Head Knocking Time

Trey Smith

For the past decade or so, there has been a lot of discussion and study on the incidence of concussions for football players. There currently is a civil suit against the National Football League (NFL) brought by scores of retired players who say they now suffer grievously from the years of repeated blows to the head. In the past few years, a handful of retired players have gone as far as to commit suicide because they have been unable to cope with the ramifications of repeated concussions.

Writing in Slate last year, Shankar Vedantam reported that

Newfound concern about the wellbeing of football players has focused on the tip of a very large iceberg. Parents, schools, and athletes worry that thousands of amateurs each year may be suffering head injuries similar to the ones that make us gasp during NFL games. But there's a worse possibility: The most serious brain injuries at all levels of the sport are going completely undiagnosed and undetected. It gives me no pleasure to say this. I am a fan who eagerly awaits game day and the ultimate redemption of my long-suffering team.

Today we worry more about high-impact strikes to the head than about repetitive blows of moderate intensity. We think the only players who suffer brain injuries during collisions are the ones who later look dazed, or who can't keep their balance, or who suffer from slurred speech and vision.

The Purdue research changes all that. Many brain injuries suffered by football players do not produce the "shell-shock" symptoms we associate with concussions. The damage caused by these hits is just as evident when you study players in brain scanners or give them tests that measure sophisticated aspects of brain functioning, but are not picked up by trainers on the sidelines.

This focus on head trauma has led a lot of people to wonder out loud if sports like football (and hockey) may soon become relics of the past. Though much effort has been put into the development of better helmets and the rules have been changed somewhat to better protect players, a big question still remains: Can the inherent violence of football be mitigated without destroying the integrity of the game itself?

While I think it's great that there has been this focus on head trauma and the sport of football, there is another sport in which you rarely hear it mentioned: Race car driving. While the fatality rate has fallen precipitously because of all the safety innovations built into today's race cars, these men and women slam into walls and each other almost every week. And we're not talking about bumping a wall at 30 mph. No, it's not uncommon to see a NASCAR driver hit a wall at speeds exceeding 120 mph!

If two guys banging heads on a football field can generate enough g forces to cause a concussion, you would think that slamming into a wall at 100 mph or so would do the same thing or worse. Obviously, someone has noticed this as it was recently announced that NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt, Jr. will miss the next two races due to a concussion he suffered last week in a 25-car crash.

I say, good on, Dale and/or his doctors. Maybe head trauma researchers should start studying the brains of retired race car drivers. Compared to football players, I'm guessing these folks have been knocked silly more times than can be counted!