- using your head

October 8, 2011

As I have said many times before, when I see evidence that shows I’m the smartest person in the room, I’m probably in the wrong room.

“Despite new technology in helmets developed over the past two years, concussions are still at the forefront of the NFL.  Concussions were up 21 percent in 2010 over the season previously. Over eight weeks, 154 such injuries were reported versus just 127 in 2009. Based upon a survey of former NFL players in 1996, as many as 61 percent of NFL players suffered from some kind of concussion.”  -  William Browning, Yahoo! Sports, Sept. 23.

Why doesn’t anyone else involved in this issue get it?  Why don’t they understand what actually causes concussions and why no helmet is going to stop a concussion?

To paraphrase Hawkeye Pierce from M*A*S*H, a concussion occurs when your brain sloshes over to one side of your skull.  Imagine this:  you’re carrying a bucket of water while running.  You stop suddenly.  What happens to the water?  It sloshes around the bucket and will probably spill over the edge in the direction you were running.  The bucket is your skull, and the water is your brain.  Your brain doesn’t exactly spill out of your skull, but it does move.  There’s a fluid that surrounds your brain, kind of like a cushion, but if you’re moving fast enough – and stop suddenly enough – your brain pushes through that cushion, bashes against your skull, and actually gets bruised and swells, just like your arm or knee would.  And just like your arm or knee, it gets injured. 

To transfer this to the football field, you have players running at top speed.  Inside the helmet is a skull, and inside the skull is a brain, albeit feeble.  When those players collide, often helmet to helmet, their skulls immediately stop and reverse direction, but not their brain.  That squishy thing is still going forward and scrunching up into the front of the skull as the head is now going backwards.  Better helmets will not stop this, unless you make a helmet that crushes upon impact so that the skull is not propelled backwards.  Actually, that would be fun.  Helmets would be made of sugar, like the whiskey bottles that cowboys smash over each other’s heads in Western movies.

The key cause to the concussion – which the NFL does not seem to understand – is the moving and stopping.  That’s why the helmets are not going to change anything.  The reason there are more concussions, and there will always be more concussions, is because NFL players are bigger and stronger and faster.  They are moving faster towards each other, and when they collide, and thus stop moving – or even move in the opposite direction – their brains, which had been moving very fast, are going to slosh with even greater force against their skulls, and thus suffer even greater concussions. 

Unless these improved helmets are going to somehow slow the players down as they near each other, it is useless to pursue better helmet technology.  In fact, I agree with Hall of Fame coaches Mike Ditka and Joe Paterno.  If you really want to stop concussions, take the facemasks off the helmets.  That’ll slow them down a whole lot. 

If you watch a typical football game, you will see that most defensive players have no idea how to tackle.  Players have this brilliant idea that they are so big and strong that they can launch themselves into the ball carrier, and their own power is going to knock the player down.  I can’t tell you how much I love watching a defender lower his head, take his eyes off the ball carrier, lean towards him, and end up on his face five yards away as the ball carrier gains another ten yards.  There’s a false sense of security in the equipment.  Players feel as if they’re in a protective bubble, and their bubble is tougher than your bubble.  It’s wrong, but whose fault is this?  I suggest that it’s the coaches who are at fault.  If NFL players, after all these years, are still not tackling properly, then they must not have had anyone teach them proper technique.  There could be a solution in that.  If a player causes a concussion, perhaps we should fine his coach for not teaching him proper tackling technique.  Start fining coaches, and then you’ll see some changes.

Coaches need to be more demanding and not let players on the field if they cannot play the right way.  This is why at early levels of football, such as Pop Warner and high school junior varsity, winning is not important.  Learning is important.  Winning in football doesn’t matter until high school varsity, when winning teams get attention and winning players get college scholarships.  Considering that college football players are known to take very easy classes, it wouldn’t be at all difficult for some of these universities to offer a class in tackling, except most of the kids would fail.

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Posted by brainsnorts

- should college athletes get paid?

August 17, 2011

Fall is approaching. 

Fall means two important things:  baseball playoffs and football. 

Football means two important things:  college and pro. 

College football means two important things:  fans gambling and illegal activity in the program.

