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The Negative Cases Of Concussions In The NFL Football Players

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Former NFL superstar tight end Aaron Hernandez was convicted of executing a man. He killed him with six bullets inside an industrial park, he and was sentenced to life in prison (“Aaron Hernandez’s”). Concussions are a scary reality of playing National Football League (NFL). Every year there are more and more players that are having season ending, or career ending injuries due to hits to the head. There have been many NFL players that have had serious issues due to concussions. Postmortem X-rays Hernandez suffered the worst case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) ever in a 27 year old, this likely affected his memory and control over his actions (“Aaron Hernandez’s”). While in prison Hernandez committed suicide using his bedsheets. Once a person dies, they can have an autopsy scan. Autopsy scans can take from sixty minutes to five hours (concussion [page 12]). This looks inside the brains of player’s which allows for scientists to detect black spots which are broken down tau protein (“Aaron Hernandez’s”). The images of Hernandez’s brain showed black spots. This happens due to the players head being smashed continuously (“Aaron Hernandez’s”). Despite the fact that Dr. Ann McKee could not confidently say that the CTE caused these violent behaviors, due to the rising number of cases of NFL it is clear that CTE is linked to these kinds of issues. Since the 2017-2018 NFL season started, there have been more than 280 concussions in the NFL. That is an average of 12
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Concussions On September 24, 2002 is when Bennet Omalu was getting ready to start an autopsy on the famous football player Mike Webster. Mike had died from blows to the head on the football field. But the Steelers claimed it was a heart attack. The blows to his head affected him most after he retired.

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Aaron Hernandez, an NFL tight end, has committed murder; CTE is to blame. Hernandez was convicted of murder in 2015 and was later found dead in his cell. He had killed himself. After his death, his brain was taken for research. Dr. Ann Mckee, “examined his brain and said in a statement that Mr. Hernandez had ‘early brain atrophy’ and ‘large perforations in the septum pellucidum, a central membrane’ of the brain” (Belson 2017).

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According CNN’s article “NFL Concussion Fun Facts,” there have been 692 combined concussions diagnosed throughout the preseason and regular season in the NFL over the past 3 years. It may be evident by these numbers that the NFL has a major problem with players getting concussions, and over the years their concussion protocol has been questioned by former players and other people around the football community. Ken Belson stated in his article “Brain Trauma to Affect One in Three Players, N.F.L. Agrees,“ that a third of retired football players are subject to long term brain issues, these issues may include the disease known as CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) which has been brought to light in a more recent time. CTE has effected a good

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In this source, specifically in the “Concussions” section, Reed Karaim explains that many athletes are leaving their sports in order to maintain their brain health. Although the NFL and NCAA are taking strides to better protect their players, there is only so much that can be done. Being a “freelance journalist”, Karaim is left relatively unchecked, but he objectively paints the picture of concussions in athletes. He writes this article particularly to the avid college sports fan who wants to know what goes on behind the scenes.

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An NFL football player will endure somewhere between 900 to 1500 blows to their head over the course of a single season. With an immense amount of blows like this comes an immense amount of damage to a player’s brain. This extensive amount of brain damage has been decided, by Dr. Bennet Omalu, to result in chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. Over the course of these discoveries and much controversy, the NFL has been targeted, denied all accusations, done very few things to lessen the risk of concussions in football, and the risks and number of concussions have steadily increased throughout the league’s

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One of the worst recorded cases of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy is the case of Aaron Hernandez. Aaron Hernandez was a former NFL player who played football professionally for three years and collegiately for three years. He displayed many symptoms of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy before his death. He had murdered three people and was serving a life sentence for one of the murders. The murders and suicide are prime examples of the symptoms of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.

