
Is It Time to Retire the Football Helmet?  - edw519
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704402404574527881984299454.html
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mattmaroon
'there may be a greater prevalence of head injuries in the American game
because the players hit each other with forces up to 100% greater. "If they
didn't have helmets on, they wouldn't do that,"'

The second part of that is dead wrong. When millions of dollars and hall of
fame spots are on the line, people will sacrifice their bodies. Boxers and MMA
fighters knowingly take up a sport where their retired legendary heroes can
barely form a coherent sentence after age 50. They know going in they're going
to get their brain damaged and they do it anyway, and boxing's not half as
prestigious as football here.

Football is America's premier sport, and the Super Bowl is America's most
prestigious sporting event. People will collide just as hard without helmets
as they do with in order to win a Lombardi trophy regardless of the cost to
themselves.

It's silly to think that if millions of young Americans will put their life on
the line to defend our country, that hundreds won't put their life on the line
to achieve fame and fortune.

~~~
Travis
Just curious -- how do you explain away the many fewer head injuries in the
australian football leagues?

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jfager
Aussie rules football is a completely different game.

American football builds in a guaranteed 6+ head contacts per play, from
linemen colliding with each other when the ball gets snapped each down. In
Aussie rules, players distribute across the field, and the game isn't built
around downs.

And in American football, when you tackle someone, the play is over. Aussie
rules is much more fluid, and every time you tackle someone, you
simultaneously risk taking yourself out of the play. In that regard, it's much
more similar to hockey, where laying out a hard check might cost you a goal
because it means you're sprawled out on the ice rather than getting back on
defense.

Edit: also, a bunch of the worst hits in American football come thanks to the
forward pass - a QB leads a crossing route too much, and the defenseless
receiver gets jacked stretching out for the ball. There are no thrown passes
in Aussie rules football.

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hugh3
Indeed. Aussie rules is probably the least tackle-intensive of the non-round-
football games.

A better comparison would be to Rugby League, which is tackle-stops-play much
like Grid Iron (which is what we call American Football). But there's still
less tackling, because you're only allowed to tackle the guy with the ball,
whereas Grid Iron seems to be an everybody-tackles-everybody-all-the-time sort
of situation.

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anigbrowl
Quite. In American football the basic play is to prevent the entire team from
following the ball around.

In rugby the only time you have this pushing behavior is in a _scrum_ (aka
_scrimmage_ ), where most of the team members get into a group blocking
position against the other team and the referee throws the ball into the
middle between their legs. Then the teams try to push each other backwards so
one of them can get over the ball and kick it out to the rear of their scrum,
where another player can pick it up and start running.
([http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/rugby_union/rules_and_equipm...](http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/rugby_union/rules_and_equipment/4205334.stm)
has an explanation and a useful picture)

Even though this scrum is a test of brute strength, there's no impact involved
because the scrum is carefully arranged and supervised by the referee _before_
the ball is thrown in, not least to minimize the risk of injury. Pushing is
one tactic, especially beloved of teams like the New Zealand All-Blacks who
have a lot of big Polynesian players, but an equally valid approach is to
rotate the scrum to one side or the other and use an opposing team's forward
momentum against them. The main injury risk is a broken neck or torn ear, but
these are mercifully rare. About 10% of rugby injuries involve concussions,
but the overall rate of injury is much lower, and you could play many games
without ever getting a bang on the head.

Strength is important, but no more so than speed or agility. I weigh only 140
pounds but I was a fairly good rugby player in school because I was nimble,
and there are quite a few small professional players. If you are interested
and have 4 minutes to spare, this video shows the highlights of a game with
two excellent, versatile teams doing 'a bit of everything':
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heoO_5MvZ0w&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heoO_5MvZ0w&feature=related)

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ryanwaggoner
I've heard the same thing is true of boxing vs. MMA fights; because boxers
wear heavily padded gloves, they end up throwing and receiving many (less
powerful) blows in a fight because it doesn't hurt your hand to hit someone in
those gloves. But MMA fighters wear minimal hand protection, which results in
fewer (more powerful) blows. Surprisingly, it turns out that this may be
healthier in the long run.

This also reminds me of the whole "modern running shoe" vs. barefoot approach.
Interesting what our bodies are optimized for.

