In the United States, Sundays mark the kickoff of week-longfantasy football; an interactive, virtual competition where people manage professional football players of the NFL. And every Sunday, I’m excited to see how my team performs against other teams in my league.
It came as quite a surprise that within the first few weeks of the season, some of the top teams became riddled with injuries. It’s great for me; better chances of success. But very unfortunate for them, it could ruin their entire season. Needless to say, the owners of those injured players are livid.
Although these injuries may extend my chances for a fantasy championship, I find it in bad taste to celebrate. After all, one of the main injuries to players are concussions, which doctors have linked to depression, Alzheimer’s and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease.
“Hitting a player in the head is like shaking a Jell-O mold,” says Evan Breedlove, a mechanical engineer graduate student at Purdue University who studies neuro trauma. “The brain shakes, and splits called micro-hemorrhages can form. The splits allow fluid in, which increases the likelihood of further concussions.”
Breedlove goes on to say, “The average NFL player sustains as many as 1,500 hits to the head throughout a season. It’s the accumulation of impact after impact that does the real damage.”
What is the NFL doing to protect their most valuable assets? Well, for one, they’re cracking down on “dirty hits.” These are sustained blows as a result of helmet-to-helmet contact or laying a hit on a defenseless player. The offending team is penalized and the player receives a financial fine. But these are passive measures. The damage is done. You can’t undo the hit.
In a more proactively stance, the NFL is looking into introducing “smart helmets” in the 2012 season.
Riddell, the official equipment manufacturer of the NFL, has come up with a helmet concept and design called the Revolution and outfitted it with Head Impact Telemetry System or HITSTM. The design and development of the Revolution was a four-year project and focuses on three key elements:
- Side and Facial Protection – the face pads are designed to disperse the force of impact across the head, face and mandible areas
- Increased Shell Offset – the distance is increased from the helmet shell to the wearer’s head
- Tru-Curve Shell Shape – the shell is computer designed around the head’s anatomical center of gravity
The helmets are outfitted with embedded software and electronics which calculate the magnitude, direction and location of the hit. The data is sent wirelessly to trainers and medical personnel in real-time for sideline diagnosis and treatment. Team doctors can now make more informed decisions about whether to let the player continue on.
For a mere $400-$1,000, shouldn’t every player be given a chance of being concussion-free and, in turn, make fantasy football more enjoyable for all?
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