Football ‘Freak Accident’ Myth Obscures Catastrophes

Mueller and Cantu Ignore 150 Grave Casualties of 2011

Decades of Shoddy UNC Data Spur Public Misconceptions

Historic football excuses thrive in modern debate over brutality

Lawsuits, criticism explode and officials project blame onto individuals

Old talking points of football apology resonate yet as officials tout anti-concussion measures like trainers along sidelines, new rules for safer play, injury reduction and expert consultation—same type of promises heard from gridiron leaders during the Victorian Era

Part 1 of an ongoing review of football crisis and official talk, celebrating Super Bowl Month on ChaneysBlog.com

By Matt Chaney

Monday, January 7, 2013

American football gets lambasted in public for maiming and killing, denounced by an influential movement of critics, and game officials pledge safer play based on their new concepts of prevention, including:

*Qualified trainers and doctors will patrol sidelines.

*State-of-art medical response will treat the rare severe casualties.

*Limits will govern length of practices.

*Injury tracking will cut rates already on decline.

*Coaches will properly train players.

*Every player will undergo medical prescreening.

*Experts will lead safety reform in rulemaking and research.

*Referees and coaches will enforce new rules of experts.

*Players will follow new rules of experts.

Sounds familiar, these steps, a practical recitation of talking points for contemporary “safer football” promoted by the NFL and commissioner Roger Goodell, in face of lawsuit frenzy against the league and sport in general, along with festering disgust in the public.

Except the football rhetoric is 119 years old, from 1894, a packaged response during the game’s initial siege against formidable opposition seeking abolishment.

Erstwhile math professor Eugene L. Richards outlined the football argument in a commentary he wrote for Popular Mechanics while at Yale University, unofficial headquarters of the American game as it were then, entertainment monopoly blossoming for select colleges. Richards, a former Yale football player, was close associate of alumni player Walter Camp, who became known as “Father of American Football.”

Camp pioneered play design and rulemaking for the game, and, equally important, he established a football public-relations framework with his prodigious communication of the sport, essays, books and speeches. Notably for this discussion, Camp personally crafted and disseminated feel-good themes of tackle football that endure, like manliness, education, industriousness, patriotism and social event, to obscure the irremovable, reprehensible byproduct of mass carnage for young bodies and minds.

Richards’ essay of November 1894, “The Football Situation,” stands as original template in football apology, timeless talking points that channel Camp’s defense of the gridiron. Richards responded to period critics who alleged football “evils” negated any “good,” and his assertions resonate today for the debate renewed, continuing:

*News media sensationalize gridiron violence and injuries.

*Only football abolitionists and “timid” people see unnecessary danger.

*Football teaches teamwork, courage, while building mind and body.

*Football is part-and-parcel with a complete education.

*Football saves urban or underprivileged boys from streets.

*Football is salvation for youths everywhere.

*Football provides healthy catharsis for male aggression.

*Seriously injured players are typically predisposed, physically or genetically.

Richards also penned an introduction for Camp’s book release that season, Football Facts and Figures, “a resoundingly pro-football polemic” that began with “a barrage of football propaganda,” observes author John Sayle Watterson, football historian. “Anyone who read Camp’s book, especially the introductory excerpts, might come away wondering what all the critical fuss was about. According to the ‘facts and figures’ so authoritatively interpreted, no one suffered permanent injuries, and all but a cranky handful agreed that football’s virtues outweighed its shortcomings.”

“Walter Camp worked with fellow supporters of football to stave off critics and to create a climate of opinion favorable to the college game.”

Same PR challenge confronts officials of tackle football today, the game roundly sued in courts, on civil complaints exploding from youth leagues to the NFL. The combustible contemporary crisis, fueled by concussion fear particularly since 2009, carries forward with bad news on a roll.

Research findings outside of football’s loyalist experts stream in one direction now, against the game, especially regarding kids and brain trauma, while regular doctor denouncements lead a cacophony of public naysaying that includes nurses, journalists, authors, academics, school administrators, lawyers, athletes, coaches, and more citizens speaking out in multi-media. Terrifying off-field violence of active and retired NFL players, against themselves and others, jars the football-loving public on regular basis. And grave casualties continue unabated, likely much as ever, with hundreds occurring last year (versus a fraction reported by football-funded research) and modern trauma care and antibiotics saving upwards of 100 players who would have died a century previous, among known injuries of 2011. Many more football problems, of course, contribute to the sport’s deflating public image.

Roger Goodell, the unofficial president of Football America, knows the standard talking points of defending gridiron malfeasance, if not rhetorical origins, having himself relied on virtually all lines rooted to Camp PR at Old Yale. Curious whether Goodell actually believes what he says presently, because independent analysts see little substance emerging in his ballyhooed “safety” plan for players from children to adults.

“This public awareness fundamentally has nothing to do with what the NFL actually puts out as a product,” says Daniel Durbin, media professor at the University of Southern California, speaking recently with Joseph A. Lapin of Pacific Standard magazine. “It has to do with creating an image of them trying to help protect children, so that the parents of children will not keep their kids from playing football, and also so they will develop a new generation of football viewers.”

Harshest critics of Goodell label his brain-injury policy as transparent, flimsy legalize for beleaguered tackle football.

Thus the question: Do football advocates like Goodell seek to protect players or their sport?

This review continues by examining talking points of football apology found in statements of present-day officials and associates, promoting “safer” tackle football in America. A series of propositions or claims in football advocacy forward discussion throughout Super Bowl Month, beginning with the following installment:

P1. Safe tackling reduces brain risk, taught by coaches and enforced by referees

Indianapolis-based USA Football functions as youth-football arm of the NFL, funded by the league and union. Scott Hallenbeck, USAF executive director, joins NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and others in trumpeting what they call revolutionary safe tackling, Heads Up Football. “There is no question that the game can be played safely and is safe,” Hallenbeck says, “as long as it is taught properly and the players execute it properly.”

“You have to learn how to tackle safely and how to play the game safely,” says Goodell, in canned video. “What we’re trying to get (young players) to do is change the culture of football, to more of a culture of safety, to understand that we want to teach them the proper way to play the game. But we want to do it safely.”

“In football, it is essential to introduce proper tackling techniques early in a player’s career and to avoid unnecessary head contact,” says Dr. Stanley Herring, team physician for the Seattle Seahawks who serves on wellness committees for both the NFL and USA Football, in prepared statement. “This is achieved through USA Football’s Heads Up Football program, which is worthy of strong endorsement by experts in medicine and the youth football community.”

On the contrary, realities of this so-called technique are problematic, beginning with merely explaining how to apply it in tackle football. Eyesight ascertains that forward body leverage and modern helmets rule the vicious colliding, commonly head-on among combatants, but Heads Up promoters remain dogged.

“Your head’s going to be up. You’re literally going to take this whole head out of it,” Hallenbeck says, trying to demonstrate, if poorly, during an interview with WISH TV. “You’re not gonna be turned to the side. You’re not going to be any of that. You’re going straight in and, actually, your head’s going to be out of the tackles.”

Actually sounds impossible, excepting collisions among players meeting from convenient angles. Heads Up Football in theory would be strictly chest-banging, with players somehow trained to keep their heads “out of it” in head-on avenues narrowing down to zero-degree smashups. People like Hallenbeck propose this in straight face and critics howl in response, of course, led by players of the present and past.

“It seems to me the height of grandiosity to assume you can trick people into believing that running into other people at high speeds can be made safe,” writes Nate Jackson, author and former Broncos tight end, for Slate and Deadspin. “The human body, moving forward at high speeds, does not travel perpendicular to the ground. It naturally leans forward, and the head is at the forward-most point of that natural lean. To ask the body, while traveling at that speed, to crane the neck up and back, in defiance of physics, is a fool’s errand.”

Jackson shreds talk of teaching chest-banging to replace head-ramming in American football—illogic nevertheless mandated by a long-ignored rule in prep and college ranks. Jackson notes coaches cannot succeed in any manner with the scheme: “So who’s going to be the first to implement an experimental technique that gets your players run over, doesn’t reduce injuries, and makes you finish the season 0-10?” he poses.

No one can teach and instill such tackling and referees cannot enforce it, says every football insider I meet today, as former college player and coach myself, including coaches, referees and administrators speaking anonymously.

And so says Dr. Paul Butler of Dover, N.H., as a rising public figure in football crisis. The articulate, retired physician, a school board member and former college football player, recently proposed Dover Schools ban the sport for concerns of brain injuries and insurance liability. His message struck a chord, being picked up and disseminated throughout major media. “The literature on head injuries in football is getting increasingly clear,” Dr. Butler says. “The game is dangerous for our brains.”

Butler rebukes the old, recyclable idea of “proper contact” in tackle football, its various labels ranging from “form tackling” and “head up” of the 1970s, when game experts devised the concept, to “behavior modification” and Heads Up of late. “I know coaches are trying to teach children to tackle with their shoulders and not their head,” Butler says. “But that is just not happening.”

Veteran NFL linebacker Scott Fujita of the Browns, sidelined most of this season after suffering an apparent neck injury, said last year that coaches were hopeless for teaching “safe tackling,” despite their loyal claiming it’s possible in news quotes and live sermons. “There’s increased emphasis on trying to clean up the game, you know,” Fujita says, “coaching guys up in ‘proper technique’ and all these catch phrases, and paying lip-service to everything. It’s just a brutal game, (however), and I don’t think you can technique—using ‘technique’ as a verb here—you can’t technique the game into becoming safer. You can’t even (player) fine the game into become safer. And that’s just the reality.”

Game referees of prep and college football, meanwhile, are expected to enforce the null-and-void “anti-butting” rule long in the books, also cooked-up by game experts in the 1970s. The infraction is hardly ever called for its impossible premise, prohibiting players from striking with crown of the helmet or even facemask—policy instantly fallible upon every center snap, in any game from 5-year-olds to adults, as linemen shoot into each other.

In addition, even when avoiding use of helmet crown for head-on contact, facemask smashing is necessary by at least one party while factors like whiplash also jar cerebral matter. “Brain trauma is inevitable,” says Chris Nowinski, concussion authority, co-founder of the Sports Legacy Institute at Boston University, and former defensive tackle at Harvard. “Whether your head is up or down (in contact), it is still taking trauma.” 

For questions of legal culpability over toothless policy capable of fostering danger, national football organizations and personnel have thus far shirked liability, from USA Football to the NFL. Thanks goes in no small part to historically crafted smokescreen of “head up” theory and sidekick, the inapplicable anti-butting rule.

But legal confusion and disregard about “safe tackling” reign among personnel tending football’s maw. Individuals are targets of lawsuits for their unfortunately fallible mission. Vulnerable parties include coaches, trainers, administrators of schools and municipalities, field referees and athletes.

Nothing changes brutal football’s covering law for impacts, the dictating physics and high-tech helmets. “Most reforms are unlikely to be implemented and enforced, for a variety of reasons,” says Dr. Larry Robbins, an Illinois neurologist and former prep quarterback who recommends banning tackle football for juveniles. “Even if they were, head collisions are part of the fabric of tackle football; kids will still be seriously injured.”

Next installment in classic talking points of football apology: P2. ‘Terrible injuries are freak accidents in safer football’

Matt Chaney is a writer, editor, teacher and restaurant worker residing in Missouri, USA. Email him at mattchaney@fourwallspublishing.com. Chaney holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Southeast Missouri State University (1985), where he played football and coached as a student assistant, and a master's degree in media studies from the University of Central Missouri (2001). For more information, including about his book Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football (2009), visit the homepage at www.fourwallspublishing.com.

Historic News Timeline Sheds Provocative Light on Concussion Lawsuits

By the1990s numerous authorities said tackle football likely caused brain damage of impacts, long documented in boxing, but NFL researchers didn’t pursue obvious studies

By Matt Chaney

ChaneysBlog.com

Thursday, October 24, 2012

These days, amid history's second concussion crisis for American football, officials of the NFL convey a pre-2009 innocence about brain trauma and permanent impairment of contact sport--or the body collisions and crashes they sell consumer addicts from children to the elderly, comprising half the nation’s populace.

Posturing of past cluelessness is legally convenient for the NFL, necessary, for facing the lawsuits filed nationwide by former players and family members, thousands of people alleging mismanagement and deception for brain damage documented among deceased boxers since 1928.

What did the NFL know and when? Much, actually, plenty for beginning legitimate brain studies amid its original concussion crisis, the 1990s, as demonstrated by a trove of historic news articles this author recovered through electronic search. See the annotated timeline of 40 public texts below, 1982-2001.

NFL doctors during the 1990s, in fact, publicly cited boxing while discussing potential long-term brain damage in football players, like outside experts had for a decade already, equating brute gridiron colliding with prizefighting's lethal punching. In the timeline, among quotes of authorities and other witnesses who counted legally in the period and still count today, two urgent research needs were publicly identified for football athletes: brain pathology of deceased players and random clinical trial of living players.

But NFL researchers failed to pursue both avenues in the latter 1990s, somehow, and now the league may have to test its only possible excuse in court: alleging invalidity of boxing studies otherwise validated through 80 years of literature replication and peer critique.

Thus the football past creeps in 2012, looming for NFL attorneys if their current motion to dismiss the concussion lawsuits doesn’t succeed in federal court. For sake of this post, exploring what the NFL knew and when, discussion moves on assumption the cases proceed and discovery process restarts.

Brain Damage Suspected of Tackle Football Long Before Omalu's Breakthrough 

Allegations of football brain damage flew 30 years ago through fall of boxing, the other major blood sport, in its final descent to inspiring general disgust and intolerance, even by Americans and the British lusty for gladiatorial spectacle.

During a televised title bout in Las Vegas, 1982, South Korean lightweight contender Duk Koo Kim faltered in the 14^th round against Ray Mancini, stumbling, flailing blindly, his brain bleeding as the champion pounced instinctively. Mancini won on TKO and Kim collapsed comatose, hemorrhaging catastrophically, his skull creating a closed-canister blood bomb that liquefied brain matter, forcing surgeons to cut holes for pressure relief. The fighter died a few days later, to world horror stirred by media storm, and Old Boxing would never recover, either.

Politicians reacted in outrage, staging anti-boxing hearings, and medical associations in three countries recommended eliminating the sport for amateurs. The AMA urged banning of publicly funded boxing in municipalities, schools and colleges.

Fallout hit the holy gridiron, especially the NFL, because boxing doctors and promoters wouldn’t fade quietly, not with their game’s golden largess being sacrificed to hypocrisy propagated by Football America. They fingered football brutality as highly dangerous, equally stupid, alleging acute and chronic brain injuries occurred en masse, from episodic concussion to repetitive sub-concussive blows and surely at rates higher than boxing. Moreover, independent doctors agreed that brain care and studies were urgently needed for football players.

Soon the call was echoed by NFL medical personnel themselves, several team physicians who compared football and prizefighting for cerebral injury and lasting dysfunction. “Think about boxing,” Bills physician Richard Weiss said in 1992, discussing NFL multi-concussion victim Al Toon, the Jets All-Pro receiver forced into retirement. “Suffering a large number of concussions over a period of years more than likely leaves some permanent residue.”

NFL stars continued suffering multiple concussions, including quarterbacks Troy Aikman and Steve Young, and media questions intensified. Some team physicians indicated research was overdue for football. “In boxing, surely we’ve seen how repetitive head trauma can cause all types of long-term problems,” said Dr. David Fischer, Vikings. “But how many blows it takes, what severity over what length of time, we don’t know.” Giants neurologist Dr. Peter Tsairis, citing boxers, was unsure “how many of these [NFL] players go on to develop dementia. … I don’t know of any [research] article that’s been written on the subject.”

Football officials had documented concussions since the Depression Era, but spotlight crisis didn’t manifest until the NFL about 1994, when the league responded by establishing a concussion committee. Researcher and Steelers doctor Joe Maroon spoke of possible cumulative effect in players, and his co-member on committee Dr. Joseph Waekerle, Chiefs physician, said, “A great example would be a boxer. That may occur to other professional athletes who suffer many concussive syndromes.”

But still no brain pathologies commenced of deceased NFL players, and no research on living players. News grew darker, meanwhile, as former stars publicly revealed terrifying ordeals for themselves and family.

Toon and Giants linebacker legend Harry Carson detailed their depression and suicidal thoughts in NFL retirement, crediting loved ones such as children for vital support. But the story was grim around “Iron Mike” Webster by 1997, after his 17 years of pro football, for a rather inexplicable dive through bankruptcy, divorce, homelessness and health issues. A personal physician believed the Steelers line great suffered cognitive problems reflecting post-concussion syndrome diagnosed of Toon and Carson, and Webster confessed sometimes his thoughts “horrify me.”

Still the NFL did nothing constructive or logical. League researchers, curious contrarians indeed, pondered virtual quackery such as development of concussion-proof helmets when tech science already resolved it couldn’t be done, or whether anabolic steroids caused brain damage, debunked elsewhere. NFL researchers said they could properly monitor concussions in players, treat the diagnosed, and return casualties to full contact safely—essentially through new “concussion testing” or neuropsychological assessments they touted, and balance testing, with everything developed and administered intuitively.

Then, 2002, Webster died in Pittsburgh, of cardiac arrest according to initial autopsy, and a public employee, assistant coroner Dr. Bennet Omalu, made necessary discovery or science the NFL should’ve already mastered. Omalu, studious and inquisitive about boxing literature, solitarily brilliant, a neuro-pathologist by specialty, performed microcellular analysis on Webster brain tissue that revealed disease of impacts the doctor expected to find in a football player. Omalu named the condition chronic traumatic encephalopathy, today’s notorious “CTE.”

During a telephone interview in early 2011, Omalu recalled his discovery in the Webster case, the science involved, and the NFL backlash of power and politics he endured, including from league researchers seeking to discredit and intimidate him. “I believed in what I believed, and I knew it was as valid as the air I breathe,” Omalu said. “I wasn’t dissuaded. I’m a man of [Christian] faith. We should not fear.”

Omalu noted the discredited work by NFL brain-research teams prior to 2009, when Congress and media roasted the league’s concussion incompetence to date. He condemned their inexcusable delay in confirming football CTE evidence through full autopsy of deceased players regularly available, leaving the advance to him instead—and fate, for intersecting Omalu with corpse of an NFL player like Webster, on his work shift as then-Allegheny County pathologist. “It is something shameful that the NFL, despite all the money they have, did not identify this disease. It was an ignominious outsider like me,” Omalu said, sneering low.

Regarding football and boxing, Omalu had studied the compatriot blood sports’ uneasy partnership through head-injury controversy, and he saw the story as unfinished, speaking 21 months ago. [Omalu, today the chief medical examiner for San Joaquin County, Calif., and witness candidate for progressing NFL concussion litigation, did not answer a recent request for interview.]

“I think [football] is going to change,” Omalu said. “It’s going to be gradual… But there’s no question in my mind, in another generation, football will be regarded as boxing is today. It’s still going to remain, but it’s going to be a less popular sport. Football is going to be further removed from mainstream America, like boxing today—it’s no longer mainstream.”

Negligence Tough to Prove In Spite of NFL’s Historical Wrongdoing

It surely appears the NFL is guilty of something for failures on brain injury, but obstacles remain for proving negligence in civil court against the megalith. First there’s the NFL motion for plaintiffs to overcome and see dismissed and, if so, then likely no time soon would the league have to pay billions in settlements or jury awards.

On the contrary, seemingly damning NFL history could be turned back against former players, says Paul D. Anderson, Kansas City sport lawyer and founder of the widely referenced Website nflconcussionlitigation.com.

 “Yes, as I read through news stories I often see statements by former players, some of whom are plaintiffs, that could be used against them to show that they were contributorily negligent in the way they handled [their own] concussions,” Anderson states in email interview. “[If] litigation proceeds both the plaintiffs and defendants will be meticulously analyzing magazines and newspapers to find explosive admissions.”

Legal weight of news accounts alone typically ranks low, recognized by courts as “double heresay” evidence. But Anderson qualifies historical news like the collection below as solid start for both sides in NFL lawsuits that would proceed.

And NFL strategy would likely involve attack on the regarded boxing studies.

“This will be a significant portion of the litigation, assuming the plaintiffs survive other legal hurdles,” Anderson states. “Essentially what it will come down to is the plaintiffs’ experts, who wrote these studies as far back as the 1920s-1950s, linking concussions to neurodegenerative diseases, versus the NFL’s experts who will argue that these studies were nothing more than speculation. Moreover, the NFL will argue, the science is still inconclusive.”

Anderson sees hope for plaintiffs, noting “where the concussion lawsuits have teeth is when the NFL voluntarily inserted itself into the concussion discussion in 1994 when it created the Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee. The main question will be: Was this real science or junk science?”

“So far, the evidence is pointing to the latter.”

Matt Chaney is a writer, editor, teacher and restaurant worker residing in Missouri, USA. Email him atmattchaney@fourwallspublishing.com. For more information, including about his book Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football, visit the homepage at www.fourwallspublishing.com.

Historic News Timeline on Brain Trauma in The NFL and Boxing, Articles 1982-2001

By Matt Chaney, ChaneysBlog.com, October 2012

1982, Dec. 4:  “Dangerous Games That People Play,” by Ira Berkow, New York Times. News commentary discusses risk and injury of hazardous sports and activities in the United States, citing a report of the American Medical Association [AMA]. As the sport of boxing falls under renewed threat of elimination in America, Berkow notes that brain injuries are well-known in football too, comparing the gridiron’s “almost casual list of the maimed… those [players] suffering the routine concussions, neck injuries and assorted broken segments of the anatomy.” Berkow continues: “There are more deaths occurring in college football and in motorcycle racing and in sky-sailing than in boxing. Relatively few [authorities], it seems, have vigorously propounded abolishing any other sport besides boxing since 1905…”

1983, Jan. 14:  “Physicians’ Journal Calls For a Ban on Boxing,” by John Noble Wilford, New York Times. News analysis discusses the following: JAMA editorials urging ban of boxing in America; CAT-scan studies of living boxers revealing “brain damage”; and response of boxing officials, including their proposals to reduce risks. “Editorials in today’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association urged the banning of boxing in light of new evidence suggesting that chronic brain damage was prevalent among fighters,” Wilford writes. In Britain, a study of living boxers, professional and amateur, determines chronic brain damage is “most predictable” for a career in the ring.

1983, Feb. 15:  “The Ring Commission Hearings,” by Jim Lehrer, Monica Hoose, and Peggy Robinson. MacNeil/Lehrer Report [transcript]. PBS Television show addresses congressional hearings on boxing in Washington, with replays of day’s lawmaker questions and witness testimonies on Capitol Hill. Discussion includes the following: boxing deaths and more notorious ring beatings of the 1970s-80s; arguments on potential ban or government regulation of a continued sport; so-called safer boxing conducted as “a science”; and an AMA doctor’s pointing to tackle football in America for producing severe head injuries as well. “I think a similar kind of injury occurs in any contact sport,” says Dr. Russell H. Patterson, Jr., neurosurgeon and AMA official. “Football is a good example, and we’ve seen some serious head in juries in football. … The blow is the same whether it’s in boxing or in football. It’s just in boxing it’s small, repetitive blows but maybe spread over many years and almost daily in its occurrence.” Robert Lee, U.S. Boxing Commission president, says, “The past year, 1982, has been filled with controversy with all too many people calling for a ban on boxing. Yet how many of these same people call for a ban on high-injury sports such as skiing, football, hang-gliding, auto racing, scuba diving or mountain climbing?”

1983, June 12:  “Boxing and The Brain,” by David Noonan, New York Times. News analysis discusses the following: boxing hearings and debate on Capitol Hill; medical literature since 1928 and physiology of brain injury; child fighters such as a 13-year-old who died of brain injury; concepts of safer boxing like “body punching”; noticeable speech difficulties of boxing great Muhammad Ali, age 41; and Dr. Ira R. Casson, a Long Island neurologist who studies boxers and would later work for the NFL. The known permanent brain damage of boxing includes “a clinically diagnosed condition called dementia pugilistica, also known as chronic encephalopathy of boxers and best known as punch-drunk syndrome,” Noonan writes. “As the information about chronic encephalopathy in boxers has accumulated over the years, several distinct clinical symptoms and their apparent pathological causes have been identified.” Casson—destined to lead NFL studies on brain injury, later discredited—views radiological imaging of Ali’s brain, for Sports Illustrated, and says, “That’s the kind of CAT scan that I’ve seen in a number of former and long-term boxers.”

1983, June 20:  “Doctors Debate What To Do About ‘The Sweet Science,’ ” by Brenda C. Coleman, The Associated Press. News report discusses the AMA proposal to eliminate publicly funded boxing, convention debate over the proposal, a new study that finds repeated blows causes brain damage in boxers, and similar research on college football players. “Any sport whose objective is to injure another human being is an abomination,” says internist Dr. William F. Dowda. “There’s absolutely no moral justification for a sport that condones a brain concussion.” Differing viewpoints were heard on convention floor, including from Dr. Russell H. Patterson, Jr., AMA official and chairman of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons [AAN], who says research shows brain damage is “not a problem” among amateur boxers. “Patterson also pointed to a study of 11 Eastern colleges that showed the incidence of accumulated head injury in football was at least as high as in boxing,” Coleman reports.

1983, June 23:  “AMA Delegates: Ban Amateur Boxing,” no byline, Washington Post. News report discusses debate over the formal AMA call to eliminate boxing in municipal leagues, schools, colleges and more government entities such as the military, along with establishing federal regulation of professional boxing. “The AMA’s action comes at a time of increased interest in boxing regulation following the death last November of South Korean fighter Duk Koo Kim of head injuries…,” The Post reports. “I think their [AMA delegates’] position is unreasonable,” says Sig Rogich, chairman of the Nevada State Boxing Commission. “I think if they’re going to categorize risk factors in boxing as a professional sport, then they should use the same philosophy with other sports.”

1984, May 7:  “Concussion Routine in Other Sports; Boxing Safety Praised,” by James Christie, Toronto Globe and Mail. News commentary discusses the following: growing outrage over boxing, led by doctors who want downsizing or bans in America, Canada and Britain; Canadian measures for “reasonably safe” boxing, including sidelining knocked-out fighters for 30 to 60 days; and need for concussion protocol in other sports, particularly tackle football. “This is one of the biggest problems we’ve had at the university level,” says Dr. Bruce Stewart, neurologist and medical director of the Ontario Athletics Commission. “People get knocked out routinely in football, get revived and could be back in for the next series of plays. What this does is demonstrate to me that in boxing we’re being properly cautious about the welfare of our athletes.”

1986, Nov. 7:  “Johns Hopkins Begins Boxing Study,” no byline, The Associated Press. News report discusses pending research, a four-year study of amateur boxers and football players in select cities, for assessing brain damage among control groups and evaluating neuropsychological [NP] testing for possible method of early detection. “A 14-member research team will travel to three or four cities in the South, Southwest and Eastern seaboard to locate boxers, football players and youths in the same age group as the athletes who do not play contact sports and can serve as controls in the study,” The AP reports. “Col. Don Hull, the president of the USA Amateur Boxing Federation, said information gathered from the study will be important to all amateur sports.” Dr. Walter Stewart, epidemiologist at The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, says, “We are going to collect data and let the chips fall where they may.”

