Today’s Super Bowl XLVI star players likely played youth tackle football 20 years ago when they were 7-and 8-year-olds, but today they’re warning kids about brain damage from concussions.
With the kids 7-and 8-year-olds who play youth tackle football, “you start seeing 50, 60, 70 and 80g blows, you’re just going ‘Wow!,’ “asserted a doctor who heads the first head impact study that warns how many kids are suffering concussions and resulting brain damage. At the same time, one of the NFL’s feel-good marketing promotions for Super Bowl XLVI -- was a “health and safety football clinic” – that featured 50 kids, aged seven and eight, and held this week before the big game in Indianapolis; with edweek.org reporting that it was the first time that the National Football League and USA Football seemed to acknowledge that youth players have especially fragile brains that can be permanently damaged with just one on-field bang, and then concussion. According to StonePhillipsReports.com this week before Super Bowl also featured “the first head impact study in youth football; with data collected on more than 750 hits to the heads of 7-and 8-year-old football players over the course of a season.”
Stone Phillips, former Dateline NBC and ABC News 20/20 reporter, has joined hundreds of former NFL football stars – who are currently suing the NFL for “concussion cover-ups” – in going public with the shocking fact that today’s Super Bowl XLVI star players likely played youth tackle football 20 years ago when they were also 7-and 8-years-old, but today many parents are refusing to allow their young son’s brains to be destroyed so early in life just for the fun of playing youth tackle football.
Young kids brains being smashed
In turn, the results of the first head impact study in youth football is alarming from a health standpoint because – as Stone Phillips reported this week before the Super Bowl, during his appearances on nationally televised talk shows and his StonePhillipsReports.com website – “the findings provide the first quantitative assessment of the acceleration that young brains are exposed to in youth football.”
Phillips put this first head impact study in youth football into context by stating how lead researcher Stefan Duma – who has been gathering data on head impacts among college players at Virginia Tech for nine seasons – describes the results of the youth study as ‘surprising’ because of the great impact youth as young as 7-and 8-years-old are taking daily to their young brains when both practicing and then playing youth tackle football all across America; with concussions and resulting brain damage now being detected at these early ages.
Duma’s research found that “the highest impact we measured (in youth 7-and 8-year-olds) was 1000g, which put you right in the middle average of a concussion.”
In turn, just one concussion – that jars and permanently damages the brain with no medicine, treatment or operation that can ever repair brain damage after a concussion – can also kill.
Inconvenient truth about youth tackle football
While today’s Super Bowl stars someone survived concussions they suffered when playing youth tackle football -- and then more concussions during their high school and college football playing days – the American football culture of 20 years ago viewed concussions as “just having your bell rung,” and the rule was to “tell the kids to man-up and take those hits to the head because that was expected of football players,” said Eugene father Glenn who played football as a kid and is now re-thinking “the risk” of allowing his boys to continue to play youth tackle football where he says “the helmet can’t protect them.”
In turn, Dr. Gunnar Brolinson, head of Virginia Tech’s Sports Medicine Department, remarked on the StonePhillipsReports.com website that details this growing concern about allowing young boys to play youth tackle football in the wake of new findings that even young 7-and 8-year-olds are suffering regular concussions and brain damage just for playing a simple game of football.
Doctor Brolinson asserted: “With the kids, when you start seeing 50, 60, 70 and 80g blows, you’re just going ‘Wow!’ That is really impressive in terms of the load that’s occurring. And again, you’ve got a young athlete and a developing brain subject to those kinds of loads. So it’s concerning.”
Stone Phillips taking on concussions
The StonePhillipsReports.com website – that is devoted to this subject of youth being brain damaged after suffering concussions as young as 7-and 8-years of age, with links to hundreds of other resources for parents to investigate just how significant this problem in youth brain damage is across the U.S. due to participation in youth tackle football – also noted that “35 of the top 38 hits and all impacts over 80gs occurred during practices” for these 7-and 8-year-old youth tackle football players.
“This shows how important our research is,” adds Professor Duma. “Without the sensors, we would never have known this. We can change the practices like we’ve done at college and dramatically minimize risk.”
While that’s good news in theory, explains Stone Phillips during his recent whirlwind discussions on many of the TV investigation programs that he once anchored, who’s to say that each and every youth tackle football program in America will protect these 7-and 8-year-olds from repeated concussions brought on by an American football culture that praises big hits on the football field.
Phillips, who also admitted that he suffered two sports-related concussions during his high school and college says: “We all know how fierce the hitting is in professional, college and even high school football. For the first time, this study gives hard, sobering numbers on head impacts among the youngest players.”
NFL playing catch-up on concussion awareness
In a somewhat shocking headline from The New York Times Jan. 31, the National Football League (NFL) “in another first ever moment,” will devote 60-seconds of air time during the Super Bowl to player concussion safety.”
Mark Waller, the NFL's chief marketing officer, told The New York Times:
"It is your biggest stage, you've got a massive audience, a massive casual audience, and this topic is probably one of most important topics for casual fans, particularly mothers. And so the possibility that we could actually address the issue in a constructive, engaging way with that audience makes it definitely worth the challenge. It's a risk, without a doubt."
Also, edweek.org stated that this concussion awareness commercial “will air during the last commercial break of the third quarter, takes fans through a quick retrospective of NFL history, to show the vast rule changes the game has undergone.”
According to the Times, the commercial will end with Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis saying, "Here's to making the next century safer and more exciting. Forever forward. Forever football."
Also, The New York Times noted that given recent major lawsuits “filed by former NFL players last year that accuse the league of hiding information about the severity of concussions, it's a safe bet that the NFL's Super Bowl commercial won't be the last they ever release on player safety.”
In turn, the NFL marketing department made the most of Indianapolis student-athletes participating in what’s been dubbed by the NFL as a “health and safety football clinic” that’s code for youth tackle football concussion awareness training.
NFL players joining forces to stop brain damage
It’s been called the most under-reported sports story for 2011, because “any talk about concussions is a buzz kill for fans and wealth team owners,” say sports experts, while something changed Dec. 22 when Fox Sports actually mentioned the word “concussion” and more lawsuits against the NFL.
Fox and other major TV sports networks are now saying the “C-word,” and stating that “Jamal Lewis, Dorsey Levens and two other former NFL players have sued the league over brain injuries that they say left them struggling with medical problems years after their playing days ended.
Lewis and Levens, along with Fulton Kuykendall and Ryan Stewart, and more than 200 other former NFL stars have filed the lawsuit against the National Football League and FNL Properties LLC recently in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, L.A. and across the nation.
NFL concussion cover-up
The players maintain "the NFL knew as early as the 1920s of the potential for concussions to harm its players but only went public last year.”
In turn, a group of top former NFL players argue in the lawsuit that “the NFL has done everything in its power to hide the issue and mislead players concerning the risks associated with concussions.''
At the same time, youth tackle football concussion awareness advocates such as Stone Phillips think America’s football culture has to change so that all football players, both young and old, and even those playing in Super Bowl XLVI are protected from concussions that result in permanent brain damage.
Image source of the PET image of the human brain that was used in the first head impact study in youth football. The PET shows energy consumption of the brain after a concussion with bright red and orange areas on the brains of 7-and 8-year-old brains seeing “50, 60, 70 and 80g blows” after using this functional brain imagining proving concussions and brain damage in the young brains. Photo courtesy Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_brain
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