Should your child play football? When you watch the first play of the first game of the 2024 US National Football League season Thursday night, only one thought should cross your mind — something is very wrong with football. You will see the debut of the NFL’s new dynamic kickoff, which is designed to address the “unacceptable injury rate” of the old style of kickoffs. You will also see some of the players with giant helmets on, wearing Guardian Caps in games for the first time. The caps are designed to reduce brain acceleration from impacts.
The two changes — made by the NFL and the NFL Players Association — signal the proactive effort to address the brutality of a dangerous game. What they also signal is the gross inaction from college, high school, and youth football leagues. It is unacceptable that the organizations responsible for the child brain health of more than 2 million young people playing tackle football are lagging behind the NFL in making the game safer.
The NFL’s changes are primarily in response to the growing evidence that far too many football players are developing chronic traumatic encephalopathy. According to the National Institutes of Health, CTE is a degenerative brain disease caused in part by repeated traumatic brain injuries. CTE, which can cause dementia and problems with neurobehavioral regulation, usually occurs in athletes exposed to repeated head impacts, whether or not they had diagnosed concussions.
While studies have shown CTE is found in less than 1 percent of the population, in 2023 the Boston University CTE Center reported 345 of the first 376 NFL players (nearly 92 percent) they studied had CTE. They also diagnosed CTE in 52 percent of 92 football players who died before age 30. That study included the first 18-year-old with stage 2 CTE, Wyatt Bramwell, who played 10 seasons of football in youth and high school. The slow, progressive nature of CTE, which has four stages, suggests he first developed the disease years prior to his death, possibly before he ever stepped foot on a high school field.For Wyatt and so many others, more could have been done to prevent CTE. Take the way the game is practiced. When Tom Brady entered the NFL, most head impacts and concussions happened in practice. When the Concussion Legacy Foundation advised the NFLPA that changing practice was the single easiest way to reduce concussions and CTE risk, the players fought for it, and in 2011 collectively bargained to limit the number of contact practices during the season to 14. Since then, only 18 percent of concussions happen in practice.