1986, Nov. 10:  “The Agony Must End,” by Paul Zimmerman, Sports Illustrated. News analysis discusses NFL injuries that “continue at an unacceptable rate,” including “fractures, concussions and bruises that play havoc with America’s No. 1 sport.” While some football-funded researchers claim a safer tackle game at hand, designed to reduce head and spinal injuries in particular, the armored, high-speed violence of pro football—collisions administered and absorbed from head to toe and other stresses that discombobulate or tear—rates as unprecedented danger for the SI writer Zimmerman, a former college player and game historian, and Miami Dolphins head coach Don Shula. “Some of the collisions I’ve seen are really severe,” Shula says. “I’ve been happy for quite a while to be on the sidelines.” Zimmerman has interviewed numerous muscle dopers in the NFL and NCAA, and blames anabolic steroids and other powerful prescription drugs, like pain-killing shots and pills, for bloodshed in the modern game. “The result is higher-speed collisions by larger people, a ferocity of hitting never before seen in football or any other sport,” Zimmerman writes.

1987, Feb. 26:  “Boxing Doctor Says Peril Exaggerated; Other Sports Said Riskier as Brain Study Launched,” by Al Sokol, Toronto Star. News analysis discusses the following: boxing controversy as medical associations recommend downsizing or banning the sport; measures for less risky or safer amateur boxing; danger of tackle football, and a Johns Hopkins longitudinal study on young boxers that includes American football players as a control group. “The stand against boxing taken by both the AMA and the Canadian Medical Association comes partly from the intuitive sense that getting hit in the head by a punch is not healthy and partly from a growing body of scientific evidence,” Sokol writes. Dr. George Ginter, a Kentucky anesthesiologist and pro boxer, says, “I totally disagree with the American Medical Association’s stand regarding the neurological damage resulting from boxing. College and pro football rank higher than boxing in terms of causing long-term disabilities.” But Boston neurosurgeon Dr. Robert Cantu supports the AMA perspective, as vocal opponent of boxing and staunch football advocate himself, promoting ideas and rhetoric of “safer” tackle football in America—and destined to someday lead an NFL-funded research team verifying brain damage in deceased football players, teens and older. Commenting on boxing in 1987, Cantu dismisses touted measures of “safer” pugilism. “A doctor at ringside is like a priest at a hanging,” Cantu says. “Neither improves the safety of the event.”

1989, March 9:  “Boxing Causing Dozens of Military Hospitalizations Yearly, Study Finds,” by Brenda C. Coleman, The Associated Press. News report discusses debate over injuries in Army boxing and research that finds head injuries responsible for 68 percent of hospitalizations in the military sport. “Evidence that boxing produces irreversible brain damage is now as indisputable as the link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer,” the researchers state. Navy boxing coach Emerson Smith disagrees, as chairman of a safety committee overseeing amateur fighting. “Since they have mandated gloves and headgear that we did research on for all boxing programs in the United States, the injury statistics are far, far less than probably all your contact sports,” Smith said. “In football, you have the kids that are paralyzed, the kids that die. I don’t believe there’s any high school or college… where you have contact sports where you’ll eliminate all serious injury.”

1989, March 10:  “Boxing Safety Studies Disagree,” by Steve Woodward, USA Today. News report discusses conflicting outcomes in studies on brain risks of young boxers, with results of research commissioned by the U.S. Amateur Boxing Federation portraying the sport in “safer terms” than the Johns Hopkins study, published by JAMA. Boxing advocates questioned the number of brain injuries cited in the JAMA article, suggesting it too high and wondering if many study subjects were unfit to box in the first place. Johns Hopkins researcher Dr. Walter Stewart responds thusly: “Clearly I would say that some people should not be boxing, just as some should not be playing football.”

1990, May 22:  “Head-High Tackles: How Long Can Footy Have Them?” no byline, London Herald. News analysis discusses Britain’s boxing controversy and increasing concern for brain injuries across contact sports, particularly rugby or Australian Rules football, where some clubs already employed “baseline” NP testing. “Boxing people, when confronted with the claim that their sport is unreasonably dangerous, inevitably point the finger straight at [rugby] football as a sport more likely to give an athlete brain damage,” The Herald states. Rugby officials rebuke the allegations, noting their safety measures and declaring relative few concussions occur. An anonymous neurosurgeon, identified as a former rugby player, says high hits were the single threat and could be outlawed by new rules. “The real problem in Australian Rules is not the normal game; it’s the excessive violence and shirtfronts. As long as everyone does things sensibly and the king-hits are kept out of football, the risks are minor.”

1991, Jan. 19:  “Jabs Cause The Brain Damage,” no byline, South Australian Advertiser. Aussie news commentary discusses the following: boxing as gladiatorial sport in western civilization; violence as public spectacle or popular culture; apparent Parkinson’s symptoms in Muhammad Ali; crystallizing medical consensus that repetitive, sub-concussive blows cause long-term cognitive impairment; and injury comparisons of boxing and other risky activities such as American football. “The controversy over boxing is fueled more by emotional and moral questions than by any overwhelming death toll,” the Advertiser piece opines. “Even though more than 300 professional boxers have died in the past 20 years, a recent American survey put its fatality rate at .13 boxers per 1,000 participants—compared with .3 for college football [players], 1.1 for scuba divers, 5.1 for mountaineers, 5.6 for hang gliders, 12.3 for sky divers, and 12.6 for horse racing [jockeys]. The recorded [boxing] injury rate also is low. In the United States a two-year study of 6,000 amateur boxing bouts revealed an injury rate of 1.43 percent, compared to a rate of 4.75 percent for professional boxing and 46 percent for high school football, a figure which would probably translate quite comfortably to Australian Rules or rugby in Australia.”

1992, December 7:  “Toon Out,” by Albert Kim, Sports Illustrated. News report discusses the following: sudden retirement of NFL receiver Al Toon and his “post-concussion syndrome”; other cases of severe brain injuries in pro football; and ever-increasing awareness within the sport about potential long-term dysfunction for casualties. “Although there is no evidence to show that concussions [in football] can lead to permanent brain damage, most medical experts believes that repeated blows to the head can have dire consequences,” Kim reports. A team physician for the Buffalo Bills, Dr. Richard Weiss, says, “Think about boxing. Suffering a large number of concussions over a period of years more than likely leaves some permanent residue.” The “normally articulate and quick-witted” Toon, as Kim describes, is subdued, groggy and suffering memory loss a few weeks following his ninth diagnosed concussion in eight NFL seasons. “There are some inherent dangers in playing football…,” Toon says. “But when you get something like this [concussion syndrome], you’ve got to take it more seriously. You’ve got to think past just, Can I play on Sunday?”

1994, Jan. 28:  “Neurologist Discusses Concussions on The Gridiron,” by Noah Adams, All Things Considered [transcript]. National Public Radio show discusses growing attention to concussions in football as Super Bowl nears, including public speculation of long-term brain damage to players, with interview of Dr. Peter Tsairis, team neurologist for the New York Giants. “Are there retired players who… have permanent damage because they had too many concussions?” Adam poses to Tsairis, concluding the show. “I don’t know how many of these players go on to develop dementia,” replies the Giants doctor, “which is a term that we use where there’s permanent structural change on a molecular level to the—to the brain that they cannot remember certain things, when they lose their memory. And you see this a lot in boxers who’ve gone on after their years in boxing and developed dementia problems. We don’t have that much experience with football players who’ve had multiple concussions. I don’t know of any article that’s been written on the subject. I know it’s been done with boxers, but not with football players.”

1994, Jan. 28: “That’s Enough for Buffalo Linebacker Cornelius Bennett,” no byline, Agence France Presse. International news report discusses injuries for Super Bowl teams, including Dallas quarterback Troy Aikman’s widely publicized memory loss of a concussion sustained during the previous week’s NFC title game. The report states: “When told a boxing trainer would suggest six weeks of rest after a concussion, Aikman said, ‘Did you tell him I have a Super Bowl to win? I’m not given the luxury of waiting til then.’ ” Jim Kelly, Bills quarterback, admits “second thoughts” about his brain injuries, especially given the decades of publicized concussions to NFL quarterbacks. “I’ve had six or eight of them and it’s a scary, scary feeling,” Kelly says. “You don’t know where you are at. The emptiness in your mind, let alone your gut, comes when you wake up trying to figure out why everybody is staring at you. It makes you wonder, ‘Is the game worth it?’ But it is.”

1994, Oct. 29:  “Illinois Firm Gives Aikman New Protection,” by Lorraine Kee, St. Louis Post-Dispatch. News commentary discusses star names who’ve suffered concussions in NFL, past and present—including Toon, Merrill Hoge, Roger Staubach, Harry Carson, Joe Montana, Aikman—and a doctor’s linking football to boxing for brain trauma and damage. “Of course, concussions aren’t news to these guys [NFL players],” Kee writes. Aikman says, “You have to be somewhat concerned by concussions, but it’s something you just have to deal with. I don’t want it to get out of hand. I want to live a normal life after pro football.” Dr. Kenneth R. Smith, neurosurgeon at St. Louis University Hospital, says, “It’s kind of like boxing injuries; if you get knocked out a lot of times, your brain will eventually have some diseased process going on. Usually, when the natural nerve cells die, they do not recover.” The specialist adds that multiple impacts to head and spine “could produce a permanent injury and a whole series of these could lead to a possible degeneration later on in life.”

1994, Nov. 1:  “Not Just Boxers [Who] Can’t Answer The Bell,” by Stephen Brunt, Toronto Globe and Mail. Canadian news commentary identifies seeming hypocrisy in supporters of tackle football, including American neurologists, who condemn boxing for brain damage while claiming to see little or none in their nationalistic collision sport. “Professional boxing exists on the verge of extinction…,” Brunt writes. “What is thriving, though, is the greatest sports-entertainment complex in the world, the game that owns Sunday afternoons, NFL football. … What’s the difference between that and being knocked out in a boxing match?” Brunt notes lengthy layoff for concussed athletes in boxing, unlike football, where “after a quick whiff of smelling salts” the injured return to contact, then the writer poses: “Does a 300-pound lineman making full, head-to-head contact have as much brain-jarring impact as a perfectly timed blow delivered with a gloved fist? You’d have to think so. Does the football helmet offer sufficient protection? Obviously not sufficient to prevent players from routinely having their bell run… And when that same helmet becomes the top of a projectile hurtling through space, it also contributes to the damage done.” Football supporters criticized boxing for intent to injure, implying sanctity of their sport, but “watch [NFL lineman] Bruce Smith bearing down on [quarterback] Joe Montana,” Brunt intones, “and then try to convince anyone that his purpose is anything other than doing as much damage as possible. Just as in boxing, there is a direct reward for disabling a foe…” In conclusion, Brunt heckles American medicine and science for obvious see-no-evil perspective regarding NFL dangers: “So where is the AMA now, why isn’t professional football being cast as the last refuge of barbarianism, the way boxing is? Probably because football is not a fringe activity run by the Don Kings of the world, but a mainstream colossus. Probably because football is so tied to corporate and academic institutions and is run by bright, white lawyers. … Probably because the same people who would be doing the condemning have a brother or father or son who has at some level been involved in the game. In other words, probably because of divisions of taste, and class, and money—not [violent] content.”

1994, Nov. 5:  “Staff Is Ready for Severe Hits: Impact of Concussions Isn’t Lost on Vikings Doctors,” by Curt Brown, Minneapolis Star Tribune. News report discusses concussion awareness in an NFL franchise, including the diagnosing of symptoms like headache, blurred vision and memory loss and professed long knowledge among medical staff and coaches in 1994—tumultuous year of publicized brain-injury cases for the league, especially of star quarterbacks flattened on television. “If I could give players any advice, I’d say don’t ignore the signs,” says Hoge, a year after retiring for multiple concussions, such as the re-bleed or “second impact” brain injury that rendered him comatose, hospitalized in ICU. A concussion “can clear up and you can function normally,” Hoge continues. “But that doesn’t mean you’re right. This is messing with your brain. You can damage your life. You can go into a coma. You can even die from it.” Longtime Vikings team physician Dr. David Fischer says: “Perhaps awareness has been heightened with fans and players, but our medical staff has always been fairly sensitive to post-concussion syndrome.” Research remains fledgling regarding long-term effects of brain impacts football, with the NFL just committing itself to studies, but some 65 years of medical literature continues documenting brain damage of boxing, like “chronic encephalopathy,” through cellular pathology of deceased athletes and longitudinal study of the living—and the Vikings doctor knows as much, among several NFL team physicians speaking publicly. “In boxing, surely we’ve seen how repetitive head trauma can cause all types of long-term problems,” Fischer says. “But how many blows it takes, what severity over length of time, we don’t know. Dennis Green, Vikings head coach, says, “Concussions are not new to football, but we have a fair understanding of when a guy is safe to return and when he isn’t. It’s up to the doctor if he can or can’t go.”

1994, Nov. 20:  “Dazed and Confused: Merril Hoge and Other Veterans Are Finding Out Why Concussions Have Become Serious Head Games,” by Jerry Crasnick, Denver Post. News analysis discusses the following: brain concussion as “the most highly publicized injury of the 1994 season”; employ of NP testing around the league, along with balance assessment of players and more intuitive methods to detect concussion symptoms; widespread concern, or talk, for guarding against dreaded “SIS,” second-impact syndrome; rhetoric on brain damage of tackle football; NFL concussion tracking and data compiled annually at the University of Iowa; and insider agreement that modern football is highly dangerous with large, helmeted athletes sprinting and colliding in open field. “Sometimes the damage the brain sustains is permanent…,” Hoge says. “Twenty years down the line they can’t come in and give you a new joint. It’s irreversible.” Cris Collinsworth, former NFL player turned TV commentator, says: “Once you get out of football, you look back and say, ‘I can’t believe I ever did that.’ It’s insane. My wife tells me all the time that she’s glad I don’t play anymore.” Greg Aiello, NFL director of communications, says league rate of concussions isn’t changing despite public spotlight on the issue. “Obviously, it’s something we’d like to reduce,” Aiello says. “But if all the media attention suggests there’s been a sudden increase in concussions, that’s inaccurate.”

1994, Dec. 19:  “The Worst Case—Doctors Warn That Repeated Concussions Can Lead to Permanent Brain Dysfunction,” by Michael Farber, Sports Illustrated. This news analysis of the time’s most-read sports magazine discusses football brain trauma and potential or known brain damage in players of the American game, particularly the NFL. “People are missing the boat on brain injuries [in football],” says neurologist Dr. James P. Kelly. “It isn’t just cataclysmic injury or death from brain injuries that should concern people. The core of the person can change from repeated blows to the head.” Farber reports: “Some [NFL] veterans have gone through the neuropsychological sideline drills so often that even new concussion can’t make them forget. … On Dec. 9, [Jets team internist Dr. Elliot] Pellman, Dr. Andy Tucker of the Cleveland Brows and Dr. Ira Casson, a New York neurologist, met with league officials, including commissioner Paul Tagliabue, to discuss concussions and suggest ways to cut down on their frequency.” Elsewhere, Dr. Cantu, neurosurgeon and NCAA-funded researcher of catastrophic brain and spinal injuries in American football, blames players who do not employ “proper contact” or “proper technique” for impacts—Cantu’s controversial theory for colliding in the modern game without using heads, or avoiding contact of high-tech helmets built for ramming without skull fracture but incapable of preventing brain trauma: “We know that people who have a concussion tend to have more concussions,” Cantu says. “Why? Two logical reasons. The first is that certain people can take a blow better than others; you see that in boxing all the time. But of equal, if not more, importance is how you play the sport [football]. If you keep playing like a kamikaze, if you tackle with your head, there’s more of a chance of being concussed than if you block or tackle with the shoulders.” Neuropsychologist and researcher Ken Kutner, PhD, says lingering “post-concussion syndrome” is more widespread among active and former players than is generally believed: “I counsel several [New York] Giants, past and present, but they don’t want their names known,” Kutner says. Meanwhile, Dr. Joe Maroon, Steelers surgeon, sees the possibility that football players could suffer “cumulative effect” from concussions, but Dr. Joe Torg doesn’t, Eagles doctor: “I know of no football player who has had residual neurological impairment from repeated insults to the head,” Torg says.

1995, March 4:  “Don’t Ban Boxing—Just Make It Safer,” by Joan Ryan, San Francisco Chronicle. News commentary discusses tenants of so-called safer boxing designed to save the blood sport from extinction or banishment, including “scientific” or finesse punching, larger gloves, stringent selection and review of referees, and stringent medical restrictions for fighters, assuring their fitness. “Don’t let them in the ring if they don’t belong there. You’d reduce about 85 percent of the problems,” says neuropsychologist Matthew Bowen, who boxed as an amateur. Former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson doesn’t care about a person he faces in the ring: “I try to catch my opponent by the tip of his nose,” Tyson says, “because I try to punch the bone into his brains.” Ryan, the pundit and confessed boxing fan, comments that “in the wake of yet another fighter leaving the ring on a stretcher with a blood clot in his brain, as happened to Gerald McClellan a week ago, I’m having a tough time arguing against those calling for drastic reforms or an outright ban of the sport.” However, “banning boxing altogether is unrealistic,” Ryan writes. “Plus, if we ban boxing for being too violent, we’d have to consider banning football, too. The incidences of flagrant violence have risen so high in the NFL that agent Leigh Steinberg recently gathered some of the country’s top brain doctors for a seminar with quarterback Steve Young, Troy Aikman, Warren Moon and other football clients who have sustained multiple concussions.”

1995, April 3:  “Information That Should Make Their Heads Spin,” by Bill Plaschke, Los Angeles Times. News commentary discusses new NFL initiatives and proposals, fostering “increased research and awareness of football head injuries,” that include the following: forming a league committee of experts for brain-injury research and recommendations for prevention; examining helmet technology and banning dangerous models; mandating all rookies undergo “baseline” NP assessment for concussion monitoring throughout their careers; and establishing a league-wide “concussion grading scale” and “testing” so injured players can be diagnosed and managed until recovery. “If boxing can have these worldwide standards and rules that can keep certain fighters out of danger, it would seem that football could, also,” says Dr. David A Hovda, neurosurgeon and consultant on boxing’s health reforms. “This is a problem that needs to be addressed and studied now.” Another neurologist agrees, Dr. Janet Chance, who says: “Head injuries [in football] are a huge problem, and a poorly understood problem. There are some questions here that absolutely need to be answered.” But Dr. Elliot J. Pellman, Jets team doctor and chairman of the new NFL concussion committee, is unsure about for rapid progress because of monetary expense, time constraint and internal resistance: “Players run the show. If they don’t want to do something, it’s not going to happen,” Pellman says. “We suggest these things and owners are going to look at us like, What difference does this make?” Plaschke states: “It is this sort of attitude that may eventually drive an ex-player to his grave from Alzheimer’s disease. Many doctors now believe this occurs more frequently in those who have suffered multiple concussions.” The writer concludes: “The players still don’t scare and the owners still don’t care. You wonder what has to happen before they do.”

1995, Oct. 20:  “A No-Brainer: Football Leads to Concussions: Al Toon Will Attest That Symptoms Can Remain for Years,” by T.J. Simers, Los Angeles Times. News profile discusses life for former NFL receiver Al Toon with post-concussion syndrome, three years after football retirement, as he still experiences problems such as “emotional volatility.” Toon, a successful businessman, says, “There was a time when I thought of suicide. The act itself was never considered, but life was very frustrating.” Toon says there are more former players like him: “Very, very commonplace. You play the game of football, people get hit in the head. It’s no fluke.” Dr. Daniel Kelly, neurosurgeon at UCLA, believes that concussion management, if effective, would likely sideline many more players than what occurs, and for longer: “There are a lot of things we do not know yet, but the simplest thing would be to have [diagnosed concussed] players sit out a month,” Kelly says. “Of course, if you did that, you would probably have the quarterback, the running back and the tight ends sitting on the bench.” Leigh Steinberg, sports agent, says: “We won’t know for years what that impact of this will be. We may have an epidemic of Alzheimer’s and attendant problems 20 years from now with some of these players.”

1996, July 9:  “Concussion Potentially Most Dangerous Sport Injury: Blows to The Head Cause Brain Damage and The More Hits an Athlete Takes The More Chance of Permanent Injury: Little Research Conducted on Returning After Concussions,” by Shaun Powell, Newsday, New York, reprinted in Canada by The Vancouver Sun. In-depth news report discusses problems of concussion and more brain injury among athletes, young and old, including the following: no “firm” RTP protocol among various approaches for treating the concussed, stark disagreement marked by no consensus in defining the condition and wide opinions regarding length of time needed for complete recovery; woeful injury reporting in American football, all levels, especially for subpar concussion diagnosis and recording overall; skull-preserving helmets that cannot prevent brain trauma while likewise encouraging head-on collisions; brain disease such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s in former athletes of contact sports; and accumulating adverse research findings for contact sports, especially tackle football. “The attention given head injuries in recent years has put the sports world on alert and confirms the fears of medical experts. The concussion finds itself at the forefront of sports injuries,” Powell reports. “We are years behind when it comes to brain injury and what we can do to diagnose it and take care of it,” says Jets internist Dr. Elliot Pellman, chairman of the recently minted NFL Committee on Mild Traumatic Brain Injury. Roger Staubach, Hall of Fame quarterback, says concussions figured “in my decision to retire,” estimating he sustained 18 to 20 in football from high school to the NFL.

1996, Oct. 31:   “Experts Warn of Brain Damage,” by Sabin Russell, San Francisco Chronicle. News analysis discusses concussions suffered by the 49ers’ star quarterback Steve Young, growing medical opinion that football’s brain dangers are underestimated, and continued speculation on brain damage of postconcussion syndrome and/or multiple concussions in football. “The risk of serious brain injury with a concussion is very, very low. But when it does happen, it is very severe,” says Dr. Gordon Matheson, Stanford professor of sports medicine. “In the scheme of things, they [concussions] may be very minor. But they may also affect a player over the long haul,” says neurologist Dr. Janet Chance. Russell reports: “Dr. Lawrence Pitts, a University of California at San Francisco neurosurgeon, said ongoing neuropsychological surveys of athletes will ultimately determine whether or not repeated concussions cause permanent damage. Although there is ample [research] evidence that boxers can be permanently damaged in their sport… no one can claim football players have a similar problem. ‘It is very uncommon to see a football player knocked unconscious,’ he said. ‘In boxing, it’s a different matter.’ ”

1996, Nov. 15:  “Concussion Policy Should Be A No-Brainer,” by Paul Woody, Richmond Times Dispatch. News analysis discusses controversial segment of concussion “return to play” protocols, particularly length of layoff for the injured athlete, a sidelining that could be minutes in football or months in boxing. Woody notes that 49ers quarterback Steve Young suffered two diagnosed concussions within 15 days, prompting the question whether the NFL star came back too soon, or dangerously, following the initial brain trauma: “In boxing in Virginia and most states, a fighter who even takes a technical knockout must wait 30 days before boxing again,” Woody reports. “If there is a knockout [unconsciousness], the boxer’s waiting period is 60s days.” But the NFL dismisses such boxing RTP protocol for the concussed in pro football, while apparently speaking for football at-large because juvenile and college levels that will follow same philosophy: “We have a committee of team and outside doctors who have been meeting and studying concussions for the past two years,” says NFL spokesman Greg Aiello. “They say it doesn’t make sense to have a rule to keep a player out for a specified period of time. Concussions are too complex. They have to be considered on a case-by-case basis.” An independent analyst disagrees, Dr. Michelle Miller, Virginia Commonwealth University Medical School, who believes boxing RTP parameters should be adopted by football: “I don’t know that it’s coming any time in the future, but it’s needed,” she says.

1996, Dec. 1:  “Heady Concerns: Concussions No Longer Comedic Material in NFL,” by Jonathan Rand, Kansas City Star. News analysis discusses multiple concussions to star NFL quarterbacks Troy Aikman and Steve Young, and insider perspective on potential brain damage of football players, related to boxing, by Dr. Joseph Waekerle, Chiefs team physician, member of NFL concussion committee, and renowned trauma-care specialist. “It’s a big problem because football has approximately 250,000 concussions every year,” Waekerle says. “One in every five high school players has a concussion on a yearly basis. Now, we’re beginning to understand the potentially serious effects of concussions, especially repeated concussions.” Noting conclusions about permanent brain damage of multiple concussions, Waekerle says: “The third [vulnerability] is the chronic thing—all this becomes cumulative. A great example would be a boxer. That may occur to other professional athletes who suffer many concussive syndromes.”

1996, Dec. 20:  “Heads, You Lose: Football Concussions Hit Players at All Levels,” by Angelo Bruscas, Seattle Post-Intelligencer. News analysis discusses concussion debate in football, conflicting talking points to endure, including in regard to cultural awareness, modern helmets, risk-taking athletes, soft definition of concussion, and gigantic athletes. “The whole subject of concussions has been taken way too lightly,” says Leigh Steinberg, sports agent who’s organized educational seminars for players and encouraged media to cover the issue. “When Monday Night Football opens with two helmets crashing together and when videos of hardest hits are huge sellers, there’s a level at which concussions are glamorized and the subject is treated as fun without a consciousness of real ramifications.” Pediatrician Dr. Stephen Rice believes football’s ever-increasing sizes and modern equipment create action of terrible risks and casualties, by emboldening players to act as missiles like never before: “Did all this happen before and we were just missing it all? … Now you could run into a steel wall and nothing would happen to you. … In the days when players wore only leather helmets without facemasks, no one struck people with their heads. There was no protection.” Rice notes the fact modern helmets do not prevent concussion “because the helmet doesn’t stop the brain from moving around inside the skull.”

1997, Jan. 1:  “QB Concussions: A Heady Issue,” by Thomas Boswell, Washington Post. News commentary discusses NFL brutality ravaging quarterbacks, suggesting football stars could end up punch-drunk permanently, and endorses controversial countermeasure to arbitrarily monitor tackler intent and punish “cheap-shot” or “dirty” hits. “This season, football’s been getting its bell rung with regularity,” Boswell writes. “Every time a popular quarterback gets his brain scrambled the game suffers a blow, too. As our gridiron heroes reach middle age, do we want them to remind us of addled boxing pugs? Do we want Troy Aikman to tremble like Muhammad Ali or Danny Wuerffel to be as bizarre and bitter as Joe Frazier?” Boswell reports a coach’s allegation of bounty-type hits on Wuerffel, star quarterback at University of Florida: “Obviously [Florida State] had some late hits [on Wuerffel],” says UF coach Steve Spurrier. “Obviously they could have pulled off. The intent of the hits was a little different than the other teams we play. Obviously somebody told them to try to knock him out of the game.” Spurrier suggests responsibility lies with the Florida State “coaching staff.”

1997, June 10:  “Carson’s Crusade Begins, Puts Focus on Head Injuries,” by Randy Lange, Bergen Record. News profile discusses cognitive and emotional struggles of former All-Pro Giants linebacker Harry Carson, who’s become one of the first players, like Al Toon, to openly discuss his post-concussion dysfunction and dark thoughts such as suicide. “A lot of players are hesitant to talk about the brain and being brain-damaged. It’s one of those things you don’t want to be associated with,” Carson says. “I think probably there are a whole bunch of players walking around who are experiencing mood swings and sensitivity to bright lights and loud noises, who are having headaches, and a whole host of other symptoms. … There was a time where I was depressed about it, and bad thoughts came to my head. I didn’t know what was going on, and I didn’t have anybody to talk to. Suicide? I thought about it. I was living but I didn’t have a life. My head was kind of in a fog. My daughter Asia kept me up. I told myself, ‘You do that, what’s going to happen to her?’ ”

1997, July 13:  “‘Iron Mike’ Webster Works on Strategy for Health Since Retirement; He Has Struggled With Troubles,” by Terry Shropshire, Akron Beacon Journal. News profile discusses the Hall of Fame lineman’s descent into publicized problems after retiring from the NFL, including poor health, debt, pending divorce and homelessness. “As good as times got, they got bad,” says Pam Webster, estranged wife of the Steelers great. “We’ve gone through times where we didn’t have enough money for toilet paper. There were times we didn’t have heat in the house. … Mike has always been a loner by nature. But there were times that people should have been there for him.” Mike Webster says: “I lived in the car for about a year and a half out of the last five years. … My issues are my issues and I’ll handle my issues.” Doctors speculate Webster suffers from congestive heart failure, but he worries about his brain, possible symptoms of post-concussive syndrome or Parkinson’s, as does his personal physician. “He’s really had trouble concentrating and focusing on certain things in order to function at an optimum level,” says Dr. Jerry Carter. Webster acknowledges mind disturbances: “Some of the things I think about, horrify me,” he says.

