We all know football involves a lot of physical contact and huge hits. Often injuries are fairly common like concussions or other injuries due to being hit. If a young child begins to play football at an early age will they have an increased risk for brain damage later in their life. I wanted to investigate if all that contact at an early age could have very negative side effects.
A study done by researchers at Boston University School of Medicine of NFL retirees was conducted to see if repeated impact had an effect on the brain prior to age 12. This period is when a child’s brain begins to develop aspects like memory and verbal IQ. 42 former NFL players were used ages 40-65, half played football before the age of 12 and the other half played after the age of 12. Subjects were tested in 3 different ways. They completed a Wisconsin Card Sort Test, Neuropsychological Assessment Battery List Learning test, and Wide Range Achievement Test. These tests test for disfunction within the brain. They concluded that those who played football before the age of 12 performed significantly worse than those who played after the age of 12. The study concludes that playing football during a key period of brain development increases the risk of cognitive impairment later in life.
Another study done at The University of Tulsa’s Laureate Institute for Brain Research was done to see the volume of the hippocampus in football players. The hippocampus is the region of the brain associated with memory, but more long term memory. 50 college players were tested along with 25 non football players. 25 of the college football players who had not suffered any trauma to the head like a concussion had a hippocampus that was similar to the 25 non football players. The second group of 25 college football players had a hippocampus that was on average 25% smaller than the control of non players. Conclusions made were that the longer the player played football, the smaller the size of the hippocampus.
Based on results from these studies football players eventually struggle in everyday life because they face such hard hits. That is part of the sport, but if these hard hits are faced at a point in a child’s life when the brain is developing, it may cause effects earlier in life. Some proposals to not allow head contact before the age of 14 have been made. This would involve children playing flag football later than normal.
The contact of playing football has a clear correlation with brain damage that affects one later in life. There is no third confounding variable that causes this brain damage, and the studies suggest clear results. Although only small sample sizes are present in this various studies it may be hard to find football players that are willing to participate in such an experiment. Would making children play flag football up until the age of 14 be that big of a deal if it was going to prevent brain damage? I don’t think so.
Playing football at an early age should not increase the likelihood for brain damage later in life. The two topics just correlate to each other. The thing is, many people who play football young, will continue to play football as they grow up. As the years repeat of football, and a new season begins, there is the risk of being hit hard in the head, and possibly receiving a concussion. The reason for brain damage later in life would be from being hit hard in the head too many times, possibly with concussions. The brain damage would be indirectly from football. Perhaps if he were not playing football he would not have hit his head in the first place, and still be healthy. On the other hand, you can say football did cause it because he only hit his head while playing football. Also, if starting at a young age there are more games being played throughout a lifetime than someone who starts to play football later in life. With a greater number of games played, the chances of being hit in the head increases. All together, these increase the likelihood of brain damage later in life from prior head injuries.
Tyler,having grown up with a brother who played football all of his life your blog related to me. My brother played football at a catholic high school and their team was actually ranked #1 in the nation. The amount of injuries and head aches he would have some days made me and my family worried. He however was not as worried because it was common within his team. I agree with you and think that they should keep players playing flag football when they’re younger because the brain is extremely important as you pointed out above. I completely agree with you and think that making this a rule would be very helpful and you’re right it’s pretty simple it should be done. Great blog and maybe next blog period you can expand on this and see if other sports have more or less damage on the brain or if football is the worse.
It is crazy how addicted to football we as Americans are. Now I do not want you to think that I have anything against the sport, I love to watch it, and I used to love to play it. However there also were a few times where I a kid on my team got hit in the head and would be out for almost a week (this was around middle school). I agree with you position that it would make sense for kids to play flag until they are 14 so they can continue to develop normally. However I would also wonder if heading the ball in soccer has a similar effect to getting hit in the head in football. If you are going to write the next blog period, that is something that you could talk about in order to expand on your ideas.