New stadiums, relocations, rule changes and, of course, money are currently the big issues taking the National Football League by storm. However, there is a more pressing issue that the NFL should consider first: player safety.
The NFL has avoided the issue of player safety for years, only taking small, mostly ineffective steps to solve this major problem. The league should stop risking the health of its players and start protecting them.
It’s no secret that football is a rough game, and someone is bound to suffer some degree of injury each game. Bumps, bruises and maybe a sprained ankle or two are all commonplace injuries that plague football players on a regular basis and are very difficult to prevent. However, there are certain injuries, such as head trauma and concussions, which could become completely avoidable if the NFL were to enforce a stricter player safety policy.
In January 2015, ESPN reported that concussions rates fell by 25 percent during the 2014-2015 season, but the number of concussions suffered each season is still alarmingly high. This total does not take minor concussions that go undiagnosed into account. A fair number of the concussions suffered during a regular NFL season are purely accidental and are a risk of playing the game.
However, other concussion-causing hits are no accident. The NFL prides itself on the league’s “strict” disciplinary action for team that breaks concussion protocol, yet teams are going unpunished for putting players in danger. In 2015, St. Louis Rams quarterback Case Keenum suffered a concussion after an opposing player threw him to the ground, and he hit his head. The Rams did not remove Keenum from play, though he had obviously suffered trauma to the head. According to CBS, the team received a simple warning. Keeping an injured playing on the field should warrant more than a slap on the wrist from the NFL.
More and more former NFL players are beginning to speak out against the league due to the detrimental effects that football has had on their health and the NFL’s mishandling of injuries. SBNation reported that, in a recent interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, retired Pittsburgh Steelers receiver Antwaan Randle-El confessed that he regrets pursuing a career in the NFL because he now suffers from memory loss and muscle issues in his legs.
Randle-El isn’t the only former player who has come forward to criticize the NFL’s player safety program; thousands of other ex-NFL stars have reported that they suffered long-term and often life-altering injuries from their time in the NFL.
Former players are constantly suing major league sporting organizations due to long-term injuries they suffered while playing, and the NFL is no exception. According to USA Today, the NFL settled their most recent player safety lawsuit in early 2015 and will pay $900 million dollars to former players and their families over the next 65 years.
The NFL is slowly but surely starting to get with the program and has begun to make changes to their rule book and game schedules to help lower the rate of concussions. But these minor changes still aren’t enough. If the league’s executives have time to plan how to beat last year’s total profit, then they certainly have enough time to make the game safer for their players.