1997, Sept. 22:  “Use Your Head,” by Joan Ryan, The Sporting News. News analysis discusses NFL forces that keep a brain-injured athlete on the football field, beginning with competitive intent of both the player and his team, such as the controversial case of 49ers quarterback Steve Young. “It’s tough for someone like Steve to sit out when he feels fine,” says Leigh Steinberg, the star’s agent. “But you don’t know how much long-term damage you’re causing by continuing to play. Maybe it’ll cause Alzheimer’s. Maybe senility.” Dr. Larry Bedard, of the American College of Emergency Physicians, doubts effectiveness of so-called concussion management and RTP in sports: “[Concussions] tend to be misdiagnosed and minimized. Athletes are trained to tough it out. But there may be no such thing as a mild concussion.”

1999, Nov. 21:  “NFL players roughed up to know it hurts,” by Bill Gleason, South Bend Tribune. News commentary discusses postconcussion syndrome and the multiple concussions suffered by “punch-drunk” NFL players, while quoting football writer Jerry Magee, who recently endorsed boxing’s lengthy layoff for such athletes in his column for Pro Football Weekly. “It also must be said that boxing, for all its abuses, is more mindful of the well-being of its participants than is the NFL,” Magee states. “In Nevada a boxer who is knocked out cannot fight again for at least 45 days. In the NFL quarterbacks or players at any position who suffer concussions can play again within days. On a recent Monday evening, there was Troy Aikman quarterbacking the Dallas Cowboys only eight days after suffering the sixth concussion of his [career]. Many people who cover the NFL for newspapers, radio, and TV are around NFL players who are suffering through ‘post-concussion syndrome.’ ”

1999, Dec. 10:  “A Hard-Headed NFL Makes for Soft Skulls,” by Tim Green, USA Today. Guest news commentary by former NFL player discusses regular concussions in the league and endorses mouthpieces for helping prevent brain trauma, while noting longtime nicknames for head-injured players include “cardboard head” and, for those exhibiting lasting impairment or susceptibility, “paper head.” Green writes: “I’m not such a paper head as to think that mouthpieces will eliminate concussions. They help. And, if the NFL is as serious about safety as I think, there will be fewer… cardboard heads.”

2000, May 15:  “Trying to Leave Concussions’ Dark Ages: Neurologists start to take sports hits more seriously,” by James C. McKinley, Jr., New York Times. News analysis discusses continuing problems of non-uniform concussion diagnosis and return-to-play protocols in the NFL and sport at-large, noting that only in “the past 15 years” are neurologists beginning to understand brain trauma and “how multiple concussions can lead to permanent damage.” Mark R. Lovell, a Detroit neurologist serving on the NFL concussion committee and a designer of NP testing for teams, dismisses concussion guidelines by the American Academy of Neurology: “We don’t know whether being knocked out briefly is any more dangerous than having amnesia and not being knocked out,” Lovell says. “We see people all the time that get knocked out briefly and have no symptoms. Others get elbowed, go back to the bench and say, ‘Where am I?’ ” League committee chairman Dr. Elliot Pellman dismisses standard guidelines for all cases as nonsense amid hype about brain injury in football: “You really have to hope that the doctors who deal with this have a lot of experience with it, use the tools available and are not affected by the outside din,” Pellman says.

2000, September:  “Lower Cognitive Performance of Older Football Players Possessing Apolipoprotein E4,” by Kenneth C. Kutner, David M. Erlanger, Julia Tsai, Barry Jordan, and Norman R. Relkin, Neurosurgery. Clinical study discusses possible genetic link to brain trauma and long-term damage in control groups involving 53 active professional football players, presumably of the NFL, and provides direction for priority research questions such as whether football impacts, both concussive and sub-concussive, cause cerebral disease or what is known from boxing cases as "CTBI," chronic traumatic brain injury. In review of literature available, the authors state: “To our knowledge, no previous published study has systemically evaluated the cognitive status of professional tackle football players. At least two different mechanisms may contribute to the development of chronic cognitive dysfunction in football players. First, cognitive impairment secondary to concussion may be cumulative. Football players occasionally experience concussive events through typical contact sport collisions, i.e., head-to-head, head-to-body, head-to-ground, and head-to-goal post collisions. Second, football players may experience subconcussive events through these same collisions during play and practice/training sessions. For professional boxers, CTBI has been associated more strongly with career length than with the number of knockouts and concussions, suggesting that subconcussive blows are an important primary environmental mechanism of neurological dysfunction.”

2001, April 17:  “Concussions Make Stars See Retirement,” by Jonathan Rand, Kansas City Star. News analysis discusses retirement of Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman, who sustained 10 diagnosed concussions in 12 NFL seasons, and includes comments by NFL medical officials on their knowledge and study regarding brain trauma of players, which league doctors contend typically clears in days to a week, besides exceptional cases like Aikman and fellow quarterback Steve Young. “For whatever reason, they take much longer to get better,” says Dr. Elliot Pellman, Jets internist and head of the league brain committee and research. “You also notice the injuries they are getting are the result of lesser blows. … Why are these individuals more susceptible to post-concussion syndrome? You look at them and there’s no long-term damage. There’s no scientific evidence that can tell you they shouldn’t go back and play. Others say, ‘Even though I can’t prove it, intuitively there’s something wrong. You shouldn’t go back.’ What you see publicly is that debate going on.” Dr. Joseph Waeckerle, Chiefs physician and league committee member, says: “There’s no gold standard to diagnose concussions or predict whether someone will have another concussion.” Leigh Steinberg, agent for Aikman and Young, expresses frustration with the NFL’s “slow” pace for research and answers. “I think the years have not brought any greater focus. The denial by the NFL continues,” Steinberg says, urging standardized NP testing and development of concussion-resistant helmet technology. Pellman responds to Steinberg: “That’s a lawyer talking about medicine. I don’t think it’s ever that easy,” Pellman says. “I’d like to see better helmets and better equipment, and that’s the kind of work we’re trying to do now and are actively promoting to helmet manufacturers. But neither we [researchers] nor the NFL are helmet manufacturers.”

By Matt Chaney

For ChaneysBlog.com

Posted Monday, April 23, 2012

I. Introduction

II. Football Lawsuits Surge Against Schools, Youth Leagues and Personnel

III. Court Defenses and Safety Concepts Hardly Shield Juvenile Football

IV. ‘Concussion Testing’ Unlikely to Prove Valid in Court as Diagnostic

V. Various Injuries and Issues Pose Legal Bombs for Juvenile Football

VI. Should Juveniles Play Tackle Football in America?

Legal crisis threatens American football today and not merely the pro level, where news media fixate on lawsuits by some 1,200 former NFL players alleging mismanagement and deception over brain trauma.

Off spotlight, lawsuits also fly in grassroots football, the juvenile game involving millions of kids, a legal minefield for inherent dangers and lack of resources.

America’s schools and youth leagues stand highly vulnerable in court, generally unequipped for handling tackle football against mounting legal responsibilities, and individual personnel are hot targets for plaintiff lawyers.

Most juvenile programs lack a full-time, certified athletic trainer despite expert consensus such a specialist should constantly monitor tackle football. Meanwhile, traditional court defenses have fallen flimsy in protecting organizations and personnel.

Legal experts warn that a ballyhooed defense for football lawsuit, participant “assumption of risk” or consent, is practically useless regarding players under 18 years old.

Moreover, injury “standard of care” for football, another defense against formal complaint, has devolved into flux.

New theory and recommendation come regularly and varied from competing experts, particularly for managing concussion among athletes, causing confusion and misinformation on football’s frontlines for brain trauma, heat illness, cardiac arrest and more risks.

Thus football’s legal fire stalks everyday coaches, athletic trainers, doctors, school nurses and administrators, public paramedics, even teachers who work with injured student players.

“The liability risk for ‘support personnel around juvenile football,’ to use your term, continues to just get greater and greater,” said Steven Pachman, a foremost defense attorney in sport litigation, during a recent telephone interview with me from Philadelphia.

Pachman, of the law firm Montgomery, McCracken, Walker & Rhoads, is a popular speaker for practical breakdown and advice on legalities of athletics, appearing before groups like athletic trainers charged with managing safety.

Pachman’s audiences are most concerned about tackle football, the sport in perpetual health crisis for an array of unpreventable hazards.

Serious brain injury is common for the game’s untold thousands of episodic concussions every year, many passing undiagnosed, along with more players likely affected by sub-concussive blows virtually undetectable.

Hundreds of players survive grave conditions each year, caused by or related to the sport, like brain hemorrhage, cerebral stroke, spinal fracture, cardiac arrest, heart attack, heatstroke, organ rupture, non-cerebral blood clots, “compartment syndrome” and staph infection, among football casualties I found during extensive searching of Google information banks for American cases from 2009 to present.

Players die at the annual rate of one to two dozen in American football, for known fatalities, and a hundred would perish if not for modern medical response and trauma care.

Ill-prepared football programs and personnel “are really putting themselves at risk,” Pachman said. “These days in football, because of everything that we’re discussing here, anytime following a catastrophic event a lawsuit is almost a guarantee if a plaintiff can, in any way, point to arguable negligence.”

“And the plaintiff can often do so, multiple ways, whether it’s with respect to inadequate (injury) education, testing, staffing, documentation, policy—the list goes on.”

The worst grid casualties cost a fortune in medical care, and many players lack insurance coverage and cash to pay expenses amidst economic recession. My online review of 219 such cases from year 2011 finds numerous families and schools struggling to fund proper care of the injured, particularly those beset by lasting disability.

“The bottom line is unpaid medical bills result in lawsuits being filed against football organizers and volunteers,” declared insurance executive Tom Sadler, on his business website. “Somebody has to pay for the medical bills!”

Last year at least 20 football players survived brain bleeds or clots that required emergency surgery, the large majority kids, according to reports online. A majority remain permanently impaired, requiring care and monitoring for life, joining surviving victims from decades of football.

“It’s the family (who) will have to take care of these people…,” said Lou Ruvo, a brain-injury activist and philanthropist, “whether it’s a football player, a sports legend, any other athlete, or a veteran coming back from the war.”

Football Lawsuits Surge Against Schools, Youth Leagues and Personnel

When something goes terribly wrong in juvenile football, coaches, trainers and doctors can expect to bear the legal brunt.

“At any moment, any of these football personnel are one (player’s) injury away from a lawsuit that could take down them or their program,” Pachman said. “And that’s what I’m trying to do: instill, to some extent, fear into the organizations I address.”

By outset of 2009, Pachman and other legal analysts gauged a national uptick in legal action against juvenile football. Scientific news and harrowing player stories about brain damage generated waves of negative press for the tackle game.

That spring, seven months before Congress ripped the NFL and commissioner Roger Goodell in a hearing, plaintiff attorney Paul A. Slager noted: “Recent revelations about permanent brain trauma suffered by football players raise serious ethical questions and liability concerns about head trauma in sports. Public understanding about the lasting effects of serious head injuries has been growing in recent years.”

Today, at least 18 active lawsuits target defendants in juvenile football, schools, youth leagues and personnel, with the majority of allegations involving brain injuries. Many cases were filed in the past year, according to reports online.

Additional legal complaints include a California football mother’s damage claim for staph infection of her son, denied by school officials, a matter which can lead to civil court.

A charge of inadequate equipment, helmets, drives lawsuits for a trio of teen players who suffered catastrophic brain bleeds and permanent impairment. Defendants besides helmet manufacturers include an Illinois school and a youth league in Florida.

Typically, coaching conduct drives legal disputes, along with a program’s medical preparation and response for casualty.

Cases presently include the high school in Idaho sued for a coach’s allegedly striking a player with a water bottle, causing concussion and laceration. In Louisiana, plaintiff parents target a youth coach, claiming he directed players to intentionally injure their son. In Michigan, a middle-school coach faces litigation for allegedly ramming a 13-year-old player, fracturing the boy’s collarbone.

A Pennsylvania lawsuit charges that concussion mismanagement at a school and “violent instruction” of a coach led to a prep football player’s permanent brain problems. The plaintiff, age 20, claims his constitutional right to an education was violated after his injury at 16, for mishandling by faculty and administration.

Elsewhere, provocative lawsuits allege wrongful death of prep players.

Controversial “concussion testing,” widely adopted yet panned by significant peer review and expert criticism, is at crux of the New Jersey case Ryne Dougherty v. Montclair High School, et al, for the question of erroneous results or misuse of popular-selling ImPACT software.

Dougherty, 16, died of a subdural hematoma suffered during a jayvee game in 2008, presumably of brain re-bleed or “second impact” injury, having been cleared for return to play less than a month following a diagnosed concussion. An athletic trainer administered computerized ImPACT testing to Dougherty a week prior his death.

In the second case, a North Carolina appellate court has ruled sovereign immunity cannot shield a public paramedic from personal liability, leaving him open to be held for “mere negligence.” The complaint Malinda Fraley and David Fraley v. James Griffin can proceed to trial.

Prep football player Atlas Fraley died in August 2008 following an examination by Griffin, then a county EMT. The 17-year-old had called 911 from home, complaining of severe cramping from daytime practice, and responder Griffin recommended the player drink fluids then left him alone. Fraley’s parents later found him unresponsive at home, where he was pronounced dead.

Whether any current football lawsuit reaches trial and jury decision remains to be seen. Confidential settlements are the historical rule for successful civil action against football and the norm carries in recent case resolutions.

Close observers of modern crisis in brutal American football still await a milestone jury trial at any level of the sport, robust and open in allegations, material evidence and testimony.

Jury trials could establish legal standards of care for football casualty while surely upping payouts to successful plaintiffs, especially injured kids.

Since 2009 a handful of injured teens have settled for millions in damages with football schools and personnel, like Zachary Lystedt of Washington state, who reportedly received $14.6 million and inspired anti-concussion laws in some 33 states. Most recently, plaintiff Scott Eveland of California settled with a district and helmet maker for reportedly $4.9 million.

Both plaintiffs sustained brain hemorrhage of collisions while playing high-school football, underwent emergency surgery, and today suffer permanent impairment. Their settlements entail no acknowledgement of wrongdoing on part of defendants.

But sympathetic trial juries, acting autonomously in tallying sums for damages, could have allowed much more to Lystedt and Eveland, given their tragic plights and long-term expenses.

Eveland’s lawyers had estimated his care would cost $25 million for life, and attorney Pachman sees potentially mega jury awards for children and adolescents ravaged by tackle football.

“Once (such) case is in a jury’s hands where a juvenile is the plaintiff…,” Pachman posed, considering the unenviable side of football defendant. “You’re at the jury’s mercy.”

Court Defenses and Safety Concepts Hardly Shield Juvenile Football 

In July 2004, a rather desperate official of high-school athletics went to Washington, D.C., to plead his case for lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Robert F. Kanaby, executive director of The National Federation of State High School Associations, wanted politicians to legislate federal immunity from lawsuits for the non-profit NFHS, which devised and published rules for prep athletics nationwide.

“Over the last three years, the annual liability insurance premiums for the National High School Federation have increased three-fold to about $1 million,” Kanaby said before the House Judiciary Committee. “The premiums will likely increase significantly in years to come. Since we operate on a total budget of about $9 million, such an increase would be, to put it mildly, problematical.”

The NFHS was legally beleaguered because catastrophic injuries of prep athletes “are going to occur,” Kanaby said. “And each of those accidents has now been representative to our being sued because we have either passed a rule or failed to pass a rule… And we are in a logjam situation where, no matter what we do, every time there’s an accident or a difficulty that occurs, we are embroiled in a suit.”

“For these (high-school) sports to continue to grow and prosper, the development and enforcement of rules is essential. However, the increased expense of defending litigation is endangering the future of these socially beneficial activities.”

The committee denied Kanaby’s request for shield law but offered advice, not good: The NFHS should mandate athletes and parents sign consent forms, a politician proposed, to assume risks of dangerous sport.

Kanaby persisted, contending that consent offered no real protection “because traditionally the courts have not recognized that you can waive the rights of minors… and most of our participants are minors.”

The politicians ended up laughing, still dismissing Kanaby, but he was correct about injury waivers for kids that hold little legal weight, then or now.

Attorney Steven Pachman concurs. “In the case of minors, they can disaffirm contracts,” he said. “So if you’re under 18, a guardian must sign for the minor, and many jurisdictions will not allow anyone, including the parent, to contract away the rights of a minor. So a release wouldn’t have any effect (in such jurisdiction).”

“One of the topics I talk about, when I speak to these larger audiences on assumption of risk, is that it’s become a really difficult defense on which to prevail in football cases.”

Furthering the point, a sound complaint alleging negligence trumps prior consent as defense. “No one, either a juvenile or an adult, can quote consent to negligence, or quote assume the risk of negligence,” Pachman said.

Even a plaintiff athlete’s own negligence can mean nothing for defendants, after the fact of grave casualty. “I’ve seen cases and have been involved in cases as defense counsel,” Pachman said, “where the injured plaintiff may have downplayed symptoms prior to injury, may have misled athletic trainers or other healthcare providers, and actually these players have played while they’re knowingly symptomatic.”

“And in these cases, their post-injury response (in court) is ‘Well, the defendant knew or should have known of the plaintiff’s condition. Or ‘The defendant should’ve known more.’ Or, specifically, ‘The defendant should’ve had better testing, etcetera, or some other program or protocol in place.’ And the plaintiff’s counter-argument often prevails.”

Pachman summarized: “The bottom line is if there’s a good negligence theory, then consent, assumption of risk, doesn’t necessarily get the defendant anywhere, as defenses in these cases.”

Neither does “standard of care” presently in tackle football, primarily for mysteries of brain injury coupled with near certainty the destruction impacts every game level and too many participants, based on documented cerebral damages of players child and adult, Tiny Mite to All-Pro, living and deceased.

No independent validating research exists, nor expert consensus, for reliable steps in so-called concussion management. No doctor or research team is certain of proper course of action for brain trauma, none is certain about diagnosis and recovery, including no headliner expert of the U.S. military and NFL.

No one is certain about return-to-play protocol of diagnosed concussed football players, young and older. No concept deployed as prevention effort of brain injuries, in football or the military, yet verifiably turns back rates of risk and outcome.

But known error margins are high in concussion management of athletes and soldiers.

Presently, as many as 20 different “expert” guidelines circulate. And realm of sub-concussive blows and trauma is hardly addressed or understood, the groundbreaking Purdue studies notwithstanding, MRI radiology detecting brain trauma in prep players who outwardly appear fine, asymptomatic.

Worse for juvenile football, research and expert opinion continue to suggest young brains are more susceptible to severe injury and poor recovery, for their continuing development through minimally age 14 to as long as early adulthood.

Damage to frontal-lobe regions of the adolescent brain, during its accelerated maturation of cellular “gray matter,” is a prime concern of medicine and science regarding contact sport.

The pediatric health crisis of athletes is a focus of researcher L. Syd M. Johnson, PhD, at Michigan Technological University, who specializes in ethics and law of neurology and biology.

“Research shows that the subtle short-term effects of concussion can last up to a year or more in youths, long after the obvious clinical symptoms have abated,” Johnson stated in an email interview. “Athletes who sustain multiple concussions are at greater risk of long-term neurological effects but also more severe short-term effects, as well as increased susceptibility to concussion. Clearly, the only effective ‘treatment’ here is prevention, but that is difficult to achieve in high-impact competitive sports.”

“A further problem, which is only beginning to be acknowledged, is that concussion may not be the real culprit in football. The chronic, day-to-day, sub-concussive head impacts may be the real danger… Preventing the kinds of chronic head impacts that are just part of the game would be impossible without radically altering the game of football.”

“Return-to-play guidelines are a politically and culturally popular Band-Aid,” Johnson continued, “because they don’t require any substantive change to the game itself. But they don’t address the problem of primary concussion at all—they are only designed to prevent secondary concussions.”

In legal blowups around brain injury of football, for expert contradictions and knowledge gaps, personnel fall through the cracks.

“Because the standard of care is still unsettled in many areas related to the proper management of concussions, (football) coaches, trainers and other healthcare professionals or administrators are highly susceptible to the risk of being sued,” Pachman said.

Despite volatile legal environment for head injuries in football, and the news media’s constant coverage, a remarkable amount of personnel remain uninformed. Coaches and administrators can astonish Pachman.

“We usually have Q&A after I speak before these audiences,” he said, “and I’ll still get these questions that are kind of frightening on the issue of liability risk, like ‘Does my school or does my league need a full-time athletic trainer? Or a full-time physician?’ ”

“And do you really need one to reduce the risk of injury, I don’t know. But if you don’t have one, if you don’t have a full-time athletic trainer guiding return-to-play decisions; if you don’t have a physician; if the athletic trainer is not working under the direction of a physician, as many (state) jurisdictions put it…”

“And you’re out in front of a jury?” Pachman continued. “The plaintiff’s lawyers are going to kill you because they can pick and choose from whatever handbooks, whatever guidelines they want, because there are so many out there.”

“One of the questions I’ve received several times—and this goes back to the question of waivers and consent—is ‘If my (concussed) player or my player’s parent signs a waiver, may I allow this player, a symptomatic player, to return to play?’ ”

“That’s a pretty scary question, at least coming from my perspective as a defense lawyer,” Pachman said. “Some of this causes me to question these inquirers’ basic common sense, but it also says to me there still may be a long way to go before we actually see a uniform standard of care that’s understood by the personnel involved.”

‘Concussion Testing’ Unlikely to Prove Valid in Court as a Diagnostic

Many well-publicized experts, led by neurosurgeon Dr. Robert Cantu and North Carolina professor Kevin Guskiewicz, designate written and computerized neuropsychological testing as legitimate standard of care for cerebral injury in American football.

The claim is contentious and central to the divide between those authorities who believe “safe” football is possible versus those who disagree. The latter side ranges in mindset from mildly optimistic for positive reform to the belief no need exists for the sport, especially where kids are concerned.

The side pro-concussion management is led by commercial developers of testing, “football experts” with MDs and PhDs—supported and promoted by the NFL, NCAA, public schools and youth leagues—who contend their studies validate intuitive-based assessments for detecting brain injury among athletes.

For the burgeoning service industry of brain trauma in sport, so-called concussion testing leads technologies in marketing.

The No.1 product, computerized ImPACT, has racked up thousands of sales for millions of dollars based on a wide public trust—even if without a page of independent literature affirming diagnostic quality.

“Concussion testing” is the popular remedy to crisis in football, touted as solution by news media, coaches, school administrators, game officials, trainers, physicians, researchers, educators and politicians.

But NP assessments have not faced court scrutiny to-date while attracting an impressive opposition that grows louder.

No longitudinal study supports the methods and instruments as valid and reliable for diagnosis and return-to-play assessment, and though ImPACT developers promote the product as “Valid. Reliable. Safe.” their fine print states concussion testing should only be one tool of a multi-faceted protocol. ImPACT developers have ignored my requests for interview.

If anything of real record, concussion testing accumulates denouncement, led by informed critics and a decade of negative peer review.

In the military, officials and insurers say the computerized test ANAM lacks independent validation, and some suggest it a failure. The tool “is insensitive and nonspecific,” Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, Army surgeon general, told lawmakers. “It misses about a quarter to a third of (soldiers) who are concussed and includes about 50 percent of (those) not concussed.”

Christopher Randolph, professor of neurology at Loyola University, has compiled unfavorable reviews on NP testing of athletes for years, recently finding faults in “baseline” testing of ImPACT software—designed and marketed by associates and a physician of the NFL, neuropsychologists Mark Lovell and Micky Collins and neurosurgeon Dr. Joseph Maroon.

“The use of baseline neuropsychological testing in the management of sport-related concussion has gained widespread acceptance, largely in the absence of any evidence suggesting that it modifies risk for athletes,” wrote Randolph, detailing unacceptable ImPACT rates of false-positive and false-negative results for his 2011 article in Current Sports Medicine Reports.

Dr. Bennet Omalu, pioneer football neuro-pathologist, said ImPACT testing is “a fraud” as concussion diagnostic, criticizing anyone claiming it a quick fix, ranging from marketer to politician, for epidemic brain trauma in the game.

“ImPACT testing is not a diagnosis tool,” Omalu, chief medical examiner of San Joaquin County, California, said in a phone interview. “It is a forensic follow-up to monitoring a patient, to evaluate the amount of damage. Using (computerized) testing in the acute phase of injury can actually make the symptoms worse. Am I making sense?”

Journal reviewer Dr. Lester Mayers cites lack of specificity and sensitivity of NP products on mass market. “Basically, they’re all unsuitable for clinical work with concussions,” Mayers said, estimating 20 to 25 percent of afflicted athletes are missed.

The public rhetoric and expectation of ImPACT for solving football’s head injuries, much less protect game personnel in court, leaves independent experts confounded.

“The response is infantile,” said Mayers, director of sports medicine for Pace University Athletics, during a phone interview. “The ImPACT people have taken over the idea that somehow they can tell you when it’s OK that the athlete goes back.”

Insurers see problems already, before a possible trial test like the pending Dougherty family lawsuit. Some insurers determine computerized concussion testing raises liability risk for schools and personnel and decline to underwrite the practice, for concern of either misuse or faulty technology.

Most recently, a statement of the Army Surgeon General’s Office reads in part: “the scientific community has yet to identify an objective biomarker or other test that accurately determines when the brain has completely healed from the concussion.”

State governments stop short of explicitly mandating suspect NP testing for school athletics, among anti-concussion laws passed nationwide. Indeed, politicians know a large portion of juvenile football cannot afford the purchase and employ of software applications.

The typical statute does present an implied standard of intuitive-based brain assessment, serving society’s predominant goal for quickly returning injured athletes. But politically charged perception of effectiveness, buttressed by media and echoed by law, does not guarantee proving validity or even reasonableness of concussion testing in court.

And critics deride new measures as minimalist, anyway, except for effecting increased liability risk and caution around contact sports. The laws’ commonly broad language require removal of a presumed symptomatic competitor until clearance by a general practitioner or lesser technician, most assuredly involving NP testing.

Resultant practices in juvenile football are less than ideal overall, or legally inadequate, according to follow-up reviews and observations.

Many athletic trainers do not understand or want to employ computerized assessments like ImPACT while many physicians feel challenged or reluctant as well.

Dr. Charles Tator, Canadian neurosurgeon and researcher on sport-related brain trauma, emphasizes no objective assessment protocol exists, much less a user-friendly model employed in minutes on an acutely concussed athlete who cooperates and reliably self-reports.

