But in 1968, 36 high school football players died on the field and another 30 suffered paralysis. The advent of plastic helmets, which first appeared in the 1940s, helped to stem the injury tide. The Ellenburgh Daily Record used some fuzzy math to arrive at their headline, “Leadership Is Blamed For Half Grid Accidents.” All of this despite, as both the AP and the study itself noted, “the natural hazards of the game still were the major cause of all accidents.” “Coaches can avoid many grid injuries,” declared the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “Poor leadership blamed for gridiron injuries,” shouted the headline in the (St Petersburg, Florida) Evening Independent. Reports covering the study focused on that minority of preventable injuries. The 1933 edition of this study found, according to the Associated Press, that “27.8% of the total could have been avoided by closer attention to playing fields, coaching and the players’ condition.” In the 1930s, the American Football Coaches Association began commissioning studies into football injuries, their causes, and how they could be prevented. Athletes may get along with broken noses and gradual elimination of front teeth but the skull is valuable and rules should be made to hold it intact if possible.”ĭespite the intervention of Teddy Roosevelt, the creation of the NCAA, revision of the rulebook, and a commitment to stricter enforcement of those rules, injuries in football kept piling up. Chaney cites a story from the Asbury Park Press that stated: “In any event, ‘tackle’ with heads up should be substituted for ‘tackle’ with heads down in the football contest. This rhetoric continued throughout the early 20th century. “The best way to learn tackling is with a dummy with head thrown to one side that saves your head,” Armstrong wrote. Some coaches, like Dr FC Armstrong of New York’s Pratt Institute, offered advice startlingly close to the preachings of Heads Up football.
Unsurprisingly, since the only head protection available in football’s early days were leather helmets and nose guards, traumatic brain injury was a regular occurrence. Yale’s offensive line in particular was noted for charging through holes and headbutting opponents to clear the way for ballcarriers. “Butting” – ramming the opponent with the crown of the head, more commonly called “spearing” today, created an epidemic of injuries in the 1880s. Programs akin to today’s Heads Up Football in fact date back to the 19th century. On his blog, historian Matt Chaney has detailed the history of trying to create smarter football. Yet no matter how smart we have made football – tinkering with the rules, improving the equipment, fixing leadership problems, or encouraging better conditioning – the damage caused by the game has proven inescapable. This is not the first time football has faced an injury crisis, and not the first time big players in the industry have promised to fix them through making the game smarter. Both of these deflect attention from the truth: that no matter how you play football, head injuries are inevitable. Riddell’s Smarter Football campaign places the blame on equipment the Heads Up campaign places the blame on poor form and improper coaching. And USA Football, the NFL-created governing body for the sport, has instituted the Heads Up Football program, dedicated to teaching players, coaches and referees the smarter way to tackle.īut there is an important implication in the idea that simply playing football “smarter” will solve football’s head injury crisis.
Helmet companies like Riddell advertise fancy technological features on new models, and compete in studies in physics departments at top universities like Virginia Tech. Attempts to make football “smarter” have come in droves as football has experienced a concussion crisis over the past decade or so.
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