Most illegal activity involves players receiving money and gifts in order to attend or remain at a particular school.  Many players come from such poverty that without assistance from the program, they might not even have enough money to buy the pens that they never use in class.  Illegal activities usually involve everyone from players to coaches and recruiters to agents.  Usually, the goal is to give players as much money and “stuff” as possible in order to keep them at the school.  Two important things will then happen:  1) The school gets a big payday from television rights and bowl games, and 2) those people helping out the athlete will be paid back many times over when that player makes his millions in the NFL. 

This is why ESPN and other sports outlets are revisiting an on-going question:  should college athletes get paid?  One knee-jerk reaction is “yes” because the school literally makes millions off the players’ backs, such as selling jerseys and collecting television money, so perhaps that talented individual should share in the wealth.  The other knee-jerk answer is “no” because the university has already given that player about $100,000 worth of education for free as well as providing the opportunity to make millions if the student turns professional.  While all of that is mightily important, none of it is what I really care about.  My focus is on the common but incorrect term, student-athlete.  It’s wrong, and I’ll prove it – with crayons.

Think about a box of 64 or 128 Crayola crayons, the box with the built-in sharpener.  There were some wonderful color names like aquamarine, periwinkle, and mahogany, but there were other names that were a little confusing.  For example, blue-green:  is it more like blue or more like green?  Same thing with orange-red.  Here is how you figure it out.  The second word is a noun, which is the real color, and the first word is an adjective, which is a slight influence on the real color.  Therefore, blue-green is really green but with a bluish influence.  Let’s apply that to college football players.

According to the term student-athlete, the individual is first and foremost an athlete.  Secondarily, this athlete also happens to be a student.  That seems unfortunately accurate when you look at the reality of the situation, but it’s backwards.  You can have a school without an athletic program, but you cannot have scholastic athletics without a school.  The young people involved are students for ten months but athletes for only about three months.  It is likely that every one of these institutions includes the words “college” or “university” on the stationery.  Also, you can fail at sports while continuing to being a student, but failing as a student – theoretically – will remove you from sports.  It is “theoretical” because it seems as if top athletes never get a failing grade, even if they never once set foot in the classroom.  So instead of student-athlete, they should instead be called athletic students.

College athletes actually do get paid, but it’s by subtraction and it’s delayed.  Athletic students are passing up a handful of bucks now in order to collect a truckload of bucks in about three years.  Four if they actually graduate.  The average college student graduates with about $10,000 owed in student loans while also cramming in a few hours of part-time work just to keep some ramen noodles in their dorm fridge.  Conversely, many athletes not only graduate without loans to repay, but they’re likely to have a few million in their pocket before the caps and gowns have been hung up in the closet.  That doesn’t include the ones who run wild in the fall, get their names written in Sports Illustrated in the winter, and then quit school early in order to jump into the pro draft before their first Spring Break.

2 Comments | college sports, football, school, sports | Permalink
Posted by brainsnorts

what’s up in the NFL?

October 24, 2009

i love to watch football, especially nfl football, and especially with knowledgeable football people. the last place i want to be is at a superbowl party with those people who sit around waiting for the new commercials. i watch them, but that’s just an unnecessary accessory. my three brothers have all been football coaches, and two still are. two of them have also been football referees, and one still is. because i’ve spent so much time studying football since 6th grade, i sometimes think i see things that don’t make sense and i might possibly know better. for example: what’s up with taking a knee at the end of the half?

why is it that when a team has the ball on about their own 30 with about ten seconds left in the first half, they almost always take a knee and let the clock run out so they can all trot to the locker room? why not toss up a hail mary? barry switzer once said that when you throw a pass, three things can happen and two of them are bad. yes, you can get an incomplete pass or an interception, and those two are bad, but you can also get a completion or even an interference penalty, which is also good. why not take a 5 or 7 step drop and haul it downfield?

i’ve heard a counter argument that says, “well, your quarterback might get hurt.” true, but that can happen on any play. and if you’re throwing a hail mary, you’re not going to get much of a pass rush. they’re going to drop everyone available back in coverage, so you’ll only have to face a 3-man rush, 4 at the most, and your o-line should be able to handle that. let it rip. if it’s in complete, so what? if it’s intercepted, big deal, they’re now down at their end of the field and time will likely have run out anyway. you might get a deflection, an interference or defensive holding call, and you’re in good shape at their 20 with at least one play left. line up for a field goal at that point.

Leave a Comment » | football | Permalink
Posted by brainsnorts

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