“The best method of assessing the effects of a concussion is through a trained observer, a trained physician and a compliant patient. If you have a physician who isn’t trained and a patient who does not want to be compliant, you get nowhere,” Tator told The Toronto Globe and Mail.

“There are two types of cognitive tests. There is the interactive test—20 minutes, $50—where you come up with a numerical score as a baseline and redo half-way through the (athletic) season and see the difference. Sounds good on paper, but does it work? We don’t know the answer. Some doctors and experts rely on these tests, while others say they’re unproven.”

“I’m somewhere in the middle,” Tator continued, “but I know this: I rely on formal, neuropsychological testing, by which I mean a few hours of a neuropsychologist’s time to assess a player’s cognitive functioning. It’s very costly, unfortunately, so you can’t apply it to everybody.”

In American sports medicine, authorities tell me that many neurologists cannot handle concussion in athletes until years of acquired experience, extensive trial-and-error along sidelines.

Even Dr. Cantu, NFL brain researcher and drafter of NP testing format, a foremost promoter of “concussion management,” an authority trusted by millions of parents and children in American sport, had to acknowledge in late 2010 that “the majority of physicians who are in practice today would not be qualified to manage athletic concussions.”

All sum, “concussion testing” likely cannot prove effective and defensible as a “reasonable” standard of care, per tort definition, for tackle football organs and personnel in America.

Various Injuries and Issues Pose Legal Bombs for Juvenile Football

For additional hazards of American football, cardiac ailments and heat illness together send scores if not hundreds of athletes and personnel to hospital ERs annually. Many football fatalities are related, including at least a dozen players in 2011, along with two coaches, a referee and a cheerleader.

Cardiac and heat-related illness are classic emergencies of the sport, often intertwined in casualty, and modern standards of response are proving effective and necessary lifesavers, according to consistent positive outcomes and a jelling consensus.

Unfortunately these preventions necessary around juvenile football—portable defibrillator machines, iced cooling tubs, sideline medical support and ready ambulance—rarely become reality, standing cost-prohibitive instead for most schools and youth programs.

A host of safety recommendations and policy bombard juvenile football these days, for deficiencies, casualties and scrutiny of the environment.

Informed critics include parents, doctors, researchers, lawmakers and acquiescing football organizers who deflect blame from themselves.

Tackle football for kids, critics say, needs state-of-art helmets properly maintained and replaced, and proper-fitting pads for every player.

Practice time and hit counts must be reduced, they recommend, while coaches and trainers should record and report all injuries.

Laws in most states now require concussion education and policy administering of coaches and trainers, but critics say football support personnel also should comply with the American Disabilities Act.

Coaches should properly handle steroid use and hazing by players, and coaches should recognize and report child sexual abuse, among contemporary complaints or proposals by voices in news.

Pop Warner Football officials currently lead the call for coaches to teach dubious “proper tackling” or “proper contact,” for the improbable objective to avoid head impacts in a forward collision sport.

Size limits of juvenile players should be instituted and governed by personnel, say some observers, and a louder call proclaims practice and games should never be held in oppressive heat. Expert consensus says football staffs must ensure players are properly hydrated at all times.

Football personnel are expected to recognize spinal injury, internal bleeding and heatstroke, among potentially mortal conditions, and act quickly, carefully and decisively.

Emergency paramedics and ambulances should attend every football game, critics contend, and every player susceptible to sickle-cell trait should be screened.

School nurses and teachers should shepherd concussed football players academically, say experts and parents, through class and makeup work of recovery periods that can last a month, year, longer.

Lavish recommendations for football go beyond hi-tech helmets to critics’ demand for advanced heart screens such as EKG, presumably for millions of juvenile players each season. Experts suggest advanced radiology for brain imaging, notably “functional” MRI, to better identify and monitor trauma. Insurers do not cover such testing.

Football parents want million-dollar fields for their children, synthetic surfacing that supposedly reduces injury, with regular disinfecting of surfaces at all facilities to battle spread of staph infection.

Practically anyone around football issues will agree qualified trainers should be stationed throughout the sport, on vigil.

As for thoughts on funding such plans, few are heard but skepticism.

“In a perfect world there should be a certified athletic trainer at every single high school in the nation,” remarked Barbara Fiege in Los Angeles, commissioner of interscholastic sports where urban-core schools struggle to stay open, for budget slashes.

In New Jersey schools, athletic directors eliminate coaching positions for sports already thin in adult guidance, among department cuts. A 2011 poll of local athletic directors by The Newark Star-Ledger found: “Seventy percent of ADs are ‘much more’ concerned with budget issues than they were a decade ago or at the beginning of their tenure.”

For risk, casualty and legalities surrounding juvenile sports, about a third of athletic directors were “always” worried about safety and liability, the newspaper found.

All were mindful of brain injuries and ramifications, with 60 percent of respondents “often” or “always” concerned about concussion management.

“It seems like the first response when someone gets injured is to sue first and gather information later,” Steve Jenkins, athletic director of Bloomfield High, told The Star-Ledger. “We don’t want to do a better job with concussion management because we’re scared of being sued, but because we want to treat the kids better.”

Nationwide, football workers weigh heavily their legal vulnerability, according to numerous reports, surveys, insiders and associates.

Personnel should be concerned, with national figures showing about one in five Missouri schools have a full-time athletic trainer, for example, and about one in six across Kansas.

In Pennsylvania, iconic gridiron hotbed, a large majority of schools reportedly have “access” to athletic trainers, but the setup remains subpar. Youth leagues are woeful for response to emergency always lurking at a football field.

“For one thing, most area high schools have athletic trainers present at sporting events, but it’s not universally required across the board,” observed journalist Stefanie Loh, for the Harrisburg Patriot-News.

Athletic trainer Jeff Shields said, “Most of the youth sports never have a sports medical professional, and rarely do they have an athletic trainer at their events.”

Lawmakers in several states have proposed but backed off mandating a certified trainer for every school, despite tackle football, where liability entails practices, games and training workouts. The University of Southern California recently settled civil action with a former player who sued for injury during a weightlifting session.

If many states passed a statute requiring full-time athletic trainers for tackle football, most school and youth programs would close for lack of compliance.

“The idea came up in Georgia a few years ago,” Paul Newberry reported last summer for The Associated Press, “only to get shot down in the Legislature.”

“The education lobby was able to convince them that not every school can afford to do that,” said state athletics official Ralph Swearngin. “The situation would be very difficult to pass any kind of requirement that you had to have an athletic trainer, even though it’s vitally important.”

But the requirement already exists as recognized standard of care, which, in event of severe casualty and legal complaint, can work either in defense of a program with an ATC or against a program without.

Numerous experts and case events support the premise for tackle football. During 2011, certified athletic trainers helped saved young players stricken by brain bleeding, cardiac arrest, heatstroke, non-cerebral blood clots and organ rupture.

Neurologist Dr. Anthony Alessi works in contact sports and serves for the American Academy of Neurology (AAN)). “Many high schools say they can’t afford to have an athletic trainer. I say that means you can’t afford to have a program,” Alessi told WebMD.com. “The presence of a certified athletic trainer makes your program safer by every measure, and if you can’t afford to make the program safe, then you should be closing it up.”

In 2010 the AAN released revised recommendations for managing brain injury in athletics, foremost that a program must staff an athletic trainer and secure an associate physician.

“The five recommendations may strike fear in policymakers—state and local legislators, local school boards and superintendents, public health officials—because of the potential fiscal and practical impact,” attorney Kathleen Dachille wrote for PublicHealthLawNetwork.org.

“Mandating the presence of an athletic trainer at all practices and games is fanciful in a school district where the kids share cleats and other equipment. Requiring release by a medical professional trained in brain injury will mean that young athletes lacking health insurance will be sidelined, possibly unnecessarily. We know the benefits of keeping kids active and involved. But the AAN recommendations cannot be ignored.”

A legitimate standard of care in football, properly planning for and responding to an incident of the game’s predictable bodily calamity, does not mean saving a life in every instance.

The standard does mean having “reasonable” measures in place though, which attorney Steven Pachman does not see often enough around juvenile football in America.

“It’s hard to believe with all that’s been written, and all the knowledge out there now, how some potential defendant targets like schools—many of which just don’t have the money—are still doing less than the bare minimum,” Pachman said.

Should Juveniles Play Tackle Football in America?

King Football, as erstwhile sportswriters dubbed it, remains a major American institution, vast in market, appeal and influence.

But quakes jolt its underpinnings now, mushrooming legalities spurred by player tragedies and damning revelations of brain injury through impacts.

All the while, cultural confidence erodes in tackle football as a beneficial experience for children, and halting parents include players themselves, of the NFL past and present.

Chip Oliver, counterculture author and former Raiders linebacker, has long scoffed at football. He believes the game utterly corrupts public education, among institutions poisoned.

“Maybe it’s time for people to get real about current economics and what’s going to happen in the real world,” Oliver wrote in email. “I for one have had enough of football, period. (Education officials) always fall back on the claim it builds character when in fact the opposite is true.”

Dave Pear, former Raiders defensive tackle and legendary activist for disabled NFL retirees, says the football institution must fully acknowledge hazards in public.

“Football players youth to professional should be made aware of the dangers of this violent and brutal sport,” Pear commented in email. “Parents need to know what these dangers will do to their children.”

Troy Aikman, broadcaster and Hall of Fame quarterback, has discussed his changed viewpoint with journalists. “I believe, and this is my opinion, that at some point football is not going to be the No.1 sport,” Aikman said, adding that officials of the NFL entertainment monolith are “very concerned about concussions… the long-term viability, to me anyway, is somewhat in question as far as what this game is going to look like 20 years from now.”

“I think that we’re at a real crossroads as it relates to the grassroots of our sport,” said Aikman, concussed multiple times himself as athlete. “Because if I had a 10-year-old boy, I don’t know that I’d be real inclined to encourage him to go play football, in light of what we are learning from head injury.”

Like Aikman, Browns linebacker Scott Fujita has daughters only, three girls in a family complete for him and wife Jaclyn. Fujita is relieved knowing football will not be a parental issue for him, and he says active NFL players are sobering about risks, worrying particularly about cognitive outcome.

“Some of the information that’s come up this last year, year and a half, it’s alarming to a lot of guys,” he said in a phone interview of February 2011.

“There’s not a day goes by in the NFL locker rooms where guys don’t look around and say, ‘What the hell are we doing here?’ Much like, I would think, professional boxers. I would think that every professional boxer, at some point in his career, says, ‘What the heck am I doing?’ The difference though, I don’t see a heavyweight boxer getting his head beat-in the week before a big fight. And that’s where football needs to start to evolve.”

“If I did have a boy, would I want him to play football? I certainly wouldn’t encourage it,” Fujita said. “I would do everything I could to discourage it. If that were something that he wanted to do, I wouldn’t stop him from doing so. But I would promote golf, tennis and a lot of beach activities, before I would want him on a football field.”

“Football, to me, is the best game in the world—it’s just dangerous,” said Fujita, 32, a players’ leader in their union. “And we have to figure out the best way to move forward with it; otherwise, football’s not going to survive. I mean, who knows a decade from now whether there will even be football anymore. And I think that’s just kind of the harsh reality that’s approaching this, isn’t it?”

Fujita is among game insiders in every level who rebuke talk about “safer” football, including referees for colleges and preps who request anonymity.

Fujita rejects anything suggesting “proper tackling” and “behavior modification”—or “taking the head out” of football, as Dr. Cantu promotes; this impossible idea also ignores catastrophic grid casualties of blasts below neckline, which cause a few fatalities annually while damaging internal organs and arteries of scores of players hospitalized in ICU.

Obviously, tackle football is incorrigible for brutal head-on collisions. No safe impact is possible, as many parents want to believe through rhetoric of opinion leaders like Cantu.

Fujita said, “I drop in on Pop Warner games every now and then, I pop in on high-school games, because I love watching football at lower levels. And not only are there helmet-to-helmet hits all the time, kids trying to knock each other out, but everybody’s getting coached to do that.”

“The point is, what’s going to be the effect for football down in the high schools?” posed David Meggyesy, author, retired NFLPA administrator and former Cardinals linebacker. “How is (brain injury) going to be handled for kids? How can you handle that?”

Not well in juvenile football, at least so far, says “A Concerned Mom,” a lay critic producing prolific and insightful reader commentaries on TheConcussionBlog.com.

“I hear people talk about trickle-down safety from the NFL and can’t help but think… what? As a society we seem to be expecting a higher standard of care for highly paid adult professionals than we do for our children,” Concerned Mom wrote.

The mother, who requests her real name remain undisclosed, became involved in football health issues after her 8-year-old son suffered a concussion at youth practice. “He tackled high, clashed facemask to facemask (with an opponent), and then rebounded to the ground,” she wrote on TCB. “He was hauled up to his feet, and was left standing and crying on his own—coaches restarted the tackle drill, so I had to go get him.”

A doctor affirmed the boy’s concussion through balance testing. “The school didn’t really know how to put in place academic accommodations,” Concerned Mom wrote. “He’s being withheld from contact sports for a year because his symptoms lasted so long and because of his age.”

The boy had found youth football through a friend and enjoyed the sport initially, until contact began and injured him seriously.

“One issue that really bothers me is I never really wanted him to play football,” Concerned Mom recounted, “but I thought if youth football was really that risky, children wouldn’t be allowed to play. I thought smaller bodies resulted in smaller impacts and I put too much faith in the helmet for providing protection.”

Indeed, children should not play tackle football according to a growing field of pediatric research and expert opinion, at least until kids reach high school.

Dr. Ann McKee, sport neuro-pathologist and research colleague of Cantu, issued warning on youth football last spring in Chicago.

Speaking at a seminar on brain injury, McKee, who like Omalu has found CTE tauopathy in deceased teen football players, suggested high risk of permanent damage for kids in collision sport.

“This is a problem that is not going to be solved by (helmet) technology,” McKee said. “I don’t think 10-year-olds need to play tackle football. I’ve already told my son he’s got to stop playing.”

General practitioners second the point in news, letters, reader comments, chat forums, while several peer experts of McKee likewise denounce tackle football for most or all youths.

Dr. Alessi, who speaks on sport-related concussion, contends no child should participate in violent sport until high school. “A lot of people will say that Pop Warner football is the beginning of an NFL career,” the neurologist said. “I can tell you from my experience it’s the end of an NFL career. They get injured (cerebrally) and are never able to come back.”

Dr. Omalu, neuropath and medical examiner, says he does not care to influence football policy, but he does believe juveniles should not play the tackle game.

“There is no reason, no medical justification, for any child younger than 18 to play football, period,” Omalu told MedPageToday.com. “The brain is not fully developed until about age 18. Impact to the head in younger people may not cause any obvious damage that can be seen on CT or MRI (scans), but on the cellular, epigenetic level there is damage.”

Omalu advocates special care for brain-injured children, including a minimal three-month layoff for a diagnosed concussion beginning with strict isolation from external stimuli. Most concussed football players undergo computerized NP testing within 72 hours of injury, a harmful practice, Omalu argues.

The historic discoveries during autopsy of prep football players by Omalu and McKee—chronic traumatic encephalopathy and axonal-fiber injury in the adolescent brain—lead a contemporary wave of research conclusions in pediatric neurology.

Research estimates of concussion frequency in juvenile American football range as high as a hundred thousand or more annually.

Studies find youth-league players collide in forces comparable to college football, find that one concussion can cause loss of IQ, and find that children take longer to recover from concussion, suffering headaches and lingering cognitive deficits worse than adults.

In general population, young people with brain injury appear more prone to violence in immediate phase and the longterm; research also suggests that early trauma can alter gene pathways, laying groundwork for disorder like dementia.

Canada has aggressively undertaken research of pediatric brain injury, particularly in contact sports hockey and football, producing studies that grab attention in the United States.

Recent findings in Montreal suggest teen athletes are particularly vulnerable for harming the cerebral frontal lobe, with concussion effects lasting six months to a year, often undetectable by standard assessments.

“These frontal regions of the brain… oversee executive functions responsible for planning, organizing and managing information,” said neuropsychologist Dave Ellemberg, author of the study utilizing electrophysiology. “During adolescence these functions are developing rapidly, which makes them more fragile to stress and trauma.”

In the legal arena, authorities see a possible benchmark for age limit to high-risk football in America—adulthood, as Omalu alludes. Basically, “assumption of risk” appears untenable for allowing juveniles in the blood sport, and the age cut-off could manifest over cerebral trauma.

“A principle of assumption of risk doctrine… is that an activity can’t be so harmful as to violate public policy,” law professor Gerard Magliocca wrote in December 2009. “Put another way, knowing consent is not enough—that’s why dueling is illegal. At what point will the evidence about brain injuries from repeated blows to the head, especially if causation can be established for injuries to young kids or high-school players, raise this problem for football?”

One year later, Magliocca spoke with me by telephone from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. “Clearly, people know when they play football they could get seriously hurt,” he said. “The question is: Are they aware of the kinds of injuries they could be exposed to? And I think here it’s fair to say, no, I don’t think people knew that repeated blows to the head, that weren’t concussions, could do serious damage if you add up enough of them.”

“Now, the more interesting question, I think, is: What about for young kids, Pop Warner football, something like that? Is it possible we might get to the point where we say you can’t have kids under a certain age playing tackle football?”

Magliocca envisioned scenarios for that development but not a new law. “It’s very hard to imagine a court coming in and basically saying that football is contrary to public policy in general,” he said. “I mean, that could only come from a state legislature or Congress.”

Settlements and jury awards against football defendants, however, could push one vested group to act decisively against the sport—insurance carriers.

Juvenile American football stands exposed in this sense, according to authorities of law, medicine and science, particularly for no discernible standard of care as yet. Maintaining reasonable medical preparation and response for schools and youth leagues would amount to covering parameters of a large war, every year.

Attorney Steven Pachman said: “From a starting point, if we can assume that following a catastrophic event a lawsuit is almost inevitable, then that’s never the ideal situation. I’ve seen schools that, following one catastrophic event, are forced to terminate their football program; they might not be able to get insurance. I’ve seen certain programs that are so small they can’t even afford insurance anymore (before a major casualty); imagine a small neighborhood league that suffers a catastrophic event.”

No interview requests were made of active insurance personnel for this analysis, but current events in American football signal carriers are increasingly reluctant to underwrite damages for the environment.

Insurers are denying responsibility for liability in football lawsuits, disputing paying costly settlements and awards, and denying medical coverage for injuries from minor to catastrophic, whether suffered by child player or adult.

Insurers are denying liability coverage for two notable entities in the sport, Penn State University and Riddell Sports Inc., and will defend the decision in court.

Lawsuits are hitting PSU for alleged molester football coach Jerry Sandusky while Riddell faces complaints by players alleging inadequate helmet protection against brain trauma.

In turn, both PSU and Riddell have filed suit against insurers for denial of coverage in legal defense, according to The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and journalist Irvin Muchnick of ConcussionInc.net.

In addition, catastrophic injury is flashpoint for coverage controversy, with football survivors facing immense financial toll. These victims of football’s worst outcomes often lack or are denied coverage at outset, acute phase of injury.

Coverage also can end for survivors requiring lifetime care, in relative few years. Recently in Illinois, football quadriplegic Rasul “Rocky” Clark of Illinois, 27, died following cancellation of private insurance providing optimum care. Clark, an inspiring, determined young man through his paralysis, lived 11 years after suffering a broken neck during a high-school game.

Some carriers acted similarly in the 1980s, dropping football clients for liability and medical premiums over documented revelations of epidemic injury and steroid abuse in the sport, as chronicled in historical sections of my 2009 book, Spiral of Denial.

In conclusion, juvenile football is unmanageable and becoming indefensible in the litigious, contemporary United States.

When Magliocca and I conversed in December 2010, he discussed convergence of events that could spell doom legally, morally, thereof, for tackle football involving kids.

Magliocca envisioned a storm of negative research findings and player tragedies, including suicides, compounded by failures in prevention measures such as concussion testing, rule changes and “proper contact,” and, finally, he saw parental disillusionment.

Today Magliocca’s football scenario is materializing, save the collision death of a superstar player on live TV, and stay tuned for that grisly precedent in the incurable carnage of tackle football.

So the tumblers click into place for dramatic remake or complete extinguishing of the sport considered American bedrock not long ago, during football’s reign of blind devotion by society, forever lost.

“The industry that is contact sports in North America is not going away any time soon. But it is in trouble,” observed Arthur Caplan, bioethics professor and speaker at the University of Pennsylvania, commenting recently for MSNBC.com.

“If the NHL and NFL cannot make their games safer, those who insist on the big hits will find fewer pros available to play because more parents will chose safety over risk. As evidence grows about the toll concussions take on the pros, the chance that a parent will let a child take those risks gets smaller every day.”

Matt Chaney is a writer, editor, teacher and restaurant worker residing in Missouri, USA. Email him at mattchaney@fourwallspublishing.com. For more information, visit the homepage at www.fourwallspublishing.com.

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Minimally 2 Player Deaths Overlooked, Likely More of 2011

2010 Fatality Apparently Misidentified as 2011 Football Case

National 'Research' Continues in Error for Grid Casualties 

By Matt Chaney

ChaneysBlog.com

Posted Wednesday, February 22, 2012; updated February 22, 2012

The official sounding, widely quoted Annual Survey of Football Injury Research only officially gets worse.

The 2011 report on fatalities in American football, freshly posted on the University of North Carolina website, is erroneous like its 2010 predecessor but in startling fashion.

The new report, co-authored by Frederick Mueller and Bob Colgate for the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research Center (NCCSIR), at UNC-Chapel Hill, is missing a minimum of two football fatalities during 2011, teen players Alec Mounkes and Jerson Tizol.

The 2010 NCCSIR report, posted a year ago this month, also missed at least two football fatalities.

But the 2011 report appears to mistakenly include one of those cases missed for 2010!

Quadaar White, 15, suffered a catastrophic neck injury on Aug. 24, 2010, during football practice for a neighborhood youth team in Upper Darby, Pa.

Witnesses said that White, on defense, led with his head for tackling an opponent and was struck by a knee. White lay on the ground when paramedics arrived, paralyzed and not breathing, and he died a week later, reportedly in the early morning of Aug. 31, 2010.

Yet for the new “study” at the UNC site, supposedly 2011 football, White appears to be included among four “direct” fatality cases on page 15, briefs that do not include names and places. One brief states White’s case in almost exact detail:

A 15 year-old youth football player was injured while participating in a practice scrimmage on 8/24/2011. He died on 8/30/2011. He was playing defense making a tackle with his head in a down position. The top of his head hit the ball carrier’s knee causing a fractured cervical vertebra.

Last summer, this blogger reported the omission of White for the 2010 data, then I reported the miss of Ben Bundy, 20, a football player at Southwest Minnesota State University who died of brain aneurysm suffered in a team workout that February.

Mueller, a UNC professor of sports medicine with a PhD in education, and Colgate, assistant director of the National Federation of State High School Associations, were not contacted for comment prior to this post.

Mueller, director of the NCCSIR and lead author on football reports, has declined my interview requests and ignored my posts regarding his faulty data, for months.

Renowned NFL researcher Dr. Robert Cantu, of Boston, compiled medical data for the 2011 fatality report at North Carolina. The NCAA provides major funding for the NCCSIR.

Besides the apparent mix-up regarding White, the 2011 report commits two glaring omissions: Mounkes, 13, a middle-school player in Kansas dead of blood clots following a football injury; and Tizol, 15, a high-school player in Texas who died of brain bleeding from football, reportedly.

Further 2011 deaths of players are overlooked by the new UNC document, candidate cases for qualification as game-related, including:

*Marcellis Williamson, 23, former Ohio University noseguard training for the NFL draft, who died April 27 of a blood clot in his lung.

*Andy Collins, 27, free-agent pro quarterback of indoor football, who died on Aug. 1 in Florida, working out on a hotel treadmill. Preliminary autopsy indicated heart attack as the cause.

*Kishon Cooper, 8, a youth-league player in Florida who collapsed while training for football at home on Sept. 5; he died later at a hospital, possibly of heat complications.

*Aaron Harris, 18, prep offensive tackle in Alabama, was stricken with kidney problems during a week he practiced football and played a game for his school. He died of reported kidney failure on Nov. 1.

For more information, see my Feb. 8 post on ChaneysBlog, “26 Football Fatality Cases of America 2011.” Link to the new UNC report is http://www.unc.edu/depts/nccsi/2011FBAnnual.pdf.

The 2011 UNC report is correct for 15 deaths listed on pages 15-18, annotated cases that do not include names noted here: Ridge Barden, 16, who died of subdural hematoma; Kainen Boring, 17, brain injury; college player Derek Sheely, 22, severe head trauma; Tyquan Brantley, 14, complications of sickle cell; Latrell Dunbar, 16, acute cardiac arrest; Samuel Gitt, 17, cardiac arrest amid heat factor; Forest Jones, 16, heatstroke; Luke Killian, 16, heart ailment; Isaiah Laurencin, 17, heatstroke; Brian Rushing, 17, undetected heart condition; Don'terio Searcy, 16, heat complications; Ryan Smith, 16, blood clot in lung; Al Smith, Jr., 15, heatstroke; Montel Williams, 15, cardiac arrest with possible sickle cell complication; and Garrett Uekman, 19, college player who died of cardiomyopathy

Meanwhile, Mueller and Cantu have yet to address their fault-ridden reports of 2010 and 2009 on survivors of catastrophic injuries in American football.

My extensive Boolean searches of Google banks have located about 165 survivor cases during 2010 and 2009, casualties of catastrophic injury to brain, skull, spinal cord, vertebral column and/or heart.

My finds exceed by about 100 the survivor cases published by Mueller and Cantu for tackle football during those years. The researchers have declined comment and refused my offer to forward the casualty names they have missed.

The annual reports by Mueller, Cantu and Colgate are accepted without question by medical journals and the CDC, with data disseminated worldwide as valid epidemiology on catastrophic injury in American football.

Matt Chaney is a writer, editor, teacher and restaurant worker living in Missouri, USA. His 2001 graduate thesis study for an MA degree at the University of Central Missouri was qualitative media analysis of 466 football reports, historical print coverage of anabolic steroids and HGH in American football, largely based on electronic search among thousands of news texts from the 1970s through 1999. For more information, including contact numbers and his 2009 book, Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football, visit the homepage at www.fourwallspublishing.com. 

Only Trauma Care, Not ‘Safer’ Football, Foils Annual Massacre

Grave Injury, Costs Still Hit Hundreds of Families, Many Schools

Cantu and Mueller Refuse Redress for Faulty UNC Studies

By Matt Chaney

ChaneysBlog

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Rest uneasy, American parents, because tackle football remains barbaric like 1905.

Modern helmets and pads accomplish nothing for your players except heightening ferocity of their collisions, injury and pain.

No, President Teddy Roosevelt didn’t save football way back when. He didn’t alter ridiculous dangers and set the game on saner course, as goes the fairytale largely borne by officials and sport media.

And certainly nothing is changing today for better health of football players. New equipment and football-funded “research” do not create safe environment in the blood sport.

Officials and associate “experts” never have reformed football dangers, which they cannot believe possible. Their historic smokescreens begin with the folk hero “T.R.”

Roosevelt only preserved football against abolitionists a century ago, cloaking and sanitizing football’s barbaric nature for public perception and consumption.

The wily politician appointed a body of bureaucrats as overseers that became the NCAA, which tells us everything, while passing along his magic phrase: “safer football.”

And the sport carried on in rising popularity, cresting as entertainment monolith and predominant cultural force, endorsed by every vital institution—but now facing lawsuits by the dozens.