~~~
giardini
".. boxers wear heavily padded gloves, they end up throwing and receiving many
(less powerful) blows in a fight because it doesn't hurt your hand to hit
someone in those gloves."

No. While it is true that their hands are injured less, the gloves allow them
to deliver _more_ _powerful_ blows. The use of gloves brought brain injury to
boxing in a big way.

In the days preceding use of gloves, knockouts and concussions were less
frequent, fights lasted much longer and required considerable endurance as
well as fighting skill.

~~~
Someone
The padding of gloves in itself does not make blows to the head harder, it
makes them less painful for the competitor delivering them, and that leads to
harder blows. Hit someone hard on the head with a bare fist, and chances are
that you break your hand. Because of that, before gloves came into use, boxers
would go for body blows, rather than blows to the head.

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icegreentea
This is what rugby players have been teasing football players about forever.

And really, the only way to make it work is if they also get rid of most of
the padding. Because even with a rugby form tackle , if you smack into a full
padded up football player, that's going to cause some trauma.

~~~
Retric
I like the idea of taking it to the other extreme, attach the helmet to the
shoulder and back padding so you can swivel the helmet but not change it's
angle relative to the body. Then add even more padding and focus the sport on
armored tanks flailing at each other. You would still have the issue of people
flying end over end and landing on their heads so replace the playing surface
with gymnastic mats. Of course we could still get some joint injury’s so add a
protective exoskeleton to prevent over extension etc and then watch as people
fling their body’s around and bounce off of each other.

It might not be a sport at that point, but it would be an interesting
spectacle.

~~~
83457
...and require a player to actually go through the uprights with the ball for
field goals by way of strategically placed trampolines?

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Retric
I like it, still if your going that far why not have them play inside a giant
pinball machine?

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danielnicollet
My take on this: The human body was made to run without add-ons. Pads and
helmets seem like a great idea at first but they cause NFL players run out of
memory after they retire. Let's re-install the Football OS clean of all
plugins and call it Rugby ;-)

~~~
hugh3
Of course, rugby players also get a lot of brain injuries.

I knew one kid at school (well okay, I knew _of_ one kid at _another_ school)
who had his neck broken in a scrum. (That ended the "compulsory Rugby" policy
at that particular school.)

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brc
Yes, someone at my school broke his neck in a scrum as well. And I've heard
plenty of similar stories over the news. On a rugby field, the most dangerous
place is in the scrum.

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JoelSutherland
Here is Gladwell on Football safety:

Offensive Play

How different are dogfighting and football?

[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/19/091019fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/19/091019fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all)

~~~
thewordpainter
great read, joel. thanks for sharing. just about no one knows how to tell how
a story better than gladwell (sidenote: seems like he'd make for a great
pitch-man)

the NFL is reacting with their gut right now. i know they're trying to send a
message, but the officials are going to receive the brunt of the criticism
when there's so much ambiguity between the rules right now.

this is an issue that needs to be addressed after the season...maybe that
gives a YC-startup time to put together a new helmet ;)

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balding_n_tired
You could change the NFL a great deal by changing the substitution rules, and
making players play both ways as they commonly did before about 1960. You'd
probably see the linemen come down to about linebacker size, and the skill
positions to about defensive back size.

Meanwhile I'm waiting for the obsessive parents of America to read up on the
cumulative effects of heading soccer balls.

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bryanwb
I highly doubt that big-time football will ever change while it is still
making so much $. Yuppie American parents _are_ paying attention to the risks
of head injuries and they are voting with their kids feet by putting their
kids into lacrosse and soccer. Football won't change until it starts losing
irrecoverable ground to lacrosse and soccer.

