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Wednesday, August 03, 2016

New high school football season advice-don't let your babies grow up to be defensive backs

 Extracted from an article  from AANS regarding traumatic brain injury (TBI) data from 2012:

Defensive backs in American football are at the greatest risk for both fatal head injury and serous cervical spine injury.:

"The majority of catastrophic injuries occur while playing defensive football. In 2012, two players were on defense and one was in a weight lifting session. Since 1977, 228 players with permanent cervical cord injuries were on the defensive side of the ball and 55 were on the offensive side with 44 unknown. Defensive backs were involved with 34.6 percent of the permanent cervical cord injuries followed by member of the kick-off team at 9.2 percent and linebackers at 9.5 percent."

Spending even a small amount of time watching high school,college and professional football on TV makes it seem obvious that the vast majority of high impact collisions occur in the defensive zone involving defensive backs and either runners or receivers and on kickoffs.Quarterbacks receive many hits with the helmets impacting the ground and have a significant risk of concussion but apparently have  lower risk of fatal injury or injury leading to permanent disability.Offensive and defensive  linemen may receive more sub-concussive head blows over a game or a season and whatever the long term consequences of that may be  seem less likely to regularly  be involved in high impact collisions and therefore less at risk for serious brain or cervical spine injury. There is a reason for ambulances to be  parked near the playing field of high school football games attesting to the cognitive dissonance of some of  the  parents cheering them on.The EMTs are not on site to help manage sprained ankles.

Don't let your babies grow up to be defensive backs.

Notice: This is a lightly edited and altered version of an earlier commentary on this blog. As  I see high school kids  on the practice field in early August in Texas with heat indices pushing 105 my antipathy to high school and youth football  flares again.




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