Because football remains utterly dangerous, amounting to simple mass carnage, and likely worse than ever, given case notes on 23 deaths of 1905 collected and posted by game historian and blogger Tom Benjey.

Juxtapose Benjey’s collection for comparison to 219 casualty cases for 2011—see annotated cases in my Feb. 12 post on ChaneysBlog—and the violence of football in notorious 1905 seems quaint, if not “safer.”

Setting all cases on equal response terms, the primitive medicine of 1905—or leaving state-of-art trauma care out of the equation—football today would kill hundreds annually or more, given both the publicized grave casualties and the assuredly large number undisclosed in public for numerous limitations on information (see my recent posts).

And while head injuries dominate current debate over football, blows to torso and legs are likewise lethal.

So-called “proper” techniques of hitting, allegedly to avoid head contact, resolve nothing by encouraging players to strike below necklines.

Body shots have always mutilated and killed players. In fact, internal injury led causes of death that Benjey accumulated for 1905 fatality cases, not brain or spinal trauma, among reports from period newspapers and magazines.

Deaths such as 1 player killed of kidney rupture and 1 of heart laceration from fractured ribs, suffered in football collisions that year.

In comparing 2011 football deaths, 26 case leads that I located online, no autopsy cited organ rupture and bleeding as causal agent.

I found, however, 50 football survivors of organ trauma in 2011, nasty injuries ranging from severe to catastrophic for lung, kidney, liver and spleen. Many victims are still recovering.

At least half required emergency surgery to control internal hemorrhaging, according to details available in Google banks, and apparently would’ve died a century ago for lack of effective medicine and care.

In another category, non-cerebral blood clots, the condition killed at least 1 football player in 1905 and at least 2 in 2011, all developing from leg injuries.

Last year at least 12 players survived non-cerebral blood clots originating of collision and owe their lives to modern medical response, including athletic trainers, paramedics and ER surgeons.

Many more football survivors of bodily catastrophe in 2011 would’ve faced stark odds or hopelessness for survival in 1905, including for heatstroke, cardiac arrest, heart attack, compartment syndrome, brain bleeding, neck fracture and deadly infection (antibiotics weren’t introduced until World War II).

In sum, among known grave casualties last year, more than 100 football players would’ve succumbed with a 1905 medical response, not only the 20 or so who died.

Obviously, annual healthcare expense of football casualties today is monumental for their families and society at-large, totaling billions of dollars.

All self-sustaining Americans pay to support gridiron carnage, particularly in our standard consumer pools of medical and liability coverage. The sport of tackle football holds no special designation for risk and casualty by insurance carriers, not yet.

And “catastrophic injury” insurance for athletics, carried by schools and colleges in coverage co-ops, does not pay off in every case, such as for family and school of a Georgia football player, age 16, who died in 2011 after a week hospitalized in ICU. Apparently, government Medicaid and local fundraising are paying toward final cost of the teen’s healthcare and funeral.

Meanwhile, media-privileged football “experts” are no help in the mushrooming mess, preferring to stay mute on any critical question.

These game-connected medical doctors and PhDs speak only to friendly reporters who parrot their flimsy “study” numbers and silly theories, supposedly reforming tackle football but serving to propagate dangerous, irresponsible mythology of a manageable environment.

Indeed, one father of an aspiring youth player recently spoke of “happy medium” football for his son. Countless parents buy the lie, believing their children can play this game without suffering dire consequence to themselves and friends.

It’s pathetic, an American travesty of spin and public delusion, and a multitude of silent, football-pandering doctors are foremost to blame.

Dr. Robert Cantu won’t speak straight, being football’s celebrated neurosurgeon and injury historian, as he promotes his pending book for guiding parents in the game.

Cantu and more renowned football “researchers” want to ignore my online review producing 219 severe casualties for 2011, especially my findings that confront their study claims and pressure their connections to funding or other political influence.

Since October, Dr. Robert Cantu and professor Frederick Mueller have declined comment on my online results that prove major faults in their annual “catastrophic injury” reports, published under auspices of the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research, University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

Cantu, based at Boston University, where his Sports Legacy Institute receives $1 million from the NFL, addresses his Carolina cohort as “Dr. Mueller,” a UNC professor in sports medicine and former football coach who holds but a PhD in education.

The NCAA primarily funds the UNC center and reports by Mueller and Cantu, with data presented as valid epidemiology and repeated at face value by medical journals and the CDC, not to mention witless journalists like me, formerly.

The Mueller-Cantu numbers are terribly flawed, beset by underreporting only recently exposed through electronic searches that document their misses, football case leads in news that triple and double their data for 2010 and 2009, or “total” numbers, as they stated, for catastrophic brain and spinal injuries.

My first clues to their underreporting began when I played prep and college football decades ago, close to death and catastrophic survivor casualties who weren’t recorded. These injuries affecting friends and acquaintances included two fatal of cardiac problems, apparently, an offensive tackle hit by blood clots following knee injury, and a ruptured spleen, removed within an hour at the local ER; the linebacker got blasted in a practice, on pass rush, halted in stride at midsection by jab punch of an offensive lineman.

In the 1982 season, I experienced bodily calamity by turning a knee inside-out on a pass rush, involving no contact in the moment but likely originating from previous collision in sandlot football. Every ligament class was destroyed or damaged, along with meniscus, and the deep peroneal nerve channel was yanked and shredded five inches, rendering my foot permanently “dropped” of peripheral nerve paralysis.

A few years later, as a journalist, I was disappointed to learn Mueller and Cantu only tracked paralysis cases resulting of insult to the spinal-cord nerve bundle.

I knew of several “drop foot” football players like myself, including NFL running back William Andrews and Nebraska quarterback Turner Gill, yet we weren’t included in “total” injury data.

Today, I find up to a half-dozen such football injuries in a given year, like 2010, and only among limited cases available through Google.

Beyond inexcusably narrow scope of injury categories by Mueller and Cantu, I came to realize, through my extensive electronic searching of football health topics beginning in the 1990s, that they apparently didn’t gather adequate numbers from the brain and spinal cases online.

The final days of 2010 and subsequent UNC report clinched my observation. Dealing directly with Cantu was an eye-opener.

First, as Cantu defended invalid “concussion testing” during a telephone interview with me, he outright scoffed at my mention of at least 11 known football deaths of the year, cases I had collected and already posted on my blog!

I immediately corrected the presumptuous, erroneous doctor, or scientist, by informing him I would forward the 11 cases soon as we hung up the phone, and I did, along with additional football deaths I subsequently located. No way would Cantu have found all those 2010 cases without me.

Next, astonishingly, Cantu or Mueller, or the former's press person, missed one file I forwarded, a 2010 football collision death I’d found, 15-year-old Quadaar White, youth player in Upper Darby, Pa.

In February 2011, UNC posted the erroneous Mueller-Cantu data for 2010 football on the university’s Website, and the researchers have since ignored my public and private communiqués regarding their sizable underreporting, beginning with omission of White and the February 2010 death of college player Ben Bundy.

The misses on 2010 survivors are atrocious, including cases of brain impairment and spinal paralysis I’ve found, wholly overlooked by Mueller and Cantu.

For 2010 and 2009 combined, I’ve located online about 165 survivor leads fitting catastrophic definition of Mueller and Cantu, or about 100 above the cases they’ve gathered, confirmed and published for UNC.

But they decline my offer to forward those names, probably because they’re presently occupied with the 2011 cases I’ve dropped in overwhelming quantity.

Their chances are slim for a February publication date this time, and Mueller and Cantu obviously have to postpone exam and revision of their erroneous data infecting “safer football” trend claims they’ve constructed since 1977.

My 100-plus survivor leads for 2011, currently in review by Mueller and Cantu, will finalize a record number for UNC reports, given the current high mark of 63 for 2008.

Meanwhile, the useless 2010 report remains posted on the university site, a year running, verifiably incorrect in every category of injury allegedly studied for football.

Mueller and Cantu issue a lofty, careless proclamation in the Introduction:

“The primary purpose of the research… is to make the game of football a safer sport.”

Right. The real-world actions of Mueller and Cantu just make football seem safer, serving the goal of people close to them, especially providers of funding.

Thus the hireling experts and football promoters can count mission accomplished, ever since wily old T.R.

Matt Chaney is a writer, editor, teacher and restaurant worker living in Missouri, USA. His 2001 graduate thesis study for an MA degree at the University of Central Missouri was qualitative media analysis of 466 football reports, historical print coverage of anabolic steroids and HGH in American football, largely based on electronic search among thousands of news texts from the 1970s through 1999. For more information, including contact numbers and his 2009 book, Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football, visit the homepage at www.fourwallspublishing.com.

Football Repeats Heat-Illness Disaster of Decade Before

About 20 Player Deaths Will Qualify as Game-Related

Death Statistics Appear Sound Despite Faulty Studies 

By Matt Chaney

ChaneysBlog.com

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Ten years ago last summer, in 2001, five American football players died within 12 scorching days of July and August, including Minnesota Vikings tackle Korey Stringer and Rashidi Wheeler, defensive back at Northwestern University.

Football officials vowed the calamity would never reoccur, swearing they finally recognized heat illness and its influence on further deadly conditions. They said an “awareness” sweeping football aimed to eliminate heatstroke, which was wholly preventable by expert consensus longstanding.

The promise was broken in subsequent years, naturally, like every alleged safety reform of incorrigible football, as heatstroke and related conditions continued to plague players.

But that forsaken pledge reflected eerily on football in 2011, with an 11-day stretch of extreme heat and outcomes for unfortunate players, their families, schools and communities.

From July 22 through Aug. 2, at least five prep football players mortally collapsed amid the game’s stubborn push through record heat in the country. A middle-aged football coach also died, of a heart ailment, after withering at a morning practice in Texas with temperature nearing 100 degrees.

The deadly 2011 timespan marked a dark anniversary for brutal football—while accentuating perpetual folly over health risks—occurring almost precisely 10 years after the heat slaughter of July-August 2001.

All told for football in the United States during 2011, dozens of people died in or around the sport, as usual for a given year, with about 20 player fatalities that are provably game-related, including 4 apparent collision deaths, likewise typical of recent decades.

This blog post is the first comprehensive collection of reported deaths surrounding American football in 2011, presenting 26 select cases from fatalities located through my Boolean searches of Google information banks.

The case narratives below contain available information, distilled primarily from news reports, on the deaths of 23 American football players, 1 coach, 1 referee and 1 cheerleader in 2011. None qualifies as medical study and each case requires expert follow-up for verification as game-related or not.

Beyond this list there are more reports of fatalities occurring close to football last year, such as 2 players in offseason training who died of cardiac problems while playing pickup basketball; 3 players dead of painkiller overdosing; player suicides that invited question of brain trauma’s involvement; and additional cases of coaches who died on the job.

But football fatalities merely introduce the large, costly scope of catastrophic or severe casualties every year in religious blood sport of the culture.

This weekend I will post an unprecedented number of casualty reports on American football in a given year, on ChaneysBlog.com: 220 annotated cases for 2011 culled from hundreds of game emergencies publicized in Google.

My pending report will contain fatalities but spotlight the survivors of football terrors, nearly 200 individuals who suffered severe injury or condition.

My categories of survivor conditions include brain bleeding (23 cases located of 2011), spinal paralysis (minimally 6 cases), vertebral fracture (about 60 cases), cardiac arrest, heatstroke, non-cerebral blood clots, organ rupture or damage (51 cases), “compartment syndrome” with amputation, facial fractures, peripheral nerve paralysis and staph infection of spinal column.

About 110 of the survivor cases—severe injuries of brain, skull, spinal cord, vertebral column and heart—are candidates for designation as catastrophic in the pending report for 2011 by the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research, University of North Carolina, which has yet to address its serious errors in data collecting and recording of the past.

The UNC researchers, led by Frederick Mueller, a PhD in education, and Dr. Robert Cantu, the Boston-based sport neurosurgeon, face major revision of faulty data for 2010 and 2009, their football underreporting documented by my Google retrievals of cases they missed, doubling to tripling numbers they’ve published.

For more information, see ChaneysBlog posts since October on catastrophic injury in American football during 2011, featuring scores of survivor cases and analysis of reporting limitations.

Mueller and Cantu have declined my interview requests and my offers to forward them more than 100 total survivor leads missed for their catastrophic-injury reports of 2010 and 2009.

The Mueller-Cantu reports are accepted at face value and repeated as authoritative epidemiology on American football, for decades running, by parties such as medical journals and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

At least the Mueller-Cantu fatality numbers appear fairly sound for two primary reasons regarding news media, their primary source of case leads:

News media learn of and report the vast majority of deaths in America, primarily through public records and human sources such as police.

And football death has been a news priority since American mass media exploded as the Golden Press, print news, the daily papers and periodic magazines following the Civil War.

Today, electronic search has increased prospects for gathering football deaths reported in news media, likely helping strengthen research on deaths in vast American football, although cases are still missed for studies.

Mueller and Cantu, for example, omitted at least 2 football fatalities from their 2010 report, cases that I nevertheless located in Google: a youth player killed in Pennsylvania by football collision and a college player in Minnesota, dead of a brain aneurysm suffered during winter conditioning.

My 26 select cases of football fatalities in 2011 follow here.

Some will not qualify as football-related under Mueller-Cantu definitions and classification, either for medically verifiable fact or because no linking evidence exists.

Online Reports of Deaths Surrounding American Football, 2011

Cases require medical follow-up for affirmation as football-related

By Matt Chaney, mattchaney@fourwallspublishing.com

April 27:  Marcellis Williamson, 23, a former college defensive lineman preparing for pro football, suffered fatal pulmonary thrombosis, a blood clot in lung. Williamson died while training as hopeful for the upcoming NFL draft and as CFL teams scheduled tryouts for the 6-1, 327-pound prospect. Williamson had excelled at nose tackle for Ohio University, where he graduated in recreation management and former football teammates remembered his commitment and personality. “Everything he did, he tried to be the best,” said linebacker Noah Keller. Cornerback Julian Posey was crestfallen during video comments but took solace in recalling his close friend Williamson, including for dance moves: “Watching Marcellis dance… (wasn’t) a rare occasion ’cause he loved to dance, but it was something special ’cause he could move just like any small person would,” Posey said. Williamson’s older brother Denayne Dixon, a linebacker in the Arena Football League, said he was coping with the tragedy. “It’s tough,” Dixon said. “We were real close… I’m not the same. I feel like a part of me went with him. I’m just trying to get through it. I’ll never get over it, it’s always going to hurt, but I’m just trying to do my best. … (Marcellis) was a big guy and that could be a little intimidating at first, but once he opened his mouth, you knew he was a real good guy. He never threw his weight around.” Sources: OhioBobcats.com, Rivals.Yahoo.com, Des Moines Register, AthensMidDay.com and Ohio University Post.

May 12:  Luke Killian, age 16, North Carolina, lineman for the Morganton Mountaineers, collapsed during warm-up for a conditioning session with teammates at a city park. Killian, an overweight youth, was pronounced dead at a local hospital, possibly of heat exhaustion, according to reports. Team coach and organizer Doug Deitz had not attended the unofficial workout, which he said was staged by the players. No athletic trainer was present. The Morganton Mountaineers compete in the non-profit Pioneer Football League, which is “founded on Christian principles with an emphasis on helping young men and women develop biblical character traits,” the team website states. “The league provides an opportunity for home-school and private-schooled students ages 12-18 to play regulation football or participate in cheerleading. These student-athletes would normally not have the opportunity to play football through the public school system or if their private school does not offer football as a choice of athletics.” Sources: Morganton News Herald, Athletic Business magazine, WSOC-TV and MorgantonMountaineers.teampages.com.

July 22:  Samuel Gitt, 17, Pennsylvania, lineman for Boiling Springs High School, collapsed in a dormitory at Albright College, where his team was attending a football camp, and later died at a hospital. Gitt, listed at 6-foot-3 and 325 pounds on a team roster, was stricken following an evening football practice in extreme heat. Gitt was housed in a dormitory with window units for air-conditioning and some were not operated properly, said Albright spokeswoman Barbara Marshall. Coroner Charles Sweitzer determined Gitt died of an enlarged heart, or “natural causes,” and heat may have contributed. Sources: Carlisle Sentinel and Reading Eagle.

July 27:  Isaiah Laurencin, 17, Florida, offensive guard for Miramar High School, collapsed and fell comatose during team conditioning drills on the evening of July 26. Laurencin, listed at 6-3 and 286 pounds, died the next morning at a local hospital. The autopsy report stated Laurencin died “of cardiac arrest during physical exertion due to multiple factors superimposed upon sickle cell trait and alpha thalassemia (a genetic blood disorder).” No single cause was cited, with “co-morbid natural factors” also including hypertension, bronchitis, obesity and temperature of 92 degrees when Laurencin was stricken about 5 p.m. Matt Eagan, sports columnist for Mansfield.Patch.com, took exception with the football deaths of Laurencin and Samuel Gitt in the South, within a summer week, for a post titled “Don’t Try to Beat the Heat”: “There is absolutely no way two-a-day conditioning practices for a high school sport should be sanctioned in July, especially when the heat index rises over 90,” Eagan commented. “Student-athletes, perhaps more so than other students, are raised to trust the adults in authority. … (We) need adults to behave like adults and stop sending our kids out to get in shape when it’s 95 degrees. So many things in life are out of our control. This is one that isn’t.” Other sources: South Florida Sun Sentinel, WSVN-TV and Miami Herald.

July 30:  Tyquan Brantley, 14, South Carolina, linebacker for Lamar High School, collapsed after a morning practice session in 100-degree. Brantley, somewhat overweight, died in a local hospital. The Darlington County Coroner’s Office concluded death occurred for complications of sickle cell trait, with various factors possible and exact cause unknown. In months following the tragedy, family and friends regularly visited a Facebook page dedicated to Brantley, a popular and beloved teen who had looked forward to high school. A young relative named Commiesha posted faithfully on Tyquan’s page, especially as the holidays approached and passed. A college student, Commiesha identified herself in tribute to Tyquan as “Your Big First Cousin.” The morning of Oct. 25, she wrote: “I was thinking about you. Just sitting here doing my work in my dorm then I look to my left (And there was your picture). All I could do is smile and think about the times we all had together. We miss and love you. Mesha.” She wrote on Dec. 23: “Words can’t explain how much you’re missed… Even though we all know you are in a better place, there are just some things that we cannot replace. Love and miss you Ty. -Your cousin Commiesha.” And in January 2012, having returned to college, Commiesha posted for Tyquan: “Just stopped by your page because you have been on my mind lately (A lot). We love you and miss you.” Sources: Florence Morning News, The Associated Press, www.facebook.com, Rivals.Yahoo.com and Legacy.com.

Aug. 1:  Andy Collins, 27, Florida, pro quarterback and linebacker, collapsed while running on a hotel treadmill and later died at a hospital. Preliminary autopsy determined heart attack to be the cause and arterial malformation might have contributed. Collins had played in the Arena Football League and the Indoor Football League but was a free agent at his death. Robust and handsome, Collins appeared in television commercials, and his wife, CBS Sports reporter Brooke Collins, said her husband was “the healthiest person I knew.” Andy Collins reportedly considered the Catholic priesthood before meeting the former Brooke Olzendam in California; both were natives of Washington, where he played IFL football for the Tri-Cities Fever in 2010. “This is tragic,” said Teri Carr, Fever co-owner. “You think about these young men and they could be your kids.” Kevin Anderson, athletic trainer, said, “It’s kind of cliché when something like this happens to say he was a great guy. Andy was actually one of the great guys you could know.” Collins was “an incredible human being,” friend Josh Wallwork posted online. “It’s crazy how you see bad things happen to good people.” Sources: Tri-City Herald, Stockton Record, Yakima Herald Republic and Spokane Spokesman-Review.

Aug. 1:  Wade McLain, 55, Texas, assistant football coach for Prestonwood Christian Academy, was stricken at a morning practice session in extreme heat, as temperatures would climb to 107 degrees that afternoon. McLain died at a local hospital, and a witness to the incident, Jack Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church, recalled in a prepared statement that the team “had been stopping regularly for water and air-conditioning breaks, and during one break (McLain) became ill and collapsed.” The Collin County medical examiner ruled McLain died of heart problems “associated with heat exposure,” according to KDAF-TV.

Aug. 2:  Don’terio J. “D.J.” Searcy, 16, Georgia, defensive lineman for Fitzgerald High School, was found unresponsive in a cabin at team football camp in rural northern Florida, about 90 minutes after a morning practice in extreme heat gripping the Southeast. Searcy, 6-1 and 330 pounds, was pronounced dead at a hospital distant from his Georgia home. The player’s parents and WTEV reporter Ashley Coleman investigated, hearing from Searcy’s teammates that he collapsed twice at Florida Bible Camp, located 135 miles from Fitzgerald and site of four days of summer drills for the public school team. Players said Don’terio was initially found unconscious in a bathroom the night before his death, a Monday, by two assistant coaches following a team “devotional,” but no emergency call was made. The parents, Carlton and Michelle Searcy, weren’t notified of such an incident: “My question to the coaches is why didn’t you call 911 on (that) night and notify me when (Don’terio) first went down unconscious and unresponsive,” Michelle said. Fitzgerald High football coaches referred questions to district superintendent Nancy Whidden, who said coaches whom she queried were unaware of a bathroom collapse. Players also said that Don’terio had struggled in the heat for the camp practices in full pads, including suffering vomiting and headaches and lying down, but coaches did not sideline him. “It was intense,” said player Deion Bivens. “It was real hot and we were running and they were just pushing us real hard.” The Searcy family requested an investigation by Georgia school officials, but nothing had transpired by November, when a coroner’s report in Florida stated Don’terio died of a heart condition exacerbated by hypertension. Heat was not cited as factor. Whidden, the superintendent, issued a statement after the autopsy: “(A)ll indications were that D.J. was physically able to participate in football,” Whidden wrote. “Unfortunately, this long-standing heart condition caused his death. According to the information we have received, there was nothing our coaches or other staff members did or did not do that in any way contributed to this tragedy.” However, U.S. Army Capt. Carlton Searcy was not satisfied, and he contacted the medical examiner in Jacksonville regarding his son’s death; according to Capt. Searcy, the coroner said he was not fully apprised of circumstances like the teen’s alleged first collapse and the team’s practice conditions in oppressive heat. The parents then consulted an unidentified Army medical expert, according to a statement released by their attorney that stated: “After reviewing D.J.’s medical records, autopsy report, and considering the circumstances surrounding D.J.’s death, the medical expert formed the initial opinion that D.J. died from a heat-related event and that his tragic death was preventable.” Inquiries continued. Sources: WTEV-TV, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and WJXT-TV.

Aug. 2:  Forest Jones, 16, Georgia, offensive center for Locust Grove High School, collapsed, comatose, as a voluntary conditioning session concluded at the school on July 25. “After practice, he got a drink of water and dumped it over his head and started walking up a grassy hill, and when he did he fell backwards and hit his head. Then he stood back up for a second and passed back out,” said Glenn Jones, the player’s father. Doctors said heat may have contributed, and Jones never regained consciousness, succumbing on his eighth day hospitalized, brain-dead with complete organ failure. Family members said Jones, at 5-8, 240 pounds, had driven himself too hard in the heat, and his death occurred only a few hours after that of another Georgia prep player, Don’terio Searcy. The same-day tragedies in Georgia were America football’s 5^th and 6^th field fatalities within 11 days of withering heat—repeating closely the sport’s calamitous 8-day stretch of 10 years before, July-August 2001, when 5 players died such as Korey Stringer, mammoth tackle for the Minnesota Vikings. Now public discussion reignited nationally, and at Locust Grove, Georgia, one of the 2011 death locales, Gina Hughes was among citizens groping for answers. The deceased Forest Jones had been a teammate of her son, and Hughes noted the players drilled outside on hotter days locally than July 25, when Jones collapsed. “I’m a football mom, I believe in those boys getting out there and working their butts off,” Hughes said, “but everyone has to stop and think.” News writer Paul Newberry lambasted football for outside activities in summer and called for delaying the sport’s start on the calendar to offset heat stress on players, coaches and others. “Enough’s enough,” Newberry declared. “There’s just no need to be practicing football in 100-degree temperatures.” Meanwhile, the Jones family did not carry medical coverage or life insurance for Forest, nor had money for a funeral; local fundraising efforts helped defray mounting expenses. Sources: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, WSB-TV and WXIA-TV.

Aug. 9:  Montel Williams, 15, Arkansas, defensive end for Gurdon High School, collapsed while running sprints about 8:30 at night practice, as local temperature registered about 90 degrees. Williams, conscious when he went down, was later pronounced dead at a hospital. Findings of a state preliminary autopsy “indicated” a pre-existing heart condition was involved, not the excessive heat, but Williams’ parents were skeptical. “I still think they were practicing too hard,” said Sandra Walker, the boy’s mother. Walker said she was not aware of pre-existing health conditions for Montel, an honors student who was solidly built and athletic, and she regretted having allowed him to play football. Montel’s father, Charles Williams, questioned the autopsy report but said: “I have no medical experience, so I don’t know.” Sources: KLRT-TV, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and The Associated Press.

Aug. 28:  Derek Sheely, 22, Maryland, fullback for Frostburg State University, suffered brain trauma on Aug. 22, apparently amid collisions at a practice session. “They were preparing for the next round of drills, and it was then that Derek started to mention to the coaches that he wasn’t feeling well,” said Kenneth Sheely, the player’s father. Derek collapsed as athletic trainers escorted him from the field. The comatose athlete was air-lifted to a regional hospital then a Baltimore trauma center by Maryland State Police, for immediate surgery. Sheely died on his sixth day hospitalized, and his father said pathology results revealed the cause as severe brain injury resulting of head impact. Sheely was apparently the year’s first publicized collision death in football, and his father hoped the American institution took heed—the sport itself and advocates, not merely the Frostburg University community. “I’m not a medical expert. I’m not a football expert.” Kenneth Sheely said hours after his son’s death. “But I would hope that any time, in any sport, whether it be during a game or during practice, that if an athlete passes away from something that wasn’t of natural causes, that was clearly seemed to be induced by the activity, that the NCAA or somebody should try and look into that and see what lessons could be learned. I don’t know if it’s education, equipment, training, a combination of everything—but it seems like there has to be some subtle thing that could be learned that might help protect somebody else.” On the Frostburg campus, student videographer Madison Martin reported Sheely was “known for his determined demeanor and coy sense of humor.” Several teachers remembered him as a top student majoring in history and political science. A visibly subdued Tim Magrath, professor of political science, said of Sheely: “It’s hard for us to understand someone so strong and so capable is gone. He seemed such an unstoppable force. He’s someone I thought would never slow down.” Football quarterback Josh Volpe remembered Sheely, a good friend, as “always in pursuit of excellence,” never missing a practice, workout nor class assignment. Volpe recalled on camera that his first touchdown pass in college, in his first game, went to Sheely on a route out of the backfield. Excited for both of them, Sheely celebrated: “He scored the touchdown then he spiked (the ball) and he got a flag, got kicked out of the game,” Volpe said, smiling. Martin reported that Sheely was scheduled to graduate with honors in May 2012. “Sheely had intentions of serving our country after graduation,” she said. Sources: Prince George Gazette, WTTG-TV, New York Times, Madison Martin on Vimeo.com, and Cumberland Times-News.

