By Mary O’KEEFE

For athletes in football, soccer, and many other sports, getting banged around is just part of the game, but in recent years the toll some of these injuries take on these players have presented itself in pretty frightening ways.

Concussions, specifically for football players, were brought to the general public’s attention in 2011 when it was reported that Dave Duerson, former Chicago Bears defensive back, sent text messages to family and friends requesting his brain be used as research for chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). After sending the messages he fatally shot himself in the chest.

The concern over concussions and how to keep football players – whether professional, college, high school or younger ¬– safe has been an active discussion throughout the country.

Recently, according to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the NCAA Oversight Panel approved changing football’s kickoff rules to allow the receiving team to fair catch the kick inside the 25-yard line and have it result in a touchback.

According to the NCAA, “The Football Rules Committee made the proposal to continue efforts to increase the number of touchbacks during kickoffs since fewer injuries occur during kickoffs that result in touchbacks than on kickoffs that are returned.”

This change is one in a series the committee has made as a way of keeping players safer.

In February, California Assemblymembers Kevin McCarty and Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher introduced a bill titled, “Safe Youth Football Act” which, they say, will protect children from brain injury “by establishing a minimum age to play in organized tackle football programs.”

In a press releasem the two assemblymembers stated, “Numerous studies have shown that [CTE] is caused by repetitive impacts to the head sustained over a period of time and cite sub-concussive impacts as an important factor leading to brain injuries.”

They added that children who wait until high school to play tackle football have a better chance of avoiding the effects that come with CTE, including depression, memory loss and dementia.

Presently in California school districts, charter and private schools that offer an athletic program must provide a concussion and head injury information sheet that has to be signed and returned by the athletes’ parents and/or guardian. The law also requires that youth sports that have athletes 17 years old and younger who are suspected of receiving a concussion be given educational materials concerning head injuries. This new bill, if made into law, would “prohibit any person who is not at least 12 years of age from playing tackle football with a youth sports organization.” If passed, this law would go into affect on Jan. 1, 2020. The bill is now in committee.

The research, changes in rules of play and laws are all in an effort to keep kids safe while playing sports. Although the laws and research deal with a variety of sports the one most focused on, and the one that brought the issue to light, is football. But change does not come easily.

“It is going to be something that will take a long time to change,” said Dr. Yaser Badr, neurological surgeon at Glendale Adventist Medical Center. “Just like it took time to change [ideas] about smoking.”

Badr said in the last few years, research has shown that there is damage to the brain after a series of concussions, whether small and large.

“It happens over time,” he added.

The area of the brain typically affected by concussions due to sports is the frontal lobe, which affects social interaction.

“When we start having trouble with social interaction, we have animalistic behavior,” he added.

This area of the brain can also be linked to depression.

“[Damage to the frontal lobe] can lower IQ and make comprehension difficult,” Badr said. “And anger control is in the frontal lobe of the brain.”

Although theories how concussions affect humans has been around for years, research has caught up with theory.

“The only thing we have different now is scientific proof that [we learned] when we examined the NFL players who have brain damage,” Badr added.

Not everyone who gets a concussion is subject to CTE, or other adverse affects.

“It is a spectrum,” he said.

And it’s all about where a person with the concussion lands on that spectrum.

  Mary Okeefe