Head And Spine Committee: A Case Study

The Ongoing Concussion Crisis and the N.F.L’s Head, Neck, and Spine Committee Almost all of America has seen or heard of the popular sport Football. Football stands on the objective to get the ball across to the opponent's goal. As a way to protect the opposing team from scoring, the players can tackle the opposing team. Tackling an opponent can lead to many serious injuries injuries, including concussions. Concussions consist of forceful collisions against the head and can lead to chronic traumatic encephalopathy or C.T.E, a degenerative brain disease. As a result of football being dangerous the N.F.L, the National Football League, created the head, neck, and spine committee to help diagnosis, prevent, and treat players with sports related
The N.F.L created the head, neck, and spine committee with the intention of diagnosing, preventing, and treating any N.F.L football player that sustains an injury, including concussions. However, concussions remain a major issue happening in the football world and players continue to remain affected by them. In fact during the 2015 pre and regular season games, 271 players sustained concussions, making it a 31.6 increase from 2014 (Breslow). This set of statistics proves that the concussion crisis continues to increase because each year more players continue to become affected by concussions. Furthermore, it tells people that concussions don’t only happen in regular games, but during pre season games as well. In addition concussions regularly occur in highschool and little league football. As a matter of fact, around 47% of concussions occur in high school students (Sports). Which represents one of the highest percentages among other high school sports. This again proves that concussions do not only happen in the major leagues. The N.F.L also plays a major rule in these outside leagues. The New York Times stated, “the league’s public position could influence other levels of football because many college, high school and youth leagues take their cues
However, the N.F.L’s head, neck, and spine committee has continuously denied these accusations, even though they have been proven true. the New York Times stated, “The N.F.L. has been found to mismanage concussion research, dating to the league’s first exploration of the crisis when it used deeply flawed data to produce a series of studies” (Branch). This statement acknowledges that the N.F.L previously has mishandled the research on concussions and giving flawed data out to the public to hid the fact that a problem existed. The committee even tried to discredit two reports of C.T.E by Dr. Omalu who found signs of C.T.E in retired football players. They even blamed the players receiving concussions from outside activities. Mr. Miller stated, “A concussion can happen in a variety of different activities” (Schwarz). This statement shows that the committee tries to change the subject of the situation of the players developing C.T.E, and blaming it on other activities so that people will not know how dangerous football came be. One of the main reasons on why the committee previously tried to influence the research is because they want people to continue playing the game. The N.F.L has even gone as far to spend millions of dollars to try