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Dr. Bennet Omalu, who conducted the autopsy of Mike Webster, found the first scientific clue regarding the long-term effect of concussions in football (Kirk League of Denial). Upon investigating Webster's brain tissues, Dr. Omalu found collections of tau proteins, a definitive sign of chronic traumatic encephalopathy. CTE is best characterized by the lifelong progressive deterioration of cognitive functions with an environmental etiology (McKee et al.

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Some of the tests revealed damage to the amygdala which controls mood. Additionally the NFL players scored much lower on memory tests, and had worse verbal skills (Hedin, 2015) 5. Due to the recent number of suicides & violent crimes committed by former players, there is more of a need to research the correlation between the head injuries in the NFL and brain disease even more C. Thesis Point 3: What steps the National Football league has taken to protect players long term health and safety 1. With the scrutiny the NFL has come under, they have developed a new protocol for the diagnoses and treatment of players with concussions 2. Under the new protocol, any player who exhibits sings of a concussion, even the most remote sign, must come out of the game and be checked out by the medical staff, they may not return to the same game if they undergo tests for concussion.

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In football today, concussions are the number one leading injury in the National Football League. In the past 7 years alittle over 10 national football players have died due to concussions. The list of players getting concussions during the past couple of years have just increased more and more as time goes on. A reason why the NFL concussion protocols are so strict is because the NFL does not want to get sued for mistreatment of players and insufficient care. That could possibly cause permanent damage physically and mentally to players.

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Because many doctors and researchers were part of the NFL teams, they could not defy the NFL and were forced to forge the data. In order to fix the forgery, independent researchers and physicians who are not affiliated with the NFL must conduct a transparent research to show actual research on concussions in the NFL. Since concussion issues are newly introduced, more reliable and thorough information is needed for players to safely prevent long-term brain injuries. With NFL’s pseudo logical data, the prevention and

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Football concussions can lead to brain injuries or other serious health issues that can be fatal. Concussions can happen in many different ways, which all involve big hits to the head. Hard hits to a player's head can cause his or her brain to move in different ways which can cause brain bruising or bleeding. A hard hit to a player’s forehead causes the brain to accelerate in a back and forth motion that can make a player feel nauseous or unstable. If the hit is focussed in the left or right side of a player's forehead it can cause the brain to move in a twisting motion which will leave the player light headed and with a headache.

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Concussions in Sports In sports, concussions occur frequently across all age groups. From little leagues to high school sports to the professional leagues, concussions pose a high risk of long term Traumatic brain injuries. Because of the high rate of concussions in sports more attention should be paid to protocols and treatment to prevent traumatic brain injuries. High school athletes that partake in a sport that requires intense physical activity are the most vulnerable to concussion and need more time to recover. According to the Head Case “High school football accounts for 47 percent of all reported sports concussions, with 33 percent of concussions occurring during practice.”

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Concussion can usually be treated at a hospital or doctor's office right a way however some patients may have to stay overnight or in trauma cases there may be bleeding inside the skull. Concussion recover depends on many things such as age, where the blow to the head was,how hard the head was hit, and how healthy the person was before the hit. The concern with football players is the constant blows to the head that sometimes create concussion and multiple concussions with a person is showing long term effects such as difficulty with concentration and memory and sometimes physical coordination. A study of American high school and college players confirmed 94 catastrophic head injuries in a 13 year period, 71 percents of the high school cases had had a concussion in the same season with 39 percent playing with residual

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Athletes who have a prior concussion face greater risks of developing critical symptoms of concussions and that can lead to slow recovery (Agel and Harvey 319–323). On some instances, concussion can lead to permanent damage and can even become

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According to a study by the American Academy of Neurology (Budde et al., 2013), those with a history of concussions were more likely to have been arrested for violent crimes than former NFL players without a history of concussions. The study found that sportsmen with three or more concussions were three times more likely to have been arrested for a violent crime than players without a history of concussions. American football players have been connected to violent crimes in a number of high-profile situations. Aaron Hernandez, a former NFL player who was found guilty of murder and given a life sentence without the possibility of release, serves as one such example.

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