Sept. 1:  Al Smith Jr., 15, Texas, lineman for Eisenhower High School, became ill then fainted during a practice session on Aug. 30. Smith regained consciousness briefly, but his condition worsened: “(Doctors) were saying his system was shutting down a lot,” Al Smith Sr. later recounted. The teen died after two days hospitalized, and no cause was known immediately. “He was just a good kid, that’s all I can say. A good kid. Whatever  happened, I’m lost for words,” said his father. “He wanted to play professional ball, and he always wanted to be a real estate broker.” At Eisenhower High, schoolmates remembered Al Smith Jr. as a kid in good physical condition. “He was real healthy,” said sophomore classmate Tralynn Robinson. “This don’t make no sense,” said sophomore Antanisha Richardson. “I don’t know. It’s sad.” National discussion continued over football fatalities occurring from July until autumn. “For the sixth time this summer, a high school football player has collapsed and died after practicing in scorching heat,” Joel Siegel reported, also noting the death of coach Wade McLain. “The dangers of student-athletes training in extreme heat creates tragedies every year.” A Dallas newspaper’s inquiry into prep football’s practice procedures in summer drew a response from Texas school athletics officials, of the University Interscholastic League. A UIL medical panel wanted changes on time and frequency for “two-a-day” practices, and it recommended an extra hour of recovery between same-day sessions. However, no doctor mentioned revising start date for preseason drills. Meanwhile, final autopsy results were not publicized in Google news banks by year’s end. Sources: KRIV-TV, ABC News, Dallas Morning News.

Sept. 5:  Kishon Cooper, 8, Florida, a youth-league wide receiver and defensive back, collapsed outside his home during activity with his father on Labor Day, as they ran and tossed a football. Cooper was later pronounced dead at a hospital. His father, Kerash Cooper, recalled the incident for blogger Eric Ikpe: “I had water in one hand with Kool-Aid in my other hand, and (Kishon) had one more lap to go, and he said, ‘I don’t feel good.’ ” Ikpe reported that heat complications caused the death. Kishon apparently took up football largely with peers, as a strong, athletic youth player for the Washington Park Buccaneers program in Hollywood, Fla. “His desire for the game was so strong that he would come home and run drills around the house,” Ikpe reported. Kerash, a musician, would be drawn outside, leaving the home studio to indulge football with his son. “It got to the point where I would start watching football just because of Kishon,” the father said. “I was proud of him, and what he was doing on the field.” Two days before he died, Kishon scored a touchdown for Washington Park. “It was a good touchdown. It was a good game,” said Matayo Gray, a 13-year-old cousin. Sources: GenNexxt.WordPress.com, Miami Herald and South Florida Sun Sentinel.

Sept. 9:  Frederick Latrell Dunbar Jr., 16, Mississippi, fullback for D’Iberville High School, collapsed while blocking on a play during a game, suffering cardiac arrest. The incident occurred about 9 p.m., and trainers and medics attended to Dunbar for 15 minutes, employing an automated external defibrillator, or AED. An ambulance transported the teen to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. “Everything was done on the field to (try saving) him,” said Arlton Hudson, coach of Gautier High School, which hosted the game. “The trainers worked on him when they realized he was not breathing. CPR was administered to him. I know they ‘defibbed’ him three or four times. They did everything they could do… and it just didn’t work.” A coroner was unsure what triggered the cardiac arrest while finding that heart abnormalities may have contributed. Dunbar was solidly built at 5-7, 185 pounds, and video of his last football play did not confirm whether an impact caused his heart to stop beating. D’Iberville coach Buddy Singleton said Dunbar was struck near a shoulder, from the side. “You could see him kind of stumble and he fell. I don’t think he ever regained consciousness after that,” Singleton said. Meanwhile, friends and family remembered Dunbar, who had gone by his middle name, for fine qualities founded in his unwavering positive attitude. “He was such a good dude, such a happy dude,” said Orin Cole, friend and teammate. “Cherish everything you have, because you never know when you are going to lose it.” Singleton, with more than 30 years coaching experience, said: “He was a great kid, real clean-cut, a good student. He was one of those guys you love to have on the team. … It was real tough (at the tragic game). I’ve been in this business a long time, and you don’t get prepared for something like this. I’d never lost a player like this, and I just thanked the Lord it hadn’t happened before now.” Sources: MSGulf.com, Mississippi Press, WLOX-TV and Biloxi Sun Herald.

Sept. 10:  Brian Rushing, 17, Virginia, defensive tackle for Southhampton High School, died in his sleep during the overnight following a football game. A preliminary autopsy found Rushing died of stress linked to an undiagnosed heart condition and football collision was not a factor, according to Rev. Charles Worth, spokesman for the Rushing family. The player, somewhat overweight, “suffered no life-threatening injuries from football,” Worth said. “Any exertion would have brought on this condition.” Worth, pastor of the True Word Christian Church that Rushing attended, remembered the young man as upbeat and humorous: “He was a good kid. I can’t say enough platitudes about him.” Former schoolmates posted tributes online. “You will be missed Brian,” wrote Harvey Holt. “You could never be forgotten,” Amber Jefferson wrote, adding, “I shed one last tear for you as I read through that beautiful but goofy poem you wrote me. I miss you. And you will always be in my heart.” Sources: Franklin Tidewater News, Recruit757.com and www.facebook.com.

Sept. 16:  Jerry Green, 66, Tennessee, referee of football and basketball, complained about feeling sick during halftime of a football game he was officiating at Signal Mountain High School. Green went to a bathroom where he was discovered later, collapsed of a brain aneurysm, and he died that night at a hospital. Green, a realty specialist who was diabetic and overweight, had officiated school sports for 35 years in western Tennessee. He was known as a rules stickler who insisted players were fully padded, including hip and butt pads, David Whitley reported. “He was known to be very stern on the field,” said Billy Fairbanks, officiating crewmate and friend of Green. “That’s just how he was.” Sources: WRCB-TV, AOL.SporttingNews.com and Chattanoogan.com.

Sept. 18:  Kainen Boring, 17, Tennessee, kicker/linebacker for Bledsoe County High School, suffered head trauma of a helmet-to-helmet collision during a practice session, while making a “perfect form tackle,” said a friend. Boring rose to his feet, walked to a huddle and said, “Something ain’t right.” The 6-foot, 195-pound teen collapsed, remaining conscious long enough to speak with a coach, then fell into seizure. Boring was airlifted to a hospital for emergency brain surgery. His mother, Paula Boring, later said a constricted-arteries tangle found at base of Kainen’s skull apparently contributed to the injury—“venous malformation” or AVM—which she described as “like a birthmark, a cluster of blood vessels that ruptured… during practice.” In hospital Kainen would not regain consciousness, sustained on ventilator with nary vital signs until the removal of life support, and his organs were donated to transplant patients. Weeks afterward, his father discussed the tragedy with news reporter Stephen Hargis: “The first thing I want to make clear is that football didn’t kill Kainen,” said Robby Boring. “We never knew he had AVM until after his accident, but it could have happened by him doing just about anything. Kainen loved football. He loved being part of that team, and this wasn’t anybody’s fault. We don’t even question God as to why this happened. It’s not for us to understand right now.” Nevertheless, the death qualified as the year’s second known collision fatality in American football, according to definition of the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research (NCCSIR), University of North Carolina. Kainen Boring was a dedicated athlete, faithfully attending football practice and other workouts; the day he was injured, Kainen rose early before school, leaving home at dawn to lift weights with an uncle. “That was the last time we spoke to each other, and I wish now I had held onto him longer,” Paula Boring said. The mother told Hargis she took comfort knowing Kainen’s organs lived on through transplants, like for the young woman in Georgia who received his heart. “I want to meet her so badly,” Paula said. “I want to put my hand on her chest and feel Kainen’s heart beat one more time.” Sources: Chattanooga Times Free Press, WRCB-TV, WTVC-TV, Chattanoogan.com and New York Times.

Sept. 22:  Jurelle Davis, 15, California, defensive back for Cosumnes Oaks High School, suffered a severe asthma attack followed by cardiac arrest at his home on Monday, Sept. 19, according to school officials. Davis died that Thursday in a hospital, and football activity was not reported to have contributed. His football coaches said Davis had chronic health conditions, including Crohn’s disease, but the teen was determined to participate and received medical clearance. Davis carried an inhaler everywhere and was remembered as quiet, respectful and intelligent. “He was an undersized guy who had health issues his whole life,” said coach Ryan Gomes. “But he loved the game so much, he never wanted to give it up. I talked to his mom and dad, and they said the one thing he absolutely loved was being out on the football field with his brothers and teammates. He was absolutely aggressive on the field. He played hard and let it all out on the field.” Davis was “one of the hardest hitters we had,” said Vinny Herrera, friend and teammate, “and he pushed himself harder than anyone else. He’s an inspiration to me. … He was a quiet person but funny.” Sources: ElkGrove.Patch.com, Elk Grove Citizen,  KOVR-TV and KXTV-TV.

Sept. 30:  Angela Gettis, 16, California, cheerleader for George Washington Preparatory High School, collapsed amidst a leg-kick routine during a school football game, suffering cardiac arrest. The incident occurred about 9 p.m., as Washington High tied the game score on a touchdown, and bystanders performed CPR on Gettis until emergency personnel arrived, reviving her only briefly. Gettis was pronounced dead around midnight at a hospital, and family members said she formerly had been diagnosed with an enlarged heart, which may have contributed. “It is a catastrophic loss for the school and community,” said John Deasy, superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Todd Ullah, principal at Gettis’ school, said: “Washington High, like every other high school, has its share of unfortunate incidents regarding youth… but you can never really prepare. It’s devastating, it’s tragic.” Friends described Gettis as popular, cheerful and studious, aspiring to major in forensic science at college. “We thought she’d do something special,” said friend Chizo Iberosi. Sources: The Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, KABC-TV and NBCLosAngeles.com.

Oct. 1:  Nicholas Gulow, 15, Georgia, center for Rome High School, was stricken at home then pronounced dead at a local hospital. Coroner Ernie Studard said he believed Gulow died of natural causes. Gulow, an overweight youth, apparently played a junior-varsity football game on Sept. 29, but the sport was not reported to have contributed to his death. “He was a respectful kid and he loved Rome High football,” said coach Franco Perkins. Gulow was a “humble and spirited” player, wrote student reporter Chelsea Crumley, and senior football player Cameron Richardson referred to him as “my brother.” The team dedicated a victory to Gulow. “I played my hardest just for him,” Richardson said. Senior player Joe Claytor said, “The whole team was not thinking about losing or winning, but rather to play every play like Gulow would have, 110 percent.” Besides football and track at school, Gulow participated in Junior ROTC, FCA and yearbook. Sources: Rome News-Tribune, Rome High Harbinger and Talley’s Parkview Chapel Funeral Home.

Oct. 12:  Ryan Smith, 16, Oklahoma, defensive lineman for Edmond North High School, suffered bone fractures in his right leg, of the tibia and fibula, when struck from behind during a practice session on Oct. 11. Smith, 6-3, 220 pounds, was treated at a hospital and released, with upcoming surgery scheduled for the leg injuries, but at home in the overnight his condition deteriorated. Lethargic, unable to rise from bed the next morning, Smith was taken to a different hospital and admitted to critical care; he died that night and blood clots possibly contributed, resulting from the leg fractures, said one expert. In January 2012, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma medical examiner’s official said Smith died of an abnormal condition or “sequela” originating of the leg injuries, pending a final autopsy report. “Unbelievable,” said Michael Lively, the teen’s uncle. “It’s hard to believe something like that would happen. … It’s just something you can’t understand.” Smith had attended two high schools in the Edmond area, and students at each remembered him as fun and engaging, a teen enjoying football and wrestling, and dreaming of playing in the NFL. Taevyon Warren was a sophomore classmate and teammate of Smith; each had transferred to Edmond North High for the fall, and they met in summer football practice. “With both of us being new, we just bonded,” Warren said. “Just his presence, just him being around, would make your day.” Warren and friends produced a rap rhyme in Smith’s honor. “We did a remix of a song, talking about how life is short and how you never expect to end. We just talked about Ryan and how good a person he was.” Sources: Oklahoma City Oklahoman, Edmond Sun, KFOR-TV, KWTV-TV, ABC News and MaxPreps.com.

Oct. 14:  Ridge Barden, 16, New York, defensive tackle for Phoenix High School, suffered brain trauma of contact during a game; he lay on his belly momentarily after a play, until coaches and trainers arrived at his side. Barden rolled over of his power and sat up, complaining of headache. “Coach, I think I got hit head-to-head,” he told head coach Jeff Charles. Then Barden tried to stand and collapsed, comatose; he died later at a hospital of a brain bleed resulting from impact to the head, according to police. A school athletics official in New York, John Rathbun, said: “I don’t think anyone could have ever, ever, ever seen this coming. Accidents do happen.” Dr. Jeffrey Kutcher, an authority on sport-related head trauma, said of Barden’s case: “Those kind of injuries are very rare, they’re catastrophic, they will happen and there’s no real way of preventing them through equipment. That’s going to happen any time there are impacts to the head of significant force.” The coaches reviewed game video of Barden but could not determine a causal instance between two possible collisions that were routine for football, Jorge Castillo reported. Charles told journalist Castillo he was so shaken by the tragedy with Barden that he considered leaving coaching. “I will never bad-mouth the sport of football,” Charles said. “I played it and I loved it and I’ve coached for years, but it does make me take a second look at it.” Jody Barden, father of the deceased athlete, said he blamed no one and did not want “negative spin” on football. “I don’t want to scare kids from playing the game,” the parent said. “Ridge loved playing the game, and I know he wouldn’t want it to get a bad name.” The death of Ridge Barden qualified as the third known collision fatality in American football of 2011, per criteria of the NCCSIR at UNC. “It’s still shocking,” said his mother, Jacqueline Barden. “He was with us and now he’s gone.” She did not want other players to feel guilty, and she said neither would her son. “He just would not want those people to think that it was their fault,” Jacqueline said. “Everything that Ridge did, he did with full gust. I’d say just take that attitude with you.” Sources: New York Times, Syracuse Post-Standard, WSYR-TV and ABC World News.

Oct. 27:  Alec Mounkes, 13, Kansas, offensive lineman/linebacker for Lyndon Middle School, sustained an ankle injury during a game on Oct. 6, initially diagnosed by doctors as a mere sprain. Mounkes, in good physical shape, was prescribed rest, to stay off the injured ankle, but his condition grew catastrophic with development of blood clots in the legs; he twice suffered cardiac arrest, said a school official. The boy was hospitalized for weeks, kept alive on a heart-and-lung machine and undergoing amputations on both legs. Mounkes died following lung surgery as a “great kid from a great family,” said Brian Spencer, superintendent of Lyndon Unified School District. “We are sorry for your loss,” stated an online post to the Mounkes family, from friends in their community, the Scott Jordan family, who added. “Alec was so special and loving like his family.” Sources: Topeka Capital-Journal, KansasFirstNews.com and Legacy.com.

Nov. 1:  Aaron “Tootie” Harris, 18, Alabama, a large offensive tackle for Walter Wellborn High School, died of reported kidney failure in a hospital. An overweight young man, Harris first had kidney problems at 4 years old, his mother said, and he was ill the week he played a football game on Thursday night then missed school the following day, experiencing headaches, back pain and lethargy. The family thought Aaron was negotiating usual ailments of football season. “I didn’t think nothing worse until they had to put him in intensive care (at a hospital on Saturday), when he was having shortness of breath,” said Sharon Moore, Aaron’s mother. Harris succumbed on his third day hospitalized, shocking football teammates and coaches on the small roster at Wellborn High, where “Tootie” was a senior-class leader beloved by students and staff. “We tried to keep it together, the coaches tried to keep it together, for the younger guys,” said senior Dalton Screws, Harris’ friend and teammate, “but if you knew Tootie, you would know why it was hard. It was losing one of the best people we knew.” Schoolmates covered Harris’ locker with tribute notes and a Facebook memorial page was loaded with posts from friends of all ages. “Very upsetting,” said football coach Jeff Smith. “We love him (Harris) so much. He was a Panther in the truest sense. He represented our school and our community the best way he could.” Sources: Anniston Star, WVTM-TV and MaxPreps.com.

Nov. 8:  Jerson Tizol, 15, Texas, nose tackle for West Brook High School, told family members of suffering a head injury in a freshman game on Oct. 26, and medical examination revealed both hemorrhaging of his brain and leukemia. “He was sent to M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, where he died,” Scott Lawrence reported. “The cause of death was bleeding and swelling of the brain.” The case may qualify as football collision death through follow-up by NCCSIR researchers. Tizol, undersized but intense for line action in football, was an honors student and newcomer to high school who attained sophomore rank for advanced credits earned while in middle school. At Tizol’s former school, Odom Academy, he was remembered as a good athlete, outstanding student and popular personality. “He made friends with everybody,” said Tillie Hickman, Odom principal. “He was a real leader for the children and had an incredible future.” Students and teachers at both schools raised thousands of dollars for the Tizol family, to defray medical and funeral expenses. Giovanni Romero led fundraising at Odom, as friend and former schoolmate of Tizol. “We cared about him,” Romero said. “And, you know, we all miss him. We love him, so we are just trying to help out the family. … You’re never going to know what happens to a person, so just treat them nicely, and get along with everybody.” Sources: KFDM-TV, Beaumont Enterprise and West Brook Times.

Nov. 20:  Garrett Uekman, 19, Arkansas, tight end for the University of Arkansas, became stricken on Sunday morning in Fayetteville, alone in his campus dormitory room. Uekman was found unresponsive at 11:15 a.m., about an hour after a roommate had seen him playing a videogame, and medical personnel arrived to find the athlete in cardiac arrest. Uekman, listed at 6-4, 254 pounds, was pronounced dead in a local hospital at 12:10 p.m., less than 24 hours after his last football action, playing in a Razorbacks game on Saturday in Little Rock. Coroner Roger Morris concluded that Uekman had a previously undetected heart condition, enlarged heart syndrome, which caused the death. Toxicology scans came back negative and Morris said manner of death was natural, with no sign of foul play. As No.3-ranked Arkansas prepared to face No.1 LSU on Nov. 25, Razorbacks coach Bobby Petrino issued a prepared statement, saying in part: “Garrett Uekman was a special member of our family, and we are all saddened by his passing. His loss is a terrible shock, and it makes you realize how precious life is.” The deceased athlete was a former prized recruit, an in-state product, and his parents, Danny and Michelle Uekman of Arkansas, issued a release through the university, stating: “Our son was living his dream of going to the U of A and playing football for the Razorbacks. He loved his school, his coaches, and his teammates and classmates, and was an influence and inspiration to so many people. We ask your love and prayers for Garrett, our family and his friends as we all cope with this heavy and painful loss.” Sources: The Associated Press and University of Arkansas. 

Matt Chaney is a writer, editor, teacher and restaurant worker living in Missouri, USA. His 2001 graduate thesis study for an MA degree at the University of Central Missouri was qualitative media analysis of 466 football reports, historical print coverage of anabolic steroids and HGH in American football, largely based on electronic search among thousands of news texts from the 1970s through 1999. For more information, including contact numbers and his 2009 book, Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football, visit the homepage at www.fourwallspublishing.com. 

Glaring Shortfall of Catastrophic Casualties Grows in Ongoing Review 

Spinal Cases Might Reach Hundreds Annually in American Football

Mueller and Cantu Gathered Mere 24 Catastrophic Cases for Year 2010 

News commentary by Matt Chaney

ChaneysBlog.com

Posted Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Football-funded researchers Frederick Mueller and Dr. Robert Cantu are ignoring interview requests concerning their under-reporting of catastrophic casualties in the American sport, injuries they classify as severe trauma involving brain, skull, vertebral column and/or spinal cord.

Or Mueller and Cantu aren’t talking to me, at least, perhaps understandably from their perspective, facing now their likely decades of bad data in cases shortfall, erroneous rates, and even baseless claims about trending “safer” football in the United States.

And all because my electronic searches through Google banks continue to produce cases and rates of catastrophic football injury that bury Mueller-Cantu numbers, which are widely accepted and republished at face value, including by medical journals and the CDC.

Mueller and Cantu work under auspices of the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research, University of North Carolina. The NCAA provides major funding.

Most importantly, America faces prospect the large majority of catastrophic football injuries go unreported in public, besides a minor portion emerging in news information, the stream fished heavily by Mueller and Cantu for cases they catch.

In the class of vertebral fractures involving no paralysis, for example, there’s probability at least hundreds such “walking” cases go unreported or missed every year in American football, based on sound estimates and etiology outside UNC, along with expert and witness opinion on injuries.

For survivors of all catastrophic categories, I’ve now collected almost a hundred candidate cases for 2011 and should find more. For 80 annotated cases and further discussion, see my Dec. 21 post.

My final qualified number for 2011 should far exceed any on record by Mueller and Cantu, whose 2008 tally of 63 cases is apparently their high mark.

For 2010, the current Mueller-Cantu report lists mere 24 survivors of catastrophic football injury nationwide, including 13 in “complete” recovery.

By stark contrast, my ongoing searches have located some 70 survivors for 2010 football, including over 20 in the past week, and I expect to hit more cases through Google.

About 50 cases I’ve gathered for 2010 remain omitted from the current UNC data.

I have at least 7 detected brain bleeds missed by Mueller and Cantu, of 2010, along with about 35 reported spinal fractures, some cases involving lasting paralysis.

Epidemiologist Charles Yesalis empathizes with Mueller and Cantu. Yesalis, ScD, a professor emeritus of health policy and administration at Penn State University, says challenges are immense for producing representative or accurate accounting on bodily catastrophes in vast American football, a high-risk population of upwards five million active participants.

“I think the key thing is this notion that they (Mueller and Cantu) are only picking up a small percent of cases,” Yesalis said in a phone interview. “And given my experience as an epidemiologist, that just doesn’t surprise me at all.”

“When you go farming for these data—and that’s a good a term as any—boy, it’s a lot of hit and miss.”

The Mueller-Cantu approach for gathering catastrophic cases is characterized in annual UNC reports, depicting a patchwork of football sources and other spotters, coaches, trainers, organizers, doctors and media like me, who forward candidate finds such as online news stories.

Granted, the Mueller-Cantu method picks up some information, but little else is certain beyond invalidity as epidemiological study, pending revisions.

For briefing on the research team, Mueller is director and a former football coach who’s compiled injury cases since the 1970s. “Dr. Mueller,” as Cantu addresses him, holds a PhD in education and works as a UNC professor of sport administration and science. Cantu, the well-known neural sport surgeon and researcher based in Boston, is medical director of the studies.

Yesalis has not performed scholarly critique of the Mueller-Cantu reports at UNC, but he says the inexact approach for gathering football’s worst injuries is nothing new in aspiring research.

“When you’re dealing with (data) as what might get reported in the news, versus trying to identify accurately what’s reported in emergency rooms, or hospital records, that’s problematic,” says Yesalis, co-author of acclaimed national surveys on steroid use by teenagers, among his scientific credits on sport doping and more epidemic disease.

“You’re trying to glue all this together, which is what it appears they’re doing (at UNC),” Yesalis says. “And they’re not the first people to do this on a variety of disease states, and emergency-room conditions, injuries and all that.”

Heavy limitations virtually quash the Mueller-Cantu approach at outset, for bearing solid data and rates, and the absolute numbers they typically present or imply are impossible. Their documents always contain a pair of obscured same sentences, disclaimers for inadequate data, but there’s no formal statement of study limitations. Scant literature review doesn’t mention pertinent research, including studies outside UNC on spinal injuries in general population that rank the sport of football among causes.

An informed schoolteacher would revise the Mueller-Cantu study at first draft, proposal stage, and apparently the UNC readers of graduate and doctoral theses never have the opportunity, given shoddy final data and presumptions that are published and disseminated worldwide, thanks to witless journal editors, government officials and news media.

Obstacles for Mueller and Cantu begin on likelihood that most catastrophic football cases remain unreported in any fashion, for factors such as injured players’ ignorance or resistance of seeking treatment. Cases are also withheld for patient privacy, doctor misdiagnoses and faulty medical coding.

“And if you rely on the fact that it might be in the news?” Yesalis poses. “Well, you know…”

Attritional effects on information don’t end with a case’s publicity by news reporters. Much daily print and broadcast content is culled out before reaching online posting, and cyber pages are routinely taken down in as soon as weeks. Subscription-only access blocks readers from many online news publications, particularly of rural areas.

Indeed, I cannot declare that my vigilant Google review, based on revolving Boolean word searches over hundreds of hours, produces a representative sampling of catastrophic football casualties for a given year. No known reference can affirm, and I find that even news of football fatalities slips by, a few cases, through cross-checking my own lists and those of Mueller-Cantu.

Meanwhile, Yesalis confirms medical databases are no catchall method, no resolution for limitations, and the human variable can skew electronic data in translation.

“If you’re using in any way of automated medical records, then (the question becomes): How is a condition diagnosed?” Yesalis says. “You may have a condition that should be included that is not… That would be a false-negative (case).”

“You could have a false-positive. You might count something as an athletic injury, having to do with (brain injury) or the like, that isn’t. Again, (problems) because of miscoding, or you have diagnosis that’s in gray area.”

“That can be affected by what the physician writes,” Yesalis adds. “Somebody might be (hospitalized) and it may not even be in the report that it had to do with football. What you’re picking up, in an electronic medical-records search, is the primary diagnosis and the cause. If it’s a trauma, it wouldn’t surprise me if often football, or the cause, is left off the chart.”

“Trying to harvest (epidemiological data), looking at medical records and diagnoses, it’s not a walk in the park to be sure.”

Football Spinal Cases Become Black Hole for Disclosure, Research

Based on my intuition of e-searching and -sifting countless thousands of news texts involving football health issues, conducted since graduate study in 1996—along with my experience in football as player, coach and journalist since 1976—I believe Google currently accesses the large majority in actual game cases of death, survivor brain bleeds requiring surgery, and spinal-cord traumas causing permanent paralysis. Those represent the sensational or “newsworthy” casualties of American football.

Bets are off for other categories, though, particularly football cases of severe injury to vertebral column without paralysis, like bone fracture. If anything, I’d wager that hundreds of these casualties are missed every year, if not more, given various insurmountable factors, correlating studies outside North Carolina, and the fact I’ve found 50 and counting for year 2011.

After the untold amount of football spinal injuries undisclosed, the cases involving treatment often require CT or MRI radiology and subjective judgment for rendering diagnosis—“What is one specialist’s picture of a cervical vein is the next one’s image of stress fracture,” a technician tells me—then the variable of prominence influences public revelation or silence.

Starting football players on school teams comprise the majority of publicized spinal cases through all levels, especially prep standouts at the offensive “skill” positions of quarterback, running back and receiver. The story of a juvenile backup player with mere vertebral fracture rarely reaches public airing, from youth levels encompassing about 98 percent of football population. Sportswriters and editors don’t qualify such non-paralysis cases as newsworthy, if even alerted.

Thus news quantity is no vetted indicator of spinal injury’s scope in athletics, but credible estimates suggest how big the problem might manifest for tackle football in the United States.

Data sets of the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center at University of Alabama-Birmingham suggest American football could annually produce 36 to 72 paralyzing injuries, defined for database criteria as “temporary or permanent sensory and/or motor deficit.”

I base that range on the UAB system’s intake of about 13 percent of the estimated 12,000 cervical-cord traumas each year in the United States, and football’s ranking as 15^th in etiology for 27,526 patients in the database, having caused 0.5 percent of the injuries to lead all sports.

