Wed, Nov 03, 2010 page19

• Horror tackles raise safety questions in school football

  • THE GUARDIAN, NEW YORK
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  Pressure is mounting for a tightening of safety rules in football at high school level after a series of potentially deadly injuries in the adult game.

  The sport has been shocked by a recent spate of so-called “helmet to helmet” clashes between players that have caused horrific injuries, including that to 20-year-old Eric LeGrand of college team the Rutgers Scarlet Knights, who suffered a spinal injury that might leave him permanently paralyzed.

  The NFL has since instituted a series of fines for those who commit head-clashing tackles in a move designed to stem criticism and international concern as the game seeks to broaden its global appeal.

  But in the US, the crisis has served to highlight safety gaps in the lower reaches of the game.

  The Los Angeles Times investigated high schools in southern California and found a worrying lack of adequate medical attention at many games, even though football accounts for three times as many injuries among high school pupils as other sports. The newspaper discovered a patchwork of care. Some private schools had many health professionals on hand for games, while poorer inner cities had just an ambulance on standby or no provision at all.

  The situation in high schools — where the sport is played by more than 1 million boys — has prompted some of the sport’s top pundits to urge the NFL to tighten safety further in the hope that it will feed down to lower levels. There is anger that instead of being suspended, professional players guilty of helmet-clashing tackles are fined sums that make little dent in their lavish wage packets.

  “The NFL, in not doing everything possible to prevent head injury, sets an awful example for the high school players who model themselves on the pros,” said Gregg Easterbrook, who writes the influential Tuesday Morning Quarterback column for sports channel ESPN.

  Other news reports have revealed that the protective helmets used in high school football have never have been tested formally against the sort of forces that cause dangerous concussions. Some public figures have even called for parents to pull their children out of school sports programs where the safety measures are deemed inadequate.

  However, many long-term observers of the sport feel that critics are facing an uphill struggle against a culture that has always put a huge stress on the physical dangers of the game.

  In much of its marketing and advertising, football makes a virtue of the physical extremes to which its athletes go. Indeed, said Shorr, the trend in recent decades has been toward NFL players becoming more and more dangerous to each other as they become more athletic and heavier.

  “If you look at the size of players they have become bigger and bigger. What did they expect?” Shorr said. “Tackling is like standing 15 feet [4.5m] away from a concrete wall and then running into it. It is amazing people do not get more hurt than they do.”
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