Not speaking up after a hard hit, often times leaving an individual dazed and weary, used to mark strength and durability in football culture.
Yet what was once taken as a sign of toughness is now taken as a sign of danger. Although far from being a new concept, the effects of multiple concussions can no longer be ignored.
The situation has convinced the NFL to change football culture with respect to concussions, in order to take the issue more seriously.
New Mexico football’s head coach Bob Davie said he has witnessed a change in culture recently. He said the football world no longer regards concussions with the same nonchalant attitude it did in the past.
“I think back to some of the drills we used to do 10 to 15 years ago - it’s come a long, long way,” Davie said. “We used to call it getting your bell rung or getting a stinger, it was almost a badge of courage a little bit, quite honestly. A guy that could just do that and keep on playing. Now it’s taken with total seriousness.”
Heightened awareness is something Davie said has been a major contributor to the recent change in approach to dealing with head trauma.
He lost a key offensive lineman in the preseason, who no longer wanted to risk his mental health after suffering multiple concussions in his playing career.
Giving up the game
Johnny Vizcaino said quitting football was one of the hardest decisions he has ever had to make. However, the offensive tackle said his quality of life off the field was far more important than playing the sport he loves.
The junior liberal arts major said football is all that some people have; but for Vizcaino, there is more to life than what takes place on the field.
“A lot of guys are willing to deal with the ramifications of multiple concussions and still play, but I wasn’t one of them,” Vizcaino said. “My mental health takes precedence for me.”
Vizcaino said he never felt pressured by teammates, coaches or training staff to forge ahead after getting his bell rung. He said he was always encouraged to speak up and voice his concerns whenever something did not feel right.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
However, Vizcaino said he knows that a lot of players do not handle injuries, especially to the brain, the same way he did, which he attributed to being a judgment call for each individual.
“I think the most important thing is for people to be aware of the risks and know what they’re signing up for,” Vizcaino said. “That’s the biggest thing: If that’s what they want to do and that’s what they’re about, then that’s a decision they have to make, as long as they know what they’re getting into.”
He said he will never play football again in order to preserve his brain, but it would be an internal dilemma that he would constantly battle with.
Taking the decision away from players
Todd Seidler, a risk management specialist and chair of UNM’s Health Exercise and Sports Science Department, said the decision about a player’s health after injury needs to be taken out of athletes’ hands and placed solely in the hands of medical professionals.
He said this is not an easy task, when mixed with the desire to play and prove loyalty to teammates, coaches and fans. He said no matter the difficulty, it’s something that needs to be done in order to protect young athletes.
“It’s really important to understand that we can’t depend on the players,” Seidler said. “College football especially, and in the pros, will not report an injury of any kind if it’s going to keep them off the field, unless it’s so bad that they just can’t do their job on the field.”
High-profile NFL cases such as Junior Seau and Mike Webster have forced the NFL to stop ignoring the significant problems that arise from taking frequent blows the head.
Webster died at 50 of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, known better as CTE. His case was one of the first to bring forth one the truths surrounding football: the sport can cause permanent brain damage.
Seau, the former San Diego Chargers star, committed suicide just two years after retiring as one of the most prolific linebackers in the game. ESPN reported at the time that Seau had been diagnosed with what numerous retired NFL players before him had: CTE.
“A lot of the research is showing now that years of even sub-concussive-level hits to the head and helmets may add up and cause CTE, which is the cause of these early dementia cases with these football cases,” Seidler said.
If such injuries to a vital organ can be caused by sub-concussive blows to the brain, the necessity of reporting concussions has become more apparent than ever.
New research
In September, the University of Arizona created an application to portray the initial symptoms of a concussion in order to recognize the preliminary signs.
The application, a tool for athletics trainers, was designed to help players make the right decisions when confronted with some early concussion symptoms.
Athletic trainer Lindsey White said UNM has been conducting research of its own to create an iPad app to help displace the decision making process from those immediately involved in the sport. The mobile app would allow for immediate testing, which would evaluate the severity of a brain injury, exempting players from making any sort of judgment call with regard to their mental health.
“We’re just starting to hone in on some of the key indicators that someone has sustained a concussion,” White said. “As technology continues to improve and as medicine and science continue to improve, I think we’ll be able to hopefully get to a point to where we can streamline the evaluation process.”
Although still in the early stages of research, White said she has been part of the research that would facilitate a major change in head trauma throughout sports.
Several UNM athletics programs assisted in the development of the application. White, among others helping with the application, took a preliminary brain scan of several football players, men’s and women’s soccer players, and a few basketball players, to get a feel for athletes’ usual levels of brain activity.
“Having a baseline measure helped us first and foremost get to know what that individual’s normal was on the tasks that we were having them do,” White said. “But it also helped us to identify areas of the application that could be improved to make the app more user-friendly and overall more applicable to the athletic training world.”
Although the medical world has yet to divest players of all responsibility, the stigmas which used to urge players to “tough it out” have long been stifled.
Liam Cary-Eaves is the sports editor for the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at assistantsports@dailylobo.com or on twitter @Liam_CE.
