Published: February 7, 2016
"Practicing on occasion without helmets is, counterintuitively, another means to reduce head trauma. The University of New Hampshire introduced this practice in the belief that players would instinctively modify their blocking and tackling techniques to avoid head contact. By season’s end, players in game situations recorded 30 percent fewer head blows. It is worth noting that improving the design of helmets has yet to offer a panacea. There is no protection against the sudden acceleration and deceleration of the head, which The Week magazine recently noted “can cause the brain to slosh around inside the skull like the yolk inside a vigorously shaken eggshell. When the brain is compressed against the skull by this sudden stopping and starting, neurons are damaged—and they never recover.”
Head trauma is both qualitatively and quantitatively the biggest challenge to the future of football. Yet, football faced a similar moment at the turn of the last century. There were 18 deaths in college football in 1905, when safety rules were nonexistent, and broken necks ended lives in an instant. The game had to change. It did and it thrived. In today’s crisis, we confront the kind of slow-motion death that characterizes CTE and those numbers could run into the thousands."
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