Change Football at the University of Minnesota

It’s time to change the way we play football at the University of Minnesota

We need to start taking more precautions to ensure that football is a game safe for its players.

 In a football game, the quarterback barks out the next play. Players get into their positions. Once “hike” is called, the crash of helmets and bodies resonates past the raucous roar of the crowd. The wide receiver charges in the open field, calling for a catch. Just moments after the ball touches his fingers, the other team immediately bulldozes him. We hear the deafening chants of students — endless chants of “We Hate Iowa” and “Ski-U-Mah.”

Put aside the school pride, and I’ll tell you what has just occurred. The linemen that charged into each other likely smashed into each other at an incredible force of around 10 to 100 gs.[AN1]  The bulldozed wide receiver was likely hit with the same force. Neither of them reports a concussion. Yet the damage is already done. 

The brain is essentially a big wad of soft, crumpled-up tissue floating in cerebrospinal fluid in the skull. When a player is hit, the brain rattles in the skull. This rattling causes neural damage. In the average life of a spectating football fan, this rarely happens. However, college football players themselves often sustain many hits of this magnitude during practice alone.

According to researcher Dr. Guskiewics of the University of North Carolina, a 100-G hit is equivalent to the force of being hit in the head by the windshield after driving your car into a brick wall at 25 miles per hour without a seatbelt.

Without making any exaggerations, each one of the players in that collision got into what is the equivalent of a car accident during that play.

To make matters worse, this wasn’t the player’s first hit in a game. Dr. Guskiewics found the players he studied were hit on that magnitude 32 times that day in practice. Throughout the season, one player is hit in the head an average of over 1,000 times. [AN2] When looking at repeated hits of this high of a magnitude, plastic padding and helmets are simply not enough to protect the brain. [AN3]

The University of Minnesota takes its concussion protocol seriously. According to Dr. Bradley Nelson[BR4] , the Director of Medicine for the University’s football team, each player gets a “personal trainer,” and everyone on staff gets annual education about concussion therapy.[AN5] 

The University’s concussion management protocol involves “computerized neuro-psychological testing,” using testing methods like the SCAT-3 once a concussion has been diagnosed.[AN6] 

I can appreciate the dedication of the University’s post-diagnosis mechanisms, but it is simply not enough. We must do more to research specifically what is happening to the students who play football and what impact it has on their brains in the long run.

Repetitive subconcussive trauma — trauma that isn’t strong enough to give a player concussion — is the real problem. [AN7] Studies done by Boston University and the Department of Veterans Affairs showed that 96 percent of the NFL players examined and 79 percent of total football players, including college football, had a neurodegenerative disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

The broad consensus of researchers is that this condition is caused by repetitive subconcussive trauma. Its symptoms range from depression to memory loss and dementia. [AN8]

A huge problem with this disease is that it’s nearly impossible to get a definitive diagnosis from a MRI or CT scan of a living person. But the end result is horrid. Looking at a picture of a player with advanced CTE, their brain looks incredibly smaller. People with this condition experience a tremendous shrinkage of gray matter in their cortex and a significant depletion of thalamic volume.[AN9] 

Another problem with football’s safety is that only a small percentage of concussions actually get reported. A study by Harvard University and Boston University found that less than 4 percent of possible concussions were reported. When surveyed, many players, especially linemen, felt that the hits that they took daily were part of the routine, so they didn’t report them.[AN10] 

One possible way to explain this is to look at how they educate players on concussions. The current University protocol says that “all student athletes will be provided with a fact sheet” and other materials and that they will be required to sign the material and return it. This leaves them with the burden to learn about the potential damages to their health. [AN11] 

I would argue that these forms serve more to cover liabilities than to actually educate the players. Forty percent of the college athletes studied in the Harvard-Boston study said they didn’t remember their safety material at all.[AN12] 

With that in mind, the annual training that athletes are receiving here at the University may not be enough. In fact, nationwide, more than 15 percent of football players who experience a concussion severe enough to cause a loss of consciousness return to play the on the same day. [AN13] 

Before we are an NCAA Division I football school, we should be a top-tier research institution. The sheer purpose of public higher education institutions is to ensure that students are better prepared for the work force.

Abiding by the national standards is simply not good enough. It’s the national standards that result in the 4 percent reporting of concussions, and huge percentage of former football players with advanced CTE.

The University of Minnesota football program needs to take important steps to ensure its players’ safety. First, the school ought to invest in quantitative tracking and force trackers that don’t rely on reporting by players. This will give clear and direct feedback on how often players are actually hit. A system called HITS measures the exact force and location of every blow the player receives.[AN14] 

Next, the football program needs to fund research to biometrically track the progression of CTE. Finally, the University needs to teach all athletes a more thorough and current scientific curriculum regarding the risks they face. These things aren’t that expensive — but even if they were, we should spend the money. If we can afford to pay our football coach $2.1 million annually, we should be willing to spend a lot more making sure the physical well-being of our players is guaranteed. That way, it won’t just be University students cheering during football games.