~~~
hugh3
So we'll see growing class differentiation in sport choices between those who
grew up with rich parents (better protect young Tyler's brain so he can grow
up to be a lawyer) and those who grew up with poor parents (I'll bet young
LeMonjello could be an NFL star someday!)?

~~~
bryanwb
I think we already see that. This certainly was the case with boxing.

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michael_dorfman
The problem, it seems to me, is the temporal separation between the impact
injury and the symptoms, breaking any feedback loop.

What we need is a redesigned football helmet that has razor-sharp metal
spikes, pointed both in and out, causing immediate excruciating pain to both
parties in any impact.

 _That_ will stop concussions, guaranteed.

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dejb
As a reluctant and occasional watcher of AFL (QLD'er) I can say that the
comparison to AFL has no value. The rules of AFL impose many constraints on
the tackler and the pay-off amounts to less than the turnover of possession in
soccer. The best comparison to US football would be Rugby League which favours
more 'hard hits' than the more internationally renowned Rugby Union. I've yet
to see studies compare the results but my impression is that the League player
suffer significantly less brain injuries during their professional careers.

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83457
I think the last paragraph really sums up why this drastic of a change is not
going to happen:

 _"Without the helmet, they wouldn't hit their head in stupid plays," says P.
David Halstead, technical director for the Nocsae, the group that sets helmet-
safety standards. But without helmets, the game "wouldn't be football," he
says._

There may be a sport similar to American football without helmets right now
that becomes very popular in coming years. However I don't see such a drastic
change ever being applied to American football directly.

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bbuffone
The solution is simple - sports should ban ALL hits to the head. Zero
tolerance, it is uncalled for and brings nothing to the game

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Travis
Would this really solve anything? It would reduce the rate of serious hits
(and thus concussions). But by what amount? Any time you have men this size,
who are this motivated, moving this quickly, you'll have serious injuries.

Not to mention the fact that the elephant in the NFLPA's room is that its
starting to look like subconcussive impacts are a major part of the problem.
The big hits and helmet-to-helmet draw the attention, sure, but the 60 hits
per practice are what drive much of the damage.

~~~
bbuffone
You are trying to remove the initiation of contact to the head. This does a
couple things 1.) Simplifies and remove ambiguity from any call. 2.) Reduce
the initial impact to the head.

Is it going to eliminate all head injures no, but is a clear way to define a
rule.

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robryan
Most Australians don't get the point of all the helmets and padding in the
american game. AFL has strong rules for protecting the head, to the point that
players attempt to exploit this and ducking their head when they have nowhere
to go hoping the tackling player will make contact with them and draw a free
kick.

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tvon
Unfortunately these people have been playing with pads since they were kids,
this isn't a change that could be introduced easily. I do think it is more or
less the way things need to go though, but I don't actually see it happening.

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kenjackson
If the NFL ever did get rid of helmets, then I'm starting a new league with
helmets.

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charlesju
They might as well just start the NFL as flag-football.

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konad
<http://crimeletes.com/?watch=desean-jackson-gets-jacked-up>

There's no way on earth that tackle would have been tried sans helmet.

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jordanlyall
The logic "remove helmets and players won't make hard hits" is like saying
"remove seatbelts from cars and people will drive safer."

~~~
alex_stoddard
A very poor analogy. You never deliberately initiate a collision in a car.
Also being surrounded by a car body gives you a false sense of
invulnerability.

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adolph
Sure, few people deliberately initiate a collision. However, that false sense
of invulnerability you mention may induce behaviors that increase the
likelihood of initiating a collision.

~~~
dmfdmf
I read once that the studies show that as cars got safer with better brakes,
tires, seatbelts, airbags, etc. people increased their speed or took more
risks to compensate so the overall risk stayed roughly the same.

