Research Project: NFL Concussions The project that I decided to research was concussions in sports, focusing on the National Football League. Though the NFL is famously known for being hammered with controversy surrounding concussions, they are trying to improve the health and safety measures to prevent them from happening, and to protect players. These measures are usually tagged with a term called “Concussion protocol”. This term has been thrown around for years by announcers, coaches, players, and probably the most by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. The question I had was, was the concussion protocol actually being effective and reducing the amount of concussions in the NFL? The first set of data I collected mainly focused around a 12 year study that collected data on the amount of concussion between 1996-2001 and 2002-2007. I used the 2002-2007 study because it’s a time period that is closer to the years in which major concussion protocol changes were made. The second collection of data I used was the NFL’s released concussion data between 2012-2015. The gap in years between was due to there being no data released between 2008-2011. In fact, between that time the NFL had enacted a major concussion protocol rule that prevented players showing concussions symptoms to return back to the game. The data from 2002-2007 and 2012-2015 are used to show the before and after, respectively ,of concussion data between when major protocol was enacted. The space also gives time for the protocols to have time to be defined and properly implemented. Between 2002 and to 2007 there were 787 Concussions over 5 seasons which brings the …show more content…
Mostly because there is no definitive answer to what causes the amount of reported concussions to rise or fall over the years. Regardless there is more research needed, and the NFL is conducting further research to better address the issue of