Main Outcomes and Measures:
Glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), ubiquitin C-terminal hydrolase-L1 (UCH-L1), neurofilament light chain, and tau were quantified using the Quanterix Simoa multiplex assay…
— From ‘Association of Blood Biomarkers With Acute Sport-Related Concussion in Collegiate Athletes’ by Michael McCrea, PhD, et al, posted to the Journal of the American Medical Association on January 24, 2020.
People pay attention to different things, when it comes to football and other contact sports. Some people, for example, are looking for ‘biomarkers’ — proteins found in larger-than-normal amounts in the blood of college athletes, revealing perhaps-hidden brain injuries.
Watching the 54th annual Super Bowl on Sunday, I found myself paying close attention to the quarterbacks — Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes and San Francisco quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo — the offensive leaders on the field, the men who called the plays and received the snap and threw the passes and made the hand-offs to the running backs. Their massive, well-trained teammates did a great job protecting these quarterbacks from the oncoming defensive players, and were most often successful in giving them enough time to find an open receiver.
Sometimes, just barely enough time.
Like most folks, I was not paying too much attention to the linemen — the offensive linemen facing the onslaught of the defensive linemen.
In the 2015 film Concussion, actor Will Smith plays Dr. Bennet Omalu, a forensic pathologist with the Allegheny County, Pennsylvania coroner’s office, who handled the autopsy of four-time Super Bowl champion Mike Webster. Webster suffered from dementia and was found dead in his pickup truck at age 50, following years of homelessness and depression. Prior to becoming ill, Webster had enjoyed a celebrated career as center lineman with the Pittsburgh Steelers. In the following movie trailer, Dr. Omalu proposes that, over his long football career, Mike Webster had “sustained over 70,000 blows to the head.”
With the help of former Steelers team doctor Dr. Julian Bailes and fellow neurologist Dr. Steven DeKosky, Dr. Omalu published his CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) findings in the journal Neurosurgery in 2005. The findings were initially dismissed by the NFL.
In 2011, Colorado passed one of the nation’s “most far-reaching laws” aimed at protecting young athletes from brain injury: the Jake Snakenberg Youth Concussion Act, also known as Senate Bill 40. The law requires all coaches, public or private, to pull players from an activity if the coach suspects the child has suffered a concussion. But as was mentioned yesterday in Part One, the law does not require record-keeping, nor does it specify penalties for a coach’s failure to pull a player.
Radio station KUNC published the results, last year, of research into the number of public school athletes who were pulled following a suspected head injury, based on data from six of the largest school districts in Colorado, and found over 6,000 cases over a period of 5 years. (Four other school districts did not keep district-wide records or declined to release their records.)
In the case of Cherry Creek School District, near Denver, about one-third of the suspected concussions occurred among the district’s football players. Almost 9% were from girls soccer teams, and more than 7% were cheerleaders.
Apparently, Colorado parents are increasingly deciding that contact sports are not worth the risk. Reporter Monte Whaley wrote a story about Colorado sports last September in the Denver Post, touching on both young players as well as college athletes.
“Parents, especially moms, are getting this information and a lot of them are pushing their kids away from football,” said Jenn Roberts-Uhlig, assistant commissioner for the Colorado High School Activities Association.
Denver parent Alicia Maestas agrees the game is too dangerous for her 11-year-old son, who now plays non-contact flag football. He is likely to pursue basketball and soccer when he gets older.
“I’m good for him to just play flag football right now,” she said. “I just think the concussion rate from playing football is too high. I don’t want to risk it.”
Concerns about frequent head injuries prompted University of Colorado Regent Linda Shoemaker to call for a complete study of football’s effects on CU players.
“I am increasingly concerned about the long-term health and safety of our football players,” Shoemaker said. CTE is a huge worry, she added, “However, we do not know which football players are most at risk for developing CTE.”
More Colorado kids play football in high school than any other sport, but their numbers have been dropping in recent years. According to Whaley’s article, the number of high school football players peaked in 2006 at 17,817 players. By 2017, the figure was down to 15,879, a decline of nearly 11%. Given Colorado’s 2017 high school enrollment of about 266,000 kids, this means that nearly 6% of high school students were playing football.
Nationwide, the National Federation of High School Associations has reported the number of 11-member football participants is down 6.5% from its 2009-10 peak. That’s still more than 1 million participants, however, making it the most popular sport played by high school boys, so football is a long way from dead. But the declines are getting to be big enough to be noticeable at some schools — even some schools where supporting football is considered the civic duty of every patriotic American.
From a 5280 magazine article by reporter Kasey Cordell:
Study after study has demonstrated the value of youth sports in developing cooperation, leadership, resilience, confidence, and all manner of other desirable (and hirable) qualities. More important: Sports are fun. That’s the reason nine out of 10 kids play, according to a recent George Washington University study.
“If your child is having a positive experience while learning important life lessons, then every dollar you spend is worth it — whether they play in college or not,” says Colorado School of Mines athletic director David Hansburg.
Positive experiences come in all shapes and sizes, of course, and at various price points. (Cordell notes that youth sports is a $15 billion industry.) Can your child have fun and develop confidence — and other desirable qualities — without risking brain injury? American parents seem more inclined, lately, to believe that’s the case.
We will close this editorial series by noting that, according to the Colorado High School Activities Association (CHSAA), the most popular organized activity among high school students — with 41,500 participants — is music.