By contrast, Mueller and Cantu list 8 total spinal-cord traumas for football 2010, along with 12 for 2009 and 17 for 2008.

For all vertebral fractures, an estimated 700,000 occur in the general population, with as many as two-thirds undiagnosed. The field is dominated by people with degenerative bone conditions, but football’s ranking in etiology of spinal-cord trauma signals it could produce thousands of cases with vertebral fracture.

In comparison, the Mueller-Cantu 2010 report lists 13 cases of vertebral fracture in football, cases ranging from quadriplegia to no paralysis and strong recovery.

Juvenile players comprise 9 of the cases, for an injury rate of about 1-in-500,000 athletes by UNC data, despite other literature indicating rate closer to 1-in-1,000.

Meanwhile, among NFL players in 2011, known catastrophic spinal casualties occurred at rate of about 1-in-200 players or less. And that accounts for only the cases in news media.

Sportswriters certainly miss severe neck and back injuries of the high-profile NFL, for communication blocks ranging from  no diagnosis to privacy. Unreported catastrophic spinal injury likely occurred in 2011 among NFL players, beyond at least 6 known candidate cases requiring operations and 1 of non-surgical neck immobilization lasting three months for the athlete.

Browns linebacker Scott Fujita, a 10-year NFL veteran, wonders of true epidemiological scope for his notorious work environment. “A lot of us (players) are walking around with so much damage to our necks, and our spines, and you never know what might turn up,” he said, speaking in a phone interview.

Much of the damage to NFL players is likely residual, dating back to college and prep football. Fujita had neck surgery as a college player at Cal, for his severe case of stenosis or narrowing of the spinal canal that crimped the nerve-bundle cord. Not only was surgery imperative for continuing his playing career, but for resuming normal lifestyle as well.

“I was getting (nerve) stingers pretty much every time I hit somebody “ in football, Fujita recalls. “Then I’d be typing a term paper and turn my head too fast, and give myself a stinger. I was starting to have significant (muscle) atrophy on my left side, over my trap and delts and down my arm. It was noticeable in pictures.”

For a year of football news online, I’ll find a few cases like the collegiate Fujita’s, severe spinal stenosis leading doctors to recommend corrective surgery. Some players take the option, others don’t.

Mueller-Cantu annuals list a single case in recent years, a “complete” recovery of 2009, but Fujita and I believe there are undisclosed severe cases. And symptoms of minor spinal stenosis affect a football multitude, as many as 50 percent of players, studies find.

Myself, nearing 52 years old and 28 removed from battering collisions in college football, I experience symptoms of neck stenosis, the shooting numbness, radiating pain and trademark interior “coldness” overtaking my C5 to C7 vertebrae range. The episodic inflammation strikes regularly, often weekly, especially while driving or at a computer, and I gobble ibuprofen for the discomfort, or agony.

“(Spinal) stenosis is extremely common,” Fujita says of pro players. “Most guys get a stinger here and there. I imagine once you get a few, then it becomes worse and worse, then it becomes chronic.”

At least 8 NFL players had neck surgeries in 2011, including the aforementioned 6 solid cases for catastrophic designation. Sometimes a surgery is driven by the player’s desire to continue his career, but I find most are necessary for stabilizing spinal damage that acutely threatens nerves and normal function.

“Throughout my playing career, college and pros, I occasionally hear about a guy with a broken neck that requires surgery,” Fujita says. “I’d say more often than not, if it is a pretty serious break or operation, I don’t seem to recall those guys coming back and playing. But that’s just me shooting from the hip.”

“Yeah, I would kind of put the neck and spine in same (regard) as head injury,” Fujita continues, focusing on the NFL. “There’s a lot of gray area involved, and no one knows exactly how to diagnose it, how to describe it, how to talk about it. They know it’s serious, they just almost don’t want to touch the issue.”

Fujita, 32, is an intelligent and thoughtful athlete, husband and father. He holds a master’s degree in education from UC-Berkeley and serves on the NFL players union executive committee.

But Fujita currently wears a cast on his right hand, after shattering bones of two knuckles and fingers while hitting ground in a game last month. Complicated surgery pieced together the bone fragments in Fujita’s fingers, hopefully, lashing everything back in place with steel screws, 22 tiny bolts. This season Fujita also spent two weeks on the Cleveland disabled list for diagnosed concussion. That’s his brutal job however lucrative, until further notice.

Fujita treks the jungle of pro football in America, long has, and he always runs. Physical threat and unspoken boundary are everywhere, like stiff resistance to report bodily damages of the NFL. The stillness stands pragmatically for every insider concerned, all parties, league, management, union, players, families, agents, with fortunes riding the line over health risk, outcome, and especially liability, who ends up paying.

“A lot of times when guys are having neck stingers, or even some back issues, in many cases the clubs won’t even want to take a good look at it, especially on the MRI,” Fujita says. “And I know a lot of times the player doesn’t want to take a good look, either, because you don’t want to know what’s going on.”

“Maybe that’s stupid and irresponsible, but I think that’s the reality that a lot guys are living with right now.”

So-called safer football is wholly unrealistic, meanwhile, a national joke that nevertheless occupies national dialogue for the game’s epic health crisis at hand, blowing up over brain-injury revelations and lawsuits compounding for all levels.

Thus the data of catastrophic injury enter play, and inadequate numbers serve to nurture a popular, resilient myth, the one how an individual player faces just “rare” chance for sustaining “freak” violent mishap resulting in death or permanent dysfunction.

Parents and novice players buy that falsehood by the millions. I did as a boy.

Actually, catastrophic football injury—which by definition must be expanded to include lethal categories such as heatstroke, blood clotting, organ destruction, artery rupture, staph infection and peripheral paralysis that comprise scores of survivor cases I’ve located for 2011—is quite predictable and possibly occurring daily on average, somewhere.

The American gridiron’s goriest, most risky stretches are the regular season from late summer into winter and “spring practice,” when many states allow full-contact drills and scrimmaging at schools, along with collegiate programs nationwide. Conditioning and weightlifting sessions of January and February also kill and severely wound players, particularly at colleges.

Yet some American opinion leaders say it isn’t really so, this picture of brutal football, not any longer. People like NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who promotes neo-fandom terms like “culture change” and “concussion awareness.”

Today, football advocates insist they’re seeing a safer brand of tackle football, and Mueller and Cantu join Goodell at campaign front, citing their decades of catastrophic-injury numbers as evidence.

Mueller and Cantu claim their data have been instrumental in a game trend since the 1970s, steering players away from head contact.

Ridiculous, retorts Fujita, the NFL linebacker who’s flabbergasted the foolishness is mentioned in straight face. “Absolutely not, if anything I would say there’s more head contact in football today.”

“There’s increased emphasis on trying to clean up the game,” Fujita acknowledges. “You know, coaching guys up in ‘proper technique’ and all these catch phrases, and paying lip-service to everything. So when it comes down to it, this remains a violent game.”

Pro players certainly grasp their risks, and the genetic violence of football for all ages. And helmet or head-to-head colliding is the rule rather than exception for modern football, particularly with skull-preserving helmet technology among forces that channel combatants into zero contact, every player, from “Tiny Mite” to NFL linebacker.

Fujita has to laugh when I ask whether he feels safer playing football these days, definitely a stupid question.

“Um, no, I don’t feel any safer,” he replies. “I think in some respects you see the game changing. Some ways. Like a guy (of the NFL) coming across the middle, catching a pass for a 15-yard dig, and the safety will pull off (for the cameras), whereas before, more likely, the safety would blow the guy up.”

“It’s just a brutal game, and I don’t think you can technique—using ‘technique’ as a verb here—you can’t technique the game into becoming safer. You can’t even (player) fine the game into becoming safer. And that’s just the reality.”

Human Toll, Medical Damages, ‘Public’ Football and Vital Statistics

Independent journalist Irvin Muchnick laughs, too, when I broach the theory of safer football, the central talking point of football advocates for their increasing problems over injury epidemic and monetary damages.

“Anyone with two eyes on a Sunday afternoon can see that’s not so,” he says, dismissing assertions a fundamental reduction is possible for football risk and casualty.

Muchnick, the author, alternative columnist and indie blogger with cunning for banging on sport-entertainment conglomerates, bristles at the idea of faulty research, funded by football, as a catalyst for safer sport over 34 years of publication.

“If Cantu and the North Carolina people are claiming some credit here, about what their data have wrought, that’s so patently a false claim,” says Muchnick, a leading voice of our growing faction against “public” football financed by government, schools and colleges and largely carried for damages by general insurance consumers of health and liability coverage.

Muchnick said, speaking with me by phone, that UNC’s glaring under-reporting of football injury makes news on two levels.

“One is the statistics themselves, knowledge is power, and the information is important,” he says. “For a sport system out of control, I don’t know exactly at what point the (germane) statistics move people, to take our master points seriously, but clearly it’s part of it.”

“Which brings us to the second point, the process,” Muchnick continues, “and the idea that these kind of data are being collected by people who aren’t doing the job right. Not so much that they’re doing it in bad faith, but that it’s not a priority and it’s supporting some agenda other than getting everything out there.”

Muchnick sees football advocates in stall tactic amid dread crisis, recalcitrant to accept looming reform of their blood sport, if not abolishment. He scoffs at supporters’ rhetoric overall but does detect a shift in public conscience, related to their talk.

“One good thing about ‘concussion awareness’ is that it is pointing the markers in only one direction,” Muchnick says. “Even if people are not buying into this football problem as speedily and as conscientiously as we would hope, there’s only one place this story is going. And it’s not going toward reduced deaths, reduced disability, reduced public-health costs for our country.”

“Even if the NFL threads the PR needle in all this stuff, and they do a pretty good damn job on that, it still doesn’t add up to answering for the feeder levels of this activity, amateurs in public high schools, colleges and so forth. The economic numbers just can’t sustain themselves.”

“Football,” Muchnick says, “still doesn’t get its arms around the fact that seven- and eight-figure lawsuits, and imbalanced budgets, are going to be inevitable as our public awareness increases.”

Finally, of the data mess at UNC on catastrophic football injuries, Muchnick wants real response from the researchers, besides their short email replies to me, thanking me for my "interest" and noting they're busy evaluating their data for 2011.

Right. Mueller and Cantu are presently bombarded by about 95 cases I’ve dropped on them, including over a dozen since my Dec. 21 post.

Mueller and Cantu also cannot yet address their second overdue task, revising their bad data and assumptions of 2010, while also gauging the infestation back through decades of their reports.

For 2010, I’m still awaiting Mueller’s green light for loading them with the 70-some survivor cases I’ve pulled from Google, surely to obliterate their paltry year data currently posted at www.unc.edu/depts/nccsi.

Muchnick is bored already, seeking open discussion on the matter, quickly.

“It’s very important for Cantu and Mueller to talk about why their methodology failed to catch these cases that you did catch, as a lone, independent, unfunded researcher and journalist,” he told me.

“I’m not qualified to say everything you’ve written is perfect, but I’ve seen enough of your work to know that it’s conscientious and it’s based on a coherent method. And it’s found things that are at odds with what the public’s being told, so we need to resolve those contradictions.”

Matt Chaney is a writer, editor, teacher and restaurant worker living in Missouri, USA. His 2001 graduate thesis for an MA degree at the University of Central Missouri is qualitative media analysis of 466 football reports, historical print coverage of anabolic steroids and HGH in American football, largely based on electronic search among thousands of news texts from the 1970s through 1999. Email him at mattchaney@fourwallspublishing.com. For more information, including about his 2009 book,Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football, visit the homepage at www.fourwallspublishing.com. 

2011 Survivor Cases Likely High Mark for Modern American Game

E-Search Also Finds Error in Catastrophic Data Reported Last Year

Prominent UNC Report Far Short on Grave Casualties of Football 2010

By Matt Chaney

Posted Wednesday, December 21, 2011

The rate of catastrophic injuries in American football could be a record in 2011, with more than 70 survivor cases of conditions such as brain hemorrhage and spinal fracture, according to an intensive electronic survey by this reporter.

See the complete annotated list of cases below, with juveniles comprising the large majority of victims.

The findings belie talk of “culture change” by football officials, their popular claim of “safer” football in America, and raise question whether catastrophic injuries of the inherently brutal sport are significantly under-reported in record-keeping of the present and past.

Last year the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research (NCCSI) logged only 24 survivor cases—barely half the 2010 cases still available online, including players with brain bleeds and spinal paralysis missed in the report.

Now stronger accounting is assured for 2011, standing on results of my daily searching of Google banks that's garnered a solid 70 survivor cases for verification as catastrophic football injuries, defined by the NCCSI as affecting the brain, skull, spinal cord and/or vertebral column.

My cases include the following:

*1 comatose preschooler, a 5-year-old “Tiny Mite” player hospitalized with brain trauma of full-contact football.

*23 head injuries such as brain hemorrhage and skull fracture, cases including surgery for 16 players suffering cerebral bleeding.

*41 spinal traumas, the vast majority fractures, including 17 cases requiring surgery and at least 5 involving continuing paralysis.

*1 case of MRSA infection of the spinal column apparently triggered by football contact.

*6 cases of cardiac arrest, including 5 players revived by portable defibrillator and CPR.

*1 case of heart attack.

In addition:

*7 reported brain and spinal casualties require expert consideration for catastrophic data, including the football-related trauma of a Tennessee schoolteacher hospitalized in an ICU, after she was struck in the head sitting along a sideline, by helmet of a diving player.

My basic approach is regular filtering of Google content, utilizing Boolean command terms such as football and hospital, football medical center, football brain, football head injury, football spine and football vertebra, along with substituting main adjectives like “player” for “football,” to recycle search on terms like player hospital, player brain and so forth.

Every 2011 incident I have found requires expert follow-up and verification as football catastrophic injury, but available data indicate about 90 percent are locks for the classification by the national center based at the University of North Carolina.

At the NCCSI, funded primarily by the NCAA, two of football’s associate experts have co-authored annual injury reports for a quarter-century: Frederick Mueller, who holds a PhD in education, is a professor of sport administration at the university and a former football coach, and Dr. Robert Cantu, of Boston, is the renowned sport neurosurgeon who leads NFL-funded research documenting permanent brain damage in deceased athletes, primarily football players.

Since the 1970s, Mueller and Cantu have been key figures in the modern movement for “safer” football in America, which promotes initiatives such as rule changes, injury awareness, helmet standards, “concussion testing” and anti-concussion law, along with “behavior modification” of players that teaches theoretical “proper contact,” collisions supposedly avoiding head impacts.

Roger Goodell, NFL commissioner and associate of Cantu, has taken up the safer football campaign since fall 2009, when a congressional committee lambasted him for the league’s deplorable record on brain trauma in active and retired players.

In recent years, the Mueller-Cantu research on catastrophic injuries is cited as evidence of a trend toward less risky football in America, especially for youths.

For 2008, the NCCSI logs 63 survivor cases, adding updates, which is the highest mark among UNC reports available online. The center’s same numbers drop to a current 44 for 2009 and the 24 last year.

These figures are recognized as authoritative epidemiology on American football’s worst casualties, the cases most lethal and costly, with many survivors requiring lifetime care.

This year’s alarming amount of brain-bleed injuries alone translates to tens of million dollars for healthcare in the present and future, perhaps a nine-figure cost for long-term inflation, according to an expert I consulted. And the estimate accounts for this year’s brain-injured players who recover functionally, as some already have.

Risk assessors, obviously, are among parties relying on catastrophic-injury data, as they in turn represent interests in healthcare and insurance, the co-op industries that essentially carry medical and liability damages for American football.

But information gathering and presentation have been problematic for the Mueller-Cantu team at North Carolina, beginning with reporting language that presents data in absolute terms rather than accompanied by qualifiers like at least 24 survivors for the football year and among available reports.

The UNC documents do contain disclaimers for inadequate data or gathering, but the notes are brief and buried with no prominence in methodology passages. There is no formal declaration of study limitations.

News media, meanwhile, parrot the annual UNC numbers as hard facts of American football, disseminating worldwide the misinformation and erroneous injury context.

In reality, no epidemiological method is proven for reliably assessing rates of catastrophic injury in American football, and the recognized Mueller-Cantu approach also lacks consistency of definitions and breadth in categories. The final UNC data on survivors ignore football-related injuries such as peripheral paralysis, heatstroke, blood clots, kidney rupture, staph infection and “compartmental syndrome.”

No collection approach is yet validated for producing a representative sampling or thorough accounting of grave injuries in football, with promising e-search like mine notwithstanding.

Indeed, multiple teams for annual comparison and pooling of data might become sound strategy, if any method could prove reliable. For example, I find cases missed by Mueller and Cantu and vice versa; they have sources in medicine and athletics for information I cannot get.

Regardless, the UNC research needs year-round, state-of-art collection for finding catastrophic injuries in football, particularly through electronic search. Far too many injuries are presently missed in Google alone, inexcusably.

Regarding 2010, for example, the Mueller-Cantu report online lists merely 14 spinal injuries, ranging from paralysis victims to cases of “complete recovery,” another dubious term.

Cross-checking those cases with mine, I find twice their number online and at least 30 catastrophic spinal injuries are now known to exist for 2010, thanks to a pair of cases reported by the UNC team, of a 12-year-old youth-league player with transient paralysis and a 13-year-old rendered quadriplegic of contact at a school football practice.

Overall, the Mueller-Cantu reports for 2010 omit some 15 spinal cases I have for American football, including 3 paralyzed school players who have largely recovered motor function and touch sensitivity through surgery, healing and rehabilitation.

Mueller and Cantu likewise underreport cases of brain hemorrhages in football 2010, logging 7 presently while missing at least 5 teen victims currently reported online. Also overlooked is the NFL “chain-gang” official struck by a speeding player along a sideline in New Orleans; the middle-aged man suffered a severe head injury and was hospitalized for weeks.

At least 2 apparent cardiac cases, survivors, are missed in the UNC report for last year: a 50-year-old Texas man who collapsed while playing flag football and a Hawaii teenager stricken during practice at school. Both were revived by bystanders who employed CPR and portable automated external defibrillators (AEDs).

Bottom line, the Mueller-Cantu report for 2010 presently omits at least 22 catastrophic-injury survivors—along with omitting known football fatalities such as a youth player killed of contact in Philadelphia, Quadaar White, and a college player in Minnesota, Ben Bundy, dead of brain aneurysm suffered during a team workout.

Tough critique of research by Mueller and Cantu aside, I commend them for assembling a foundation for catastrophic-injury information on modern American football.

Foremost, limitations dog any collection effort, including my review based in tapping the jet streams of Internet search mode.

The problems of locating information on bodily catastrophe in American football begin with the incalculable cases never reported publicly, by any medium, for reasons including privacy concern, medical misdiagnosis, and even victim ignorance of injury like “walking” spinal fracture, of which an untold number occurs.

Moreover, media of all types will not or cannot report every grave injury in the vast domain and populace of American football, encompassing about five million players among tens of thousand programs across 50 states.

For injury events made public or emerging in even scantest detail, attritional effects weigh further on the communication.

A significant portion of local print and broadcast news in America does not reach posting online, and then cyber flow is divided among content providers like subscription databases and Google, the monster search engine that nevertheless cannot access everything Internet. Finally, many online pages are removed after a period of posting.

This report continues with my annotated list of 2011 survivor cases in catastrophic injury of American football.

I am forwarding these cases to medical authorities and other parties with interest in the focus, such as risk assessors, for soliciting their review and comment. Dr. Cantu and Professor Mueller are on the list of recipients.

I urge other media to do the same, contact experts regarding the cases below, which are public information.

Look for updates on this blog and elsewhere.

73 Survivor Cases of Catastrophic Injury in American Football 2011

From Reports Retrieved in Google Search Through December 21

By Matt Chaney, mattchaney@fourwallspublishing.com

Note: List below does not include 17-20 football-related fatalities in 2011, retrieved from online thus far, such as 4 deaths of head injuries from contact, along with more than 50 player survivors of grave conditions such as blood clots, femoral artery rupture, heatstroke, internal organ rupture/laceration, staph infection or MRSA, and peripheral nerve damage/paralysis.

Online Report of Comatose Youth Player, Preschooler, American Football 2011

Sept. 29, circa: An unidentified“Tiny Mite” player, 5-years-old, Hawaii, reportedly fell comatose at a hospital following a head injury. The child was injured while participating in “Tiny-Mite” division of Oahu Pop Warner football, for ages 5, 6 and 7, according to KHON-TV. Oahu doctor Josh Green said, “Five might be a little young. I’m concerned about it."

Online Reports of Brain Hemorrhage and Surgery, American Football 2011

March 19:  Logan Weber, 21, Iowa, offensive guard for Coe College, experienced severe headaches while stretching for weightlifting. Weber was hospitalized within 24 hours for brain bleeding linked to “arteriovenous malformation,” or AVM, a congenital condition. Surgery was performed to insert a shunt and Weber was hospitalized for 20 days. He recovered, returned to college, but ceased playing football, serving instead as student coach for the Coe team. Source: Cedar Rapids Gazette.

May 18:  Josh Mercer, teenager, Louisiana, senior-to-be linebacker for Alexandria Senior High School, was injured while tackling a teammate in spring practice. Hospitalized for brain bleeding, Mercer was initially released after a few days but his condition worsened and he was readmitted to intensive care. Surgery was performed 10 days post-injury and Mercer began recovery, quickly completing physical therapy. He was released from hospital then completed a scheduled 12 weeks of speech therapy in half the time. Mercer could not play football this year but serves as a student coach for the school, according to TheTownTalk.com.

Aug. 5:  Brennan Barber, 17, South Carolina, defensive lineman for Mid-Carolina High School, was injured by a reported “routine” helmet hit during a scrimmage and collapsed minutes later. Surgery was performed for brain bleeding. Barber began walking three days later and was released from the hospital within a week. He is undergoing therapy and is expected to make strong recovery. Source: The State.

Sept. 2:  Tucker Montgomery, 17, Tennessee, receiver/linebacker for Tri-Cities Christian School, was injured in helmet-to-helmet contact while running the football during a 6-man game. Surgery was performed for brain bleeding. Montgomery remained comatose for more than a month. Still hospitalized on Oct. 25, Montgomery was conscious and responding to some commands, according to reporter Preston Ayres. Montgomery faced “a long road to recovery,” Ayres reported. Sources: WCYB-TV, TriCities.com, Johnson City Press.

Sept. 10:  Dominic Morris, 21, Nebraska, running back for Chadron State College, injured by reported “glancing” contact from an opponent’s facemask during a game. Surgery was performed on brain bleeding that had caused a blood clot. “Following the operation… Morris was alert and showed no signs of any ill effects from the injury,” states a CSC release. Morris was discharged from hospital on Sept. 12 for recovery at home in California. Sources: Chadron State College, Omaha World.

Sept. 16:  Robby Mounce, 17, Texas, running back/receiver and honors student at Community Christian School, suffered brain bleeding and collapsed during a 6-man game. Surgery was performed and Mounce began therapy while in critical care. Progress has been slow but steady and Mounce was recently able to return home for a period, including the Thanksgiving holidays. He wears an eye patch and has difficulty moving his right side, and on Dec. 7 the teen was admitted to a rehabilitation facility for daily therapies. “One of the things they will work on with Robby is stabilizing his walking and balance,” his mother Janet Mounce reports. Lengthy recovery remains. Sources: KDFW-TV, Mineral Wells Index, and Janet Mounce on CaringBridges.com.

Sept. 16:  Zeth Shouse, 17, Nevada, tight end/defensive end for Elko High School, suffered brain bleeding during a game and collapsed. Multiple surgeries were performed.  The honors student remained hospitalized on Oct. 21, when his father, Todd Shouse, reported that Zeth was able to swallow and had begun therapies. Sources: KENV-TV, Reno Gazette-Journal.

Sept. 16:  Adrian Padilla, 17, California, safety for Oxnard High School, collapsed following head contact during a game. Surgery was performed for brain swelling of a reported severe concussion. Padilla was released from hospital on Oct. 4 and attended the Oxnard football game days later; he walked onto the field for the opening coin flip wearing street clothes and protective helmet. Padilla told media he suffered a concussion in football two weeks prior to the Sept. 16 injury. The teen continued schoolwork at home for remainder of the semester. Sources: Ventura County Star, Concussion Inc. blog, and ESPN.com.

Sept. 16:  Adam Ingle, 17, Kansas, quarterback/linebacker for Valley Center High School, was injured in helmet-to-helmet contact during a game. Surgery was performed for brain bleeding. Family members say Ingle likely was concussed three days before game injury, during football practice, but the player did not inform anyone of his headaches, reported blogger Irvin Muchnick. By early October Ingle was home and attending school events, with recovery work remaining. Sources: Concussion Inc. blog, Wichita Eagle, and KSN.com.

Sept. 30:  Bobby Clark, 17, Idaho, lineman/linebacker for Priest River Lamanna High School, collapsed while leaving the field during a game. Surgery was performed for brain bleeding. District superintendent Mike McGuire said Clark might have mentioned headaches in the week leading to his injury, unbeknownst to coaches and school officials. At least 9 players on the team have been diagnosed with concussion this season, among 45 players in the small school, officials said. A local TV station reported Clark was among 3 diagnosed concussion cases on the team the night he was airlifted for emergency surgery. Clark was hospitalized about six weeks then transferred to a rehabilitation facility for therapies that will continue through December, at least. His mother, Julie Clark, writes a detailed, vivid journal online about Bobby’s ordeal, and she reports he is talking, eating, socializing and re-acclimating to school subjects such as math; he walks regularly, although with assistance for difficulty in moving his right side. Bobby and family members hope for his release from inpatient therapy by early January, to coincide with pending surgery to replace the piece of skullcap removed at injury, then he could return home. “So today I am praying that his mental status and physical status come together quickly in the next 3 weeks,” Julie Clark posted on Dec. 8, “and that surgery will happen at the right time when his body and mind are ready. I have patience. It’s what has gotten me this far, so I’m not impatient; I just want for everything to fall into place at the same time for his well-being. This is something too important to rush.” Sources: Julie Clark on CaringBridge.org, WASWX-TV, Spokane Spokesman-Review, and Bonner County Daily Bee.

Sept. 30:  Shelton Dvorak, 17, Nebraska, fullback/linebacker for Pierce High School, collided with multiple opponents while running the football during a game. Moments later he collapsed, suffering a brain bleed. A week after surgery, Dvorak was released from ICU and hospital to a rehabilitation center, where he progressed markedly in a few weeks, solo walking, exercising, eating and conversing with visitors. Dvorak returned home on Oct. 27 in strong recovery mode, resuming activities such as attending football games and going hunting with family members. Follow-up surgery replaced the skullcap piece and Dvorak continued his comeback, returning to school in mid-November. “Shelton is a living miracle,” a family member posted on Nov. 21. “He is doing things that everyone prayed he would do.” Sources: Dvorak Family on CaringBridges.org, KETV.com, Lincoln Journal Star and Norfork Daily News.

Sept. 30:  Dillon Lackhan, teenager, Arizona, senior lineman/linebacker for Valley Christian High School, suffered brain bleeding of a headshot during a game. Surgery was performed and Lackhan was conscious within a few days, eating and conversing. “Dillon shows positive signs for recovery, but a long-term prognosis is not clear,” school athletic director Marlin Broek stated in an Oct. 6 email, reported sportswriter Richard Obert. Sources: AZCentral.com, MyFoxPhoenix.com and East Valley Tribune.

