it is not just the helmet that is the problem.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/nfl/news/20121219/nfl-concussions-helmet/
was what I (somewhat clumsily) tried to say in my first post. The schools/NCAA don't want to deal with that any more than they already have to and are going to go into CYA mode when it comes to stuff like this to maintain the status quo.
Maybe the NFL is becoming so violent, that they are actually trying to save the sport by protecting its playmakers. Spring drills in the NFL means very little. I don't see any downside to this, since there wasn't a considerable drop off in quality after the strike. In the long run, it may actually keep their big money playmakers on the field , improving the quality of the product that consumers consume.
But it's not. It's not BECOMING anything. I'm willing to bet one nickel that injuries have stayed relatively static over the past 30 years. Media saturation is what is driving this craze, not a higher risk of injury.
20 years plus ago went to 5 man rotations, added a full day of rest for starters, limited pitch counts (I realize this was a buch of managers deciding, not a new baseball rule), all to reduce injury risk. Funny thing, injury rates for pitchers are exactly the same as they were with 4 man rotations, no pitch counts, snd 3 days rest. Effectiveness hasn't increased either. All it did was convince most guys other than Justin Verlander that after 100 pitches they must be getting tired.
You're probably too young to know this, but the game of football at both the collegiate and professional level is a very different game from what it was 50 years ago, if you look at the nature of the contact, especially in tackling technique. If you watch this youtube of an old NFL championship game, you'll see a virtual absence of leading with the head, or attempted kill shots. Instead, it's stodgy-looking form tackling. When you couple the dramatic increase in size and strength over the last three decades with the far more violent nature of the contact, it would be unreasonable to assume that there has been no increase in head injuries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0kYhDrktvg
Even looking at the opening kickoff you see multiple areas where grown men are hitting each other very hard and their heads are involved. Granted athletes and speed of game is greater but I can tell you the game was just as prone to head injuries back then. There isn't some threshold that we passed in 1995 that all of a sudden impacts are beyond the brain's ability to absorb. Worse helmets, no facemasks, much more rigorous practices, etc all contributed to injuries back then at a pretty good pace. My father played football in the 30's and allowing for dramatic license, there were a lot of dudes knocked the hell out back then in every game. Hell, Navy had some players in the 30's that would tape angle iron to their forearms for a little extra ooomph... I think the risk has always been about the same but this is becoming a "movement" now for the good of and also to the detriment of the sport.
It isn't a government rule - it's an NFL rule.
Why not just play soccer? Everyone who plays football knows that the possibility for injury is there. At what point does the lack of live reps start effecting game play? It's a delicate balance that coaches walk and do their best not to get guys injured. At least half of spring practices are non contact. Also you know what causes brain injuries? Guys that are 6'6" running 4.5 forties and weigh 270. Start a real testing policy for steroids and watch the average size at every position drop.
What a joke.
My theory on spring is for teams to scrimmage other teams and have a real spring game. Possibly directional teams or smaller schools.
Michigan vs GVSU, EMU etc. in a spring exhibitions. With a fall exhibition game in august against an FCS team.
Also, scrap the helmets. We're going 1879 throwbacks for UTL II. If these gents wore them 133 years ago playing foot ball, why can't this team?
Okay maybe I'm kidding on that last suggestion.
No helmets and not much padding elsewhere.
that they hit just as hard as the NFL. You are right that head shots or very rare though.
HS and below IMO. In college or the NFL IMO, or anywhere else where legal adults understand the risks and still want to play, any forced regualtion is wrong and an insult. NFL players know the risk and accept lots of money to play, and there is nothing wrong at all with acknowledging that there be injuries and that's the price these guys are willing to pay.
High schools have full contact spring practice here, and they have three-team spring scrimmages called "jamborees," where each team plays a half against the other. I wonder how long this is going to happen if colleges stop allowing off-season contact?
IIRC you are in the Tampa area. In Florida, we are given 20 practice sessions. This includes the first 3 days which are helmets and mouthguards only for the purpose of conditioning. During this period, we are not permitted to even hit sleds. Of the remaining 17 sessions, the spring jamboree(3 teams that play a half against each) or a Classic (full game against one team where punts and kickoffs are typically not live contact) count as a session as does an intra-squad spring game. With two pre-game walk-through type practices you are left with 13 days of practice where you would go full-contact in drills. We have usually gone pro-gear (helmet and shoulder pads with no pads where we play to thud, solid contact without the intent of taking the player to the ground) for about half of the parctices.
As a side note about the South's unfair advantage with spring practice, I would venture to say that throughout the fall season in Florida, we lose close to those 13 practices a year due to thunderstorms where we end up in the gym
I also agree that the only regulations should be in hs and possibly at he collegiate level, because those athletes are considered amateurs in the sense they are not paid or under contract. (arguments can of course be made for collegiate athletes and scholarships) I also agree ha it seems as a trade off so in the future leaders can justify placing more games on the schedule. All about he dollars, but we will make it appear as safety.
The high school where my son will be attending can do a few mini conditioning camps in the spring, but cannot start practicing football until mid to late June.
The real question here is if this has any bearing on SEC recruiting advantage, and player rankings at Scout, etc.
Cool you eliminated 100s of hits per player weekly, give the fans what we know as football back. Eliminate all these stupid contact rules during games.
It's no coincidence that when we went from RR's walkthrough practices to full-contact ones with Hoke, our defense improved dramatically.
If you ask the players I bet they'll tell you they want to be in pads.
The article indicates that the NFL is going to eliminate all pads and contact during the nine week offseason practice program...
Do they wear "pads" in the NFL? They wear helmets, of course. And shoulder pads, of course. What else?
It is actually an interesting thing; the NFL is going to force all players to go back to wearing knee and thigh (and hip?) pads starting this year.
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/7959313/nfl-says-players-wear-thigh-knee-pads-2013
Does anybody get the sense that this is just trying to do something, without really doing anything at all? I feel like both the NCAA and NFL are trying have their cake and eat it too.
"See! We do care about concussions, we're limiting spring drills to reduce the number of hits the players take! Nevermind the fact that we're trying to push for an 18 game season (NFL), or who knows how many extra teams/games for the College Playoff"
What the article (and the media) ignores is that unless we continue to work on tackling technique (which requires contact) and help kids learn how to tackle properly, we are increasing the risk.
Look, when big, strong, fast men hit each other, there will always be impact. That impact may seem to lead to injuries. But that's true in any sport. There's risk in almost every activity, and, as long as kids know there's some risk, they should be allowed to take it.
But reducing contact in the 15 spring practices isn't going to lengthen the life of these kids significantly, and may actually shorten it. Kids that don't know how to hit or be hit are much more likely to experience injuries.
EDIT: Actually, if you read far enough, it does say the inexperienced players should be allowed to have more contact. Any coach knows this won't work; trying to run a practice with only kids that are bad at a technique often turns into a trainwreck. You need the good players to be demonstrating and practicing so that the inexperienced players can learn from them.
This is all pie-in-the-sky, idealistic thinking. The bottom line is this: If you aren't comfortable with the risks of football impacts, don't play. But stop trying to pretend we can have football without the risk.
Hoke does not approve. How is he supposed to hear football with no contact?