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The Champion, Thursday, December 17 - 23,2015 EDITORIAL Page4fl
Parents should consider concussion doctor's advice
In an op-ed piece for The New
York Times titled “Don’t Let Kids
Play Football,” Dr. Bennet Omalu—a
forensic pathologist who discovered
chronic traumatic encephalopathy
(CTE)—said children should not
participate in high-impact sports be
fore age 18.
“Our children are minors who
have not reached the age of consent,”
Omalu said. “It is our moral duty as
a society to protect the most vulner
able of us. The human brain becomes
fully developed at about 18 to 25
years old. We should at least wait for
our children to grow up, be provided
with the information and education
on the risk of play, and let them make
their own decisions. No adult, not a
parent or a coach, should be allowed
to make this potentially life-altering
decision for a child.”
Omalu is portrayed by actor Will
Smith in the movie Concussion, a
dramatic thriller based on Omalu s
discovery of CTE. Omalu first dis
covered CTE in 2002 after conduct
ing an autopsy on the brain of Mike
Webster, who played center for the
Pittsburgh Steelers and Kansas City
Chiefs.
Webster was 50 when he died.
His cause of death was first an
nounced to be a heart attack by the
Steelers’ management, but this was
recanted after it was later discovered
that his brain showed signs of de
mentia.
Players with CTE have battled
depression, memory loss, and in
some cases, dementia. CTE can even
lead to suicide, as is suspected in the
deaths of several high-profile football
players.
Omalu findings published in a
2005 report titled “Chronic Trau
matic Encephalopathy in a National
Football League Player,” were at first
criticized and later accepted by the
NFL.
Since then, the NFL has worked
to find ways to deal with the concus
sion issue, such as creating a concus
sion protocol that forces players to
do a, instant concussion test with
team doctors if players show signs of
a concussion during a game.
The NFL also launched a “Heads
Up Across America” tour, which
promoted the Heads Up Football
program. Heads Up Football is a
comprehensive program developed
by USA Football to advance player
safety in the game of football. The
program was launched in 2013 to
instruct coaches and league admin
istrators how to fit equipment, un
derstand concussion awareness and
teach tackling with players keeping
their heads and eyes up.
The program seems to be a good
resource for coaches, specifically
youth football coaches. However, the
program has come into question with
the time limit (one hour and 30 min
utes) it takes to become certified—
most notably by NFL Hall of Famer
John Madden.
“And all due respect to the pro
gram, I don’t believe in it,” Madden
said last year. “I respect coaches, I re
spect what good coaches do. I know
that you don’t learn to be a coach in
an hour and a half.”
It’s a tough task for parents to
determine whether a youth football
coach is trained in how to coach
tackling properly, which is why par
ents should consider Omalu’s advice
of not allowing their child to play
football at a young age.
As Omalu said, no child’s brain
should experience that many blows
to the head in a sport. Football is an
entertaining sport and fun to watch,
but with all this new information
out about head trauma it should be a
no-brainer for parents to keep their
children out of football.
However, with football as the
king of all sports and to some, nearly
a religion—especially in the South—
some will still ignore the information
and shout from the stands at a kid to
“hit somebody.”
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