Safety Hurts

Jovan Belcher playing for the Chiefs

By now I imagine many of you, sports fans or not, have read about Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher murdering his girlfriend and mother of his child and then driving to his team’s practice facility, before shooting himself in front of his coach and general manager. I cannot pretend to know why he did this and whether or not there was some sort of medical cause, but what I do know is that questions are being asked about whether or not he may have been suffering from any concussion related mental issues.

I am sure we will learn more once an autopsy is performed, but the fact that the question surrounding concussions is being asked legitimately proves in-and-of-itself that any time something bad happens to a current or former player, the question of brain damage is going to come up and deservedly so. We have enough evidence already about the impact concussions have and we also have enough evidence about just how common they are in American football at all levels of the game.

At the same time, the NRL here in Australia has banned the shoulder charge, which when performed correctly makes no contact with the head, however due to how often it goes wrong and head contact is made, the league has acted on it. The response has been near unanimous in disapproval. However, one must wonder if it’s situations like what is happening in the USA that is the actual cause behind the decision taken to ban the shoulder charge. Clearly everyone agrees now that concussions are probably the most serious regular injury suffered in contact sport, but we don’t like when rules are changed based on that fact.

The problem with the rule change though is that there simply isn’t a history in rugby league of brain damage as there is in gridiron. The cases of depression, memory loss, suicide and other problems regularly facing retired NFL players simply isn’t happening here to the same level. Four Corners on the ABC had a story on the impact concussions are having in Australian sport, so clearly there is a precedent for it here too; however it really seems to occur en masse in the USA. Yes we want to cut out concussions, but there isn’t evidence to suggest the shoulder charge specifically is a massive problem causing serious long term issues. After all, most of the research suggests the high impact, memorable concussion incidents that we usually think of aren’t actually the ones causing all the problems, but rather it’s the small, more regular impacts occurring between American football linemen that is the bigger issue.

Now some people may wonder why head injuries are so much more prevalent in the American game where players wear so much padding and helmets and of course are involved in so many fewer plays across the course of a game. Shouldn’t games like rugby or rugby league, which seems so barbaric to many in the USA, be dealing with as many if not more of these problems?

But the answer is no and I think I know why.

It’s the helmets themselves. American football players feel protected due to their padding and helmets and are trained to use them as weapons. Obviously recent rule changes are trying to crack down on this, but it still happens all the time and the players are killing themselves by doing it. It’s counter-intuitive.

I genuinely believe that if you had American football played without the pads and with only rugby headgear or even the old leather helmets the NFL players wore 100 years ago, you would see a drastic change instantly. Yes it would change the game itself quite a lot. Player’s instincts are currently a certain way and they would have to very quickly have to adjust, but I think it would happen a lot quicker than it is right now, where they change the rules to punish guys for doing what they have been taught to do since childhood.

I would love to see a one-off game of American football played in this manner. I can’t imagine it ever happening and if anything I feel like they will bring in more protection with new and improved technology. But honestly, they might just be doing more harm than good.

What is certain is that the game is changing and will continue to change as they try and solve this problem. The question really is though, what is causing the problem?