Oct. 1:  An unidentified teenager, Massachusetts, a wide receiver for Sandwich High School, complained of wooziness following contact during a game and a trainer called for medical attention. “The player later underwent emergency surgery to remove a blood clot in his brain,” reported Michael J. Rausch, on Oct. 14. “The boy is now home and recovering well from his injury.” Source: Sandwich Enterprise.

Oct. 13:  Dennis Pena, teenager, California, sophomore player for Los Angeles High School, suffered a head injury and collapsed during a junior varsity game. Surgery was performed for a brain hemorrhage, and David Craft, LAHS athletic director, said Pena’s prognosis was “supposed to be good.” Source: Los Angeles Times.

Online Reports of Vessel Rupture and Stroke, Surgery in American Football 2011

Sept. 6:  Connor Laudenslager, teenager, Pennsylvania, senior offensive/defensive tackle for Line Mountain High School, was stricken of a blood clot at beginning of indoor practice, causing stroke. Laundenslager, 6-foot, 270 pounds, was hospitalized for emergency brain surgery then made “remarkable progress,” said coach Mike Carson, moving quickly through therapies and returning to school. By mid-October Laudenslager was working out with teammates and hoping to be cleared to resume football, although that did not occur in 2011. Laudenslager wants to play football in college. Sources:  NewsItem.com, TNonline.com and Pottsville Republican Herald.

Sept. 23:  Dylan Mercadante, 16, Vermont, receiver/defensive back for Montpelier High School, suffered a ruptured blood vessel in his neck during the second half of a game, causing strokes. The injury possibly stemmed from contact on his team’s first kickoff of the game. Following surgery, Mercadante was hospitalized for month then continued therapies as an outpatient. “His recovery has been faster than expected, but he faces a lengthy rehab,” reported Tom Herzig, on Nov. 3. Mercadante plans to graduate with his class and attend college. Sources: Montpelier Bridge and Barre-Montpelier Times Argus.

Online Reports of Brain Bleeding or Swelling, No Surgery, American Football 2011

Feb. 14:  Neiron Ball, 19, linebacker for the University of Florida, experienced headaches following a workout and was hospitalized the following day for a burst blood vessel of the brain linked to a congenital malformation of arteries known as AVM. Ball was released from ICU after five days and in March began “radial” treatment described as a non-intrusive procedure, similar to radiation for cancer. Ball did not play football last season, and a relative said his future in the game was uncertain. Sources: Orlando Sentinel and YardBarker.com.

Aug. 19:  Alan Mohika, 17, Hawaii, quarterback for Damien Memorial High School, was injured by contact during a game, rose and walked off, then fell into seizure. Mohika suffered brain bleeding and was hospitalized in ICU for a reported severe concussion. No surgery was necessary and the teen was discharged from hospital after five days. Mohika returned to school in mid-September but did not play football. He hoped to return to sports. Sources: Honolulu Star-Advertiser, HawaiiNewsNow.com and KITV.com.

Sept. 9:  Matt Ringer, 15, California, running back for Central Catholic High School, suffered an apparent concussion during a tackle. Later he was hospitalized for a detected brain bleed, although fully conscious. No surgery was necessary and Ringer was released from hospital within 48 hours. He returned to school but not football. Source: Modesto Bee.

Oct. 7:  Jadon Adams, 16, Kansas, running back for Beloit High School, collapsed during a game and was hospitalized for brain swelling. Doctors sedated Adams as treatment and discontinued the drugs as swelling subsided within 24 hours, and no surgery was necessary. The teen entered a rehabilitation hospital on Oct. 21 and made steady progress, according to updates by family friend Steph Barrett. Adams was released on Dec. 2 and is continuing therapies at home, where he has resumed schoolwork with a tutor, according to reports. Sources: Salina Journal, KAKE-TV, and Steph Barrett on CarePages.com.

Online Reports of Skull Fracture in American Football 2011

April 2:  Lamont Baldwin, 17, Washington, D.C., touted receiver for Carroll High School, suffered a fractured skull and other injuries in a four-player collision during  private camp without pads and helmets in Virginia. Baldwin was hospitalized in ICU for two days and could not return to school for the remaining semester, facing months of recovery. When injured, Baldwin was a top college prospect reportedly being recruited by several major programs; he did not play football in 2011. Sources: Washington Post and NBCWashington.com.

Online Report of Head and Neck Injury With Nerve Damage in Football 2011

Sept. 12:  Spencer Eller, 14, Missouri, wide receiver/cornerback at Lee’s Summit North High School, was struck in back of his neck by a teammate’s helmet during a practice drill. Eller was hospitalized with paralysis through his right side and legs. “The doctors diagnosed Spencer with a brain injury, a spinal cord injury, vertigo and muscle and nerve damage,” reported Miranda Wycoff. Imaging tests were negative for cranial swelling, and Eller was released to go home with outpatient therapy. Six weeks after injury, the teen was walking but with a cane while still experiencing numbness through his right side; pain radiated everywhere, including migraine headaches preventing his sleep. At October’s end, Eller’s family hoped for his condition to improve enough for a return to school, but doctors remained cautious of his complex injury. “When he went in for the CAT scan and the MRI nothing was broken and there was no bleeding in the brain,” said Cheryl Eller, the teen’s mother, in a report of Oct. 26. “It makes it harder to understand because you can’t even see it.” Source: Lee’s Summit Journal.

Online Reports of Spinal Injury Requiring Surgery, American Football 2011

May 7:  Rob Marrero, 31, Pennsylvania, semi-pro player for the Mountain Top Reapers, suffered a broken neck and severed spinal cord during a game. Friends reported after surgery that Marrero is paralyzed permanently from chest down. Marrero, married and a father of two, continues treatment and therapy. Source: Lehighton Times News.

May 27:  Jeremy Bingham, 34, Arizona, fractured cervical and thoracic vertebrae during a game in pads and helmets between alumni of two local high schools. He was injured colliding with another player. Doctors diagnosed no paralysis in Bingham and surgery was performed to stabilize the C7 and T1 vertebrae. Bingham is married and the father of four. Sources: Eastern Arizona Courier and the Bingham Family on Blogspot.com.

Sept. 1: Torell Troup, 24, New York, defensive lineman for the Buffalo Bills, sustained a reported “minor fracture” in his spine during an NFL preseason game. Troup missed several games while playing in about six before placed on injured reserve for the season. Troup was reportedly scheduled for surgery on Dec. 16; Google had no further update at time of this blog posting.

Sept. 18:  Nick Collins, 28, Wisconsin, free safety for the Green Bay Packers, ruptured a lumbar disc during a collision in an NFL game. Cervical-fusion surgery was performed and Collins faces lengthy rehabilitation. Doctors expect full recovery for normal lifestyle, but Collins hopes to resume pro football. Sources: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Channel3000.com.

Sept. 23:  Corpio Dennard, 16, Alabama, receiver/running back for Saks High School, suffered a broken neck during a game while being tackled from behind, pinning his arms and sending him into ground headfirst. Dennard experienced no paralysis and walked to the sidelines, but coaches did not return him to the game. The next day his mother sent him for a doctor’s exam and Dennard was hospitalized, with X-rays showing fractures in his 5th and 6th cervical vertebrae. Surgery was performed on Sept. 25, for stabilizing the spine with plate and screws. “The doctors that saw him were just amazed that he got up and walked off the field,” Saks coach Clint Smith told reporter Joe Medley. Dennard said, “If I had gone back in the game, I don’t know where I’d be right now. I’d probably be paralyzed or even dead.” Dennard has begun 6-to-12 months rehabilitation and doctors expect he can return to sports, although probably not football. Source: Anniston Star.

Sept. 29:  Luis Morales, teenager, Texas, junior player for Vega High School, suffered fracture of the C6 vertebra while colliding with bleachers during a junior varsity game. Surgery was performed in Texas, and Morales was flown to California for specialized rehabilitation on Oct. 13. Reports state the teen is paralyzed from waist down while also hardly able to move his arms. Sources: Amarillo Globe-News, High Plains Observer and ConnectAmarillo.com.

Oct. 1: Shontrelle Johnson, 19, Iowa, running back for Iowa State University, suffered a reported “neck injury” in a game and was sidelined for the season, with no paralysis reported. Surgery was performed on Nov. 22 and Johnson faced lengthy recovery, according to ISU coach Paul Rhoads, who said the player’s possible return to football was uncertain.

Oct. 7:  Porter Hancock, 16, Utah, running back/linebacker for South Summit High School, suffered a broken neck and paralysis while making a tackle in a game. “Porter finished off the tackle. It was nothing big,” said South Summit coach Jerry Parker. “He turned his head the wrong way.” During surgery on Oct. 8, doctors removed two cervical discs and inserted a stabilizing plate. Hancock was released from hospital on Dec. 16 and remains paralyzed from chest down. Sources: Deseret News, Salt Lake Tribune, Park City Record, KSL.com.

Oct. 20:  Hunter Casebolt, 13, Arkansas, defensive player for Elkins Junior High School, fractured two cervical vertebrae in a helmet-to-helmet collision during a game. No paralysis occurred and surgery was performed to stabilize the fractures. Casebolt was released from hospital after one week, wearing a collar brace. Sources: WriteForArkansas.org, 4029TV.com and KFSM-TV.

Oct. 21:  Anthony Conner, 23, Kentucky, cornerback for the University of Louisville, fractured a cervical vertebra when his helmet struck the knee of an opponent during a game. No paralysis occurred and surgery stabilized the fracture. Conner was released from hospital within days, wearing a collar brace. Sources: Louisville Courier-Journal, Syracuse Post-Standard and WDRB-TV.

Oct. 22:  Aaron Smith, 35, Pennsylvania, defensive end for the Pittsburgh Steelers, was diagnosed with damage to cervical discs and placed on NFL injured reserve for the season. Surgery was performed around Nov. 15, fusing the damaged discs, and Smith’s future in football is unknown. Sources: ESPN.Go.com, Steelers.com and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Oct. 26:  Joe Aulisio, adult, Ohio, a sports reporter for WKBN-TV, suffered fractures of two cervical vertebrae of accidental contact with football players during practice at Liberty High School. No paralysis occurred and surgery stabilized the neck column, according to The Warren Tribune Chronicle.

Oct. 29:  Carlton Downs, adult, West Virginia, senior safety for Concord University, fractured his C5 vertebra during a game. No paralysis occurred and surgery stabilized the cervical break. Downs was released from hospital within days and wore a neck brace to begin therapy, according to The Bluefield Daily Telegraph.

Nov. 4:  Christian Hurt, teenager, North Carolina, quarterback/defensive back for Starmount High School, suffered CV fracture while being tackled in a game. No paralysis occurred and surgery stabilized the fracture. Hurt was released from hospital within days and wears a halo brace, according to The Yadkin Ripple.

Nov. 5:  Tyler Vitiello, 17, New Jersey, running back/defensive end for Saddle Brook High School, suffered a fractured CV while returning a kickoff during a game. Initially paralyzed in his lower body, Vitiello underwent surgery and was standing with assistance after a week, then walking two weeks post-injury. He was released from a rehabilitation hospital in December and wears a collar brace, according to The Bergen Record.

Nov. 6:  Donnovan Hill, 13, California, running back/linebacker for the Lakewood Lancers of the Lakewood Pacific Junior Football and Cheer program, fractured his C4 vertebra while trying to make a tackle. Surgery stabilized the injury, paralysis remained in Hill’s extremities. Doctors predict incomplete recovery. Sources: KTLA-TV, KCAL-TV, KNBC-TV and LakewoodFootball.com.

Dec. 8:  Chris Hoke, 35, Pennsylvania, nose tackle for the Pittsburgh Steelers, was diagnosed with a reported “neck injury” and placed on NFL injured reserve for the season. Surgery was performed on Dec. 14, and Hoke’s football future is uncertain. Sources: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Associated Press.

Dec. 18:  Johnny Knox, 25, Illinois, wide receiver for the Chicago Bears, suffered fracture of a reported vertebra “facet joint” in his back during contact in an NFL game. Surgery stabilized the injury and Knox faces at least four months of rehabilitation, according to The Chicago Tribune.

Online Reports of Spinal Fracture Without Surgery, American Football 2011

Note: Football cases of spinal fracture often involve no displacement of vertebrae or puncture of spinal cord, resulting in no paralysis or other acute alert, and in fact unknowing victims can function normally for long periods after injury, including playing tackle football. For such injury that is diagnosed and treated, recovery is often strong to complete. Among severe or catastrophic injuries in tackle football, diagnosed spinal fracture without displacement qualifies among least serious types, and undoubtedly a portion each year will never be reported or associated with the sport. Some spinal-injured football players return to full contact in the same season, even quickly, as did several in 2011, youths and adults. For this section, available details are fewer and less precise, and no case involves mention of surgery. No paralysis was reported in a case unless otherwise noted.  Additional cases of spinal fracture for the football year, yet unpublicized, will become public in the future.

March, circa:  Kendric Cook, 20, Mississippi, tight end for Mississippi State University, was diagnosed with stenosis of the cervical spine, narrowing of the neck column encasing the spinal cord, which could be adversely affected by football contact, including death. Cook ceased playing football and became a student coach in the program, according to The Clarion Ledger.  

April, circa: John Goode, 22, Illinois, fullback for Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, was injured while blocking a teammate in a drill during spring practice. Doctors diagnosed bulging discs in the lumbar spine, along with damage to a pelvis joint, and Goode could not return to football. In mid-September he began a 14-week rehabilitation program that effectively ended his playing career, according to The Carbondale Southern.

June 25:  Evan Gray, teenager, California, senior running back for Poway High School, suffered three fractured vertebrae during a fall in pass-league competition. Following rest and rehab, Gray returned for Poway’s football season but was sidelined for a reported fractured kneecap. Sources: Damian Gonzalez on MaxPreps.com and Poway News Chieftan.

Aug. 9:  Jeff Wozniak, teenager, Indiana, sophomore quarterback for Morton High School, suffered fractured vertebrae, broken neck bones and bruised spinal cord in practice when “hit under his chin during a drill and driven backward,” initially leaving him paralyzed, reports sportswriter Steve Hanlon. Doctors fitted Wozniak with a steel halo head brace, requiring drilling of screws but not open surgery. In ICU he progressively regained feeling and motor function and in two weeks left the hospital for a rehabilitation facility, where he was also released after two weeks. He continues outpatient therapy and hopes to play football again. Source: NWTimes.com.

Aug. 10, circa:  Mario Crawford, 21, Virginia, running back for Old Dominion University, sustained fracture of the C1 vertebrae in a preseason practice, striking his helmet on a medicine ball in a drill. A CT scan revealed the injury, two weeks post-injury, and Crawford was likely sidelined for the season, wearing a collar brace, according to The Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot.

Aug. 20, circa:  Devin Mahina, adult, Utah, redshirt sophomore tight end for Brigham Young University, sustained a fractured vertebrae in a preseason scrimmage. Initially the injury was not diagnosed and Mahina practiced football for about 10 days, until doctors found it by CT scan on Aug. 30, sidelining him for the year. Mahina wore a collar brace. Sources: Deseret Sun and Salt Lake Tribune.

Aug. 25:  Will Rishell, teenager, Connecticut, junior quarterback/safety/kicker for RHAM High School, suffered fractures of lumbar vertebrae in a preseason scrimmage. Rishell was sidelined until Oct. 22, when he played in a game and re-injured his lower back. Rishell did not play football again in 2011, according to The Norwich Bulletin.

Aug. 26:  Dustin Newman, teenager, Alabama, junior player for Pike Liberal Arts Academy, sustained a fractured thoracic or T5 vertebrae during a kickoff. He wore a collar brace for three months, reportedly. Sources: Troy Messenger and WAKA.com.

Sept. 1:  Kellen Bernard, 15, Texas, running back/linebacker for Palmer High School, sustained a fractured lumbar vertebra on a hit while returning a punt. He reportedly had temporary paralysis and was expected to recover. Sources: Ennis Daily News and WFAA-TV.

Sept. 2: Jerram Rojo, 17, Texas, quarterback/linebacker for Marfa High School, was injured running the ball in a game, with his heading striking the ground. He walked off the field then was hospitalized, where a CT scan revealed fracture of the C6 vertebrae. Rojo wore a collar brace and did not resume football in 2011. Sources: Jerram Rojo on Facebook.com and The Big Bend Sentinel.

Sept. 2, circa:  Sam Scholting, teenager, Missouri, junior offensive tackle for Mexico High School, suffered a broken vertebrae and was sidelined, coach Nick Hoth told The Mexico Ledger.

Sept. 9:  Frank de Braga, teenager, Nevada, senior running back/safety for Fallon High School, suffered a fractured T3 vertebrae and brain concussion while making a tackle. Initially unconscious, the teen had movement before transport to hospital, where he spent the overnight under observation. De Braga was cleared to return to play two weeks later and finished the season in the Fallon lineup, according to The Lahontan Valley News.

Sept. 10:  Brian Tyms, 22, Florida, receiver for Florida A&M University, sustained a fractured vertebra during a game. He returned to playing football on Oct. 1 and finished the season. Sources: Tallahassee Democrat and The Associated Press.

Sept. 11:  Ron Bartell, 29, Missouri, cornerback for the St. Louis Rams, sustained fractures of the C7 vertebrae in an NFL game. Bartell wore neck braces for three months and was declared healed by doctors. He expects to return to football. Sources: 101Sports.com and The St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Sept. 16:  Scott Thibeault, teenager, Maine, senior running back/linebacker for Mountain Valley High School, suffered two fractured vertebrae and was sidelined. He returned to playing football on Oct. 14 and finished the season. Sources: Portland Press Herald and Scarborough Leader.

Sept. 17, circa:  Matt Lindamood, 21, West Virginia, fullback for Western Virginia University, had a recurring neck injury of “stingers” and numbness checked out by MRI, and doctors found stenosis of the cervical vertebrae, narrowing of the spinal canal that affects many football players while threatening only a few with potential grave consequences of added impacts. One doctor determined Lindamood should cease playing football and consider surgery, but another examining specialist concluded the athlete could still compete, finding no degeneration in his motor and sensory function. Lindamood returned to the team and finished the season, according to The Charleston Daily Mail.

Sept. 24:  Derek Hayden, 22, Georgia, safety for Georgia Southern University, fractured his C1 vertebra during helmet-to-helmet contact in a game. Hayden was fitted with a halo brace and released from hospital within days. He did not return to football in 2011, according to The Savannah Morning News.

Sept. 30:  Deangelo Peete, 17, Michigan, linebacker for Livonia Franklin High School, fractured his C1 vertebrae in three places during a helmet-to-helmet collision in a game. A halo brace was fitted to stabilize the injuries and Peete was released from hospital within days, according to WJBK-TV.

Sept. 30:  Cody Ashcraft, teenager, Missouri, senior receiver for Scott City High School, sustained a fractured cervical vertebra in a game, according to The Southeast Missourian.

Oct. 8:  Chris Thompson, 20, Florida, running back for Florida State University, suffered fractures of the T5 and T6 vertebrae while being tackled in a game and was hospitalized overnight. Thompson wore a collar brace as he began rehab, sidelined for the season. He hopes to play football again, according to The Orlando Sentinel.

Oct. 14:  Sean Walsh, teenager, California, senior offensive guard/defensive tackle for Saratoga High School, suffered a reported “broken back” in a game. Walsh was sidelined for remainder of the football season. Sources: Saratoga Falcon and Saratoga News.

Oct. 28, circa:  Ronald Tolbert, teenager, Georgia, sophomore defensive tackle for Mt. Zion High School, suffered a reported “cracked vertebrae” playing football and was sidelined, according to The Times-Georgian.

Nov. 4:  Andrew Barr, teenager, Michigan, senior running back for Portland High School, suffered fracture of his C1 vertebra and a concussion during a hit in a game. Barr was fitted with a neck brace and released from the hospital within days, sidelined for the football season, according to The Lansing State Journal.

Nov. 4:  Hunter Harden, teenager, Tennessee, junior running back for Munford High School, suffered a fractured CV during a game, reportedly “dumped onto his head and shoulders” while trying to catch a pass, according to The Paris Post-Intelligencer.

Online Report of Staph Infection in Spinal Column, American Football 2011

Sept. 10:  Aaron Thibodeaux, 19, Louisiana, defensive lineman for University of Louisiana-Lafayette, sustained a concussion in helmet-to-helmet contact during a game. Moreover, the collision injured Thibodeaux’s back and reportedly “reawakened” dormant methicillin-resistant staphylococcus, or MRSA, which had infected the player’s elbow in the preseason, and it formed a cyst in his spinal canal. Hospitalized a week in intensive care, Thibodeaux survived the infection and did not suffer paralysis like an Arkansas teen football player in 2010. Doctors determined Thibodeaux should cease playing football, according to The Shreveport Times.

Online Reports, Survivors of Cardiac Arrest and Heart Attack, Football 2011 

May 19:  Teddrick Lewis, 15, Louisiana, player for Breaux Bridge High School, collapsed on the sidelines during a spring football scrimmage, his heart stopped. Coach Paul Broussard employed a portable automated external defibrillator, or AED—after having trained in a mock drill with his team and school personnel weeks earlier—to restart the heartbeat and save Lewis’ life. “Because we had a plan in place, we knew exactly what to do,” Broussard said. Lewis was hospitalized for a week and has since recovered for normal activity, but doctors advise he not return to contact sport. Sources: KATC-TV and ZOLL Medical Corporation.

Aug. 22:  Unidentified teenager, Missouri, eighth-grade player for Waynesville Middle School, collapsed of cardiac arrest during afternoon practice. Local fire and ambulance personnel responded and restored the boy’s heartbeat. “The defibrillator devices were absolutely what saved him,” said Mike McCort, of the ambulance district. Source: Pulaski County Daily News.

Aug. 30:  Ross Palmer, 17, Idaho, receiver/cornerback for American Falls High School, collapsed of apparent cardiac arrest while running wind sprints at practice. Two coaches began CPR while another fetched a portable defibrillator, then they correctly ignored a directive not to use the device, from responding paramedics, reports journalist Patty Henetz. “If [the stricken player] had not been shocked, no way would he have come out of that,” said cardiac surgeon Dr. Brian Crandall. Three days post-incident, surgeons implanted a self-activating stimulator in Palmer’s chest. Henetz reported “if Ross’ heart goes into ventricle fibrillation arrest—quivering instead of beating—the implantable cardiac defibrillator, or ICD, will shock his heart back into action.” Source: Salt Lake Tribune.

Sept. 2:  David Wilganowski, 17, Texas, touted lineman for Rudder High School, collapsed of cardiac arrest during a game. Rudder certified athletic trainer Jamie Woodell revived the heartbeat with an AED and staff performed CPR, saving the teen. Wilganowski was hospitalized 10 days, and surgery placed an ICD device in his chest. An honors student, aspiring engineer, Wilganowski is formerly a prized football recruit at 6-foot-5, 240 pounds and athletic. He will not play football again, but Rice University reportedly pledges to honor its scholarship offer. Sources: KBTX-TV, KCEN-TV and Bryan-College Station Eagle.

Sept. 9:  Brett Greenwood, 23, Iowa, former University of Iowa safety just released by the Pittsburgh Steelers of the NFL, suffered a reported heart attack during an individual workout at his former high school in Bettendorf. Personnel of Pleasant Valley High were present and likely kept the athlete alive until paramedics arrived, media report. School athletic director Randy Treymer said, “The school nurse ran a defibrillator where our athletic trainer was working on Brett. … They kept pushing with the defibrillator and CPR. If they weren’t around, who knows what could have happened?” Doctors placed Greenwood in medically induced coma and on life support, and he was hospitalized in ICU for about two weeks. Greenwood was transferred to a specialized care facility where he remains, reportedly awake, talking and walking. Lengthy recovery work remains. Sources: Quad City Times and Daily Iowan.

Sept. 20:  Alex Templeton, 13, Texas, a linebacker for Azle Junior High School, went into cardiac arrest of contact during a game. Templeton chased down an opponent near the sideline, making the tackle from behind, and the player’s cleat jabbed his chest. The seventh-grader stood up, looked at the grandstands and collapsed. A coach performed CPR while a nurse who was a spectator administered a portable AED owned by the school; Templeton lay still until the defibrillator restored heartbeat, rousing him. “Seeing the boy spring back to life was an emotional experience for all those involved,” Edwin Newton reported. Templeton is recovering and hopes to play football again in about two years, when doctors might grant permission, but his dad, Matt Templeton, may not: “I don’t want him to play, but we will have to make the decision later,” the father said. Azle school officials, meanwhile, have ordered 11 additional defibrillators, intending to station one for every athletic activity of the district.  Sources: Azle News, WFFA-TV and DFWCBSLocal.com.

Oct. 1:  Ty Egan, 8, Illinois, youth-league player in LeRoy, was sprinting open for a touchdown when he slowed and collapsed, his heart having stopped. An ambulance was on site and medical personnel were watching as spectators, and they scrambled in response. But only oxygen was administered before the grade-schooler revived, resuming normal pulse and heartbeat. An electrophysiologist later told the parents their son was in cardiac arrest and a miracle saved him, not oxygen. Doctors are restricting Egan from all sports except golf in the future, reports Randy Kindred, The Bloomington Pantagraph.

Additional Reports of Injury for Expert Review as Catastrophic, American Football 2011

July 16:  Regina Pickel, adult, Tennessee, a teacher in the Bradley County School District, suffered a severe head injury during her son’s football scrimmage at Bradley Central High School. Pickel was sitting along the sideline when struck by the helmet of a diving player, causing profuse bleeding of a head laceration. Pickel was conscious and hospitalized in intensive care, according to The Cleveland Daily Banner.

Sept. 23:  Ikenasio Nuku, teenager, Washington, senior running back for Mount Ranier High School, sustained a reported serious injury of contact during a game. Nuku was removed from the field strapped on a long board and hospitalized, but his parents have not allowed release of further information, according to The Seattle Times.

October, circa:  Jesse Winn, teenager, Utah, senior running back for Emery High School, sustained a reported neck injury that sidelined him for the season, according to The Emery County Progress.

Oct. 10:  Josh Inhof, 15, Wisconsin, a center/defensive end for West Bend East High School, sustained a likely concussion, undiagnosed, during a collision at practice. Three days later, during a game, Inhof sustained one or more hits that rendered him unresponsive on a sideline. The unconscious teen was airlifted to a hospital, where he remained two days and was released, according to The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Oct. 14:  Sam Casinelli, teenager, California, junior wide receiver/defensive back for La Costa Canyon High School, sustained a neck injury during a game and was hospitalized, with no paralysis, according to CHS-TV.

Oct. 14:  Keegan Speas, teenager, Oklahoma, sophomore wide receiver for McGuinness High School, sustained a contact injury during a game that left him prone on the field for about 30 minutes. No paralysis occurred and Speas was transported to a hospital, according to IrishOnDeck.com.

Oct. 24:  Alton Brunson, 13, Florida, player on a youth-league team in Miami, suffered temporary paralysis of a helmet-to-helmet hit during a game. Brunson regained complete mobility while hospitalized for about a week, according to WSVN-TV.

Matt Chaney is a writer, editor, teacher and restaurant worker living in Missouri, USA. His 2001 graduate thesis for an MA degree at the University of Central Missouri is qualitative media analysis of 466 football reports, historical print coverage of anabolic steroids and HGH in American football, largely based on electronic search among thousands of news texts from the 1970s through 1999. For more information, including contact numbers and his 2009 book, Spiral of Denial: Muscle Doping in American Football, visit the homepage at www.fourwallspublishing.com.