Should Guardian Caps Be Used In Football?
Football is very popular sport in America with the hard hitting and major tackles. But when those two factors come into play there's always injuries such as concussions. Concussion is when a human has traumatic force hit to the skull in which the brain swells up in the skull leaving no space causing blackouts and even comas.This brings to the question should there be better padding for the football helmet? In the article “ With player safety preeminent in college football and the NFL, more attention is on helmets” Lee Hanson the founder of the invention “Guardian Cap”, a padded cover that goes over the football helmet to help reduce the risk concussions for football players wants to spread Guardian caps to football athletes
…show more content…
Hanson says” We can prove scientifically (Guardian caps) reduce that amount of impact.” If that is the case then Guardian Caps can be a major breakthrough on how concussions work. The caps do not completely make concussion knocked out of existence but they reduce them, in which a step forward in figuring out concussions and solving them in the future. If this can happen football athletes would have one thing to worry about when playing football.
However some people believe that Guardian Caps have no help in reducing the risk of concussions in football well they’re wrong because in the article text states that Guardian Caps have compartments padded with foam rubber that are arranged on top of helmets, and Hanson says using these compartments dissipates energy better than a solid shell. There is statistical proof that proves Guardian Caps reduce risk of head injuries. To proceed that Guardian Caps do work is that thirty-five states have schools and leagues wear at least 20 of these caps. No one would wear these caps if they didn’t work
Playing football comes with great costs, including physical and mental health deterioration, plus the amount of time spent prepping before game day. Which can pose several questions, “Why suffer for a game, is it worth the money? Is it worth the fame? How great is the cost?” I believe that football, should have stricter regulations for the treatment of injuries, along with informing players of just how devastating a concussion can be, along with the other major injuries that commonly occur while playing football.
Throughout history in the NFL, head injuries and fixing those problems have always been hidden from the athletes because of the NFL striving to make a large profit instead of caring for the players. With this being an ongoing problem between NFL players and the NFL itself, many past and current players are digging deeper to find the truth and statistics continue to show how serious this problem actually is. When the lawsuits first began to come known to the public, the NFL agreed to pay over seven hundred million dollars to compensate former players suffering neurological injuries. Many believe the NFL offered this so quickly, hoping to avoid a potential public relations nightmare. The NFL, a ten billion dollar annual business, couldn’t take any type of guilt, or legal discovery, which some inside and out of the industry expected could have caused a fatal blow to the game’s future (Thiel). The settlement may have prevented the public from learning much about the past, but the issue of head injuries is a danger to football and won’t just go away because NFL wants it to (Waldron).
2014 Issues Analysis By Dino Nuker Sport Safety: Should headgear be made mandatory for all contact sports? Injuries are common in most sports that have a contact component attached. Whether it’s at a professional level, or a school level, injuries are always bound to occur in contact sport. This analysis will look into the role headgear could, should and would play, and debates whether it should be made mandatory. Olympic sports such as Ice Hockey, Bicycle Riding and Baseball are just some examples that currently require athletes to wear a form of headgear.
For the safety of the players in the present and future, a stricter concussion protocol should be required at all levels of football. Though improvements have been made, the game of football is constantly changing and the protocol needs to keep up with the changes. Today’s athletes are bigger, stronger, and faster than ever before: "Size and physical conditioning techniques in sports at all levels have evolved to create an intense athlete. They 're able to create more force, power and speed than ever before and that leads to harder hits and a greater number of hits" (Neporent). These advances in training have led to a more dangerous sport. The protocol has improved in recent years along with an emphasis on player safety, but the increasing numbers of players with long-term effects of concussions show there is still work to be done.
Football is a sport your mother warns you not to play, but your father is on the other side of the argument, encouraging you to do it because it is a “man’s game”. Even though you don’t want ruin your manhood, your mother is always right. Football is in the top three of most injuries caused in sports (HEALTH GRADES, INC) and a majority of it comes from concussions. A concussion is a temporary unconsciousness caused by a blow to the head. Football helmets are used to prevent that from happening and is still a battle today on creating the perfect helmet to protect these young athletes. The football helmet has undergone significant transformation during the evolution of the game. To find out how this important head gear came to be, you have to
Mihoces, Gary. “More padding the issue of concussions and better helmets.” USA Today Sports. 23 August 2013. Web. 29 November 2013.
Players are using their heads as a weapon which is careless, dangerous, and should be banned from the sport. A lot of time and money has been invested in improving football helmets. Quinn and Brachmann emphasizes that “There’s a strongly held belief that no matter how much time and money is invested into research and development there will never be a helmet that is truly concussion-proof ” (Quinn and Brachmann). Helmets have been effective in preventing skull fractures, but not concussions. Helmet manufacturers are researching and trying to develop safer protective head
Is there any protective equipment besides helmets that football players should be wearing to prevent concussions?
("N.F.L. Players’ Union Weighs the Benefits and the Pitfalls of Helmet Sensors. This technology helps prevent a player with a concussion that he doesn’t know about from continuing to play during that game and cause more damage to his head that can last forever. Another good advancement is helmets that have a design that uses energy-managing materials and a facemask attachment system that disperses energy from frontal impacts. This helps prevent the head from taking the main part of the blow and disperses the energy to lessen the likelihood of becoming seriously injured from a hit. These types of helmets have a certain shelf life meaning you can only use them for so many years before they have to be replaced, this is beneficial so that the equipment stays up to the new standards of safety for the players as well as prevents them from becoming stressed over the years and breaking.
The number of concussions in professional and amateur football has been rising and has sparked much controversy in recent years. These concussions are most likely linked with disease and even the deaths of some pro and semi-pro football players. New research is attempting to solve the problem but the issue is still prevalent in football today.
Concussions occur regularly on the football field and have always been an injury associated with football. They occur at all levels from little league to the NFL. One of the earliest reported concussion...
Helmets drastically reduce the tremendous number of deaths caused by head injuries as well as reducing the severity of any ...
Football is one sport that has scientists working around the clock on finding the perfect solution to help decrease concussions. Scientist, Vincent Farrara, created the Xenith X1 Helmet in 2004. Ferrara used to be a quarterback for Harv...
Even though the devastation of concussions is just rising to the surface, they have always been around. In 1994, the NFL started a committee called the MTBI (Mild Traumatic Brain Injury). Dr. Elliot Pellman was appointed as chair, and he was quoted saying, “We think the issue of knees, of drugs and steroids and drinking is a far greater problem, according to the number of incidents” (Ezell). This quote shows how concussions did not hold much importance, even though it should have been the committee's main focus. This is ironic, because in today’s sport world concussions are a highly talked about topic. They hold such significance that some rules are even being changed to lower the risk for players.
While the use of helmets does aid in protecting players from brain trauma, they also increase the risky behavior of players; this is called risk compensation. Risk compensation is the adjustment of individual behavior, responding to the perceived changes in risk (TheFreeDictionary.com). Most people that wear helmets have a pre-conceived idea that, because they have a helmet on, they can possess more daring behaviors and be fine. The helmet is basically thought of as a tool to hit harder, or improve performance in today’s culture. Adventure writer and pilot, Lane Wallace (2011) accurately understands the dangers of helmets being used incorrectly, and how they are used as weapons instead of safety. Wallace also theorizes like the NFL, a change in football culture and of viewpoints towards helmets would vastly reduce trauma to the