Robofootball: Doublespin

The Failure of Football Helmets, A transcript report by Dr. Isabella Mendoza, CDC, joint session of Congress, June 20, 2015, Hearing #678-37-1492:

“During the dark ages of the 1960’s where more than 100 high school and college football players were killed by skull fractures followed by acute bleeding of the brain, along with approximately 5 times that amount who were paralyzed, the regulations set afterward by the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment (NOCSAE) have certainly not kept up with the times. Very few have ever heard of the NOCSAE including most NFL administrators. The NOCSAE was formed in 1973 and initially met its goal of protecting players from the extreme forces that caused those injuries; namely by requiring new helmets to be able to withstand a 60-inch free fall without allowing a fracturing force to penetrate the skull.

Do note that the NOCSAE is a volunteer consortium financed by the helmet makers. There is no federal affiliation with the CDC or even the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for that matter. The NOCSAE does not ensure, guarantee, recommend, list, or approve helmets, either new or old, to meet this long out of date limited requirement. Despite a sharp rise in concussions at all levels from youth football to the NFL, the original standard set by the NOSCAE has not changed significantly since it was written in 1973, and adopted in 1980, well over 3 decades.

Since that time, the relative size and speed of players has drastically increased – please refer to our previous report on “The Weight Factor”. As a consequence, concussion rates have increased as well. Although skull fractures are largely a symptom of the past, there are a dozen football-related deaths in America every year to players under 18 years of age due to second-impact syndrome. These are severe hits following an initial concussion that has not healed properly rather than by a follow-up single blow. Half of these occur with older reconditioned helmets that do not meet NOSCAE’s very limited out-of-date standards.

With tight budgets, pay-to-play at the high school level and below, and a lack of updated modern regulations, the vast majority of the helmets utilized by our nations’ youth are old, scratched, dented, not sized or properly fit tested, and even those that are reconditioned, are not tested at all before they are returned to the schools for repeated usage. In fact, their structural and protective integrity are generally severely compromised. Approximately 40% of the minority that are indeed tested are not even tested properly; in short, helmets in relatively poor condition are returned, and consequently, used over and over again. Our statistical analysis reveals that over 200,000 youth 18 years of age or less, are wearing helmets that are too old and damaged to provide adequate protection. Another 500,000 are wearing potentially unsafe helmets that require new testing and critical examination at the very least.

Although football helmets are heavier and more thickly padded than bicycle helmets, bicycle helmets are designed to withstand one and only one large impact before being replaced. Football helmets on the other hand suffer concussive forces hundreds of times per season, thousands as the years go by. Helmet on helmet crashes tend to be the most severe from a concussive standpoint. We do understand that for practical purposes, that football helmets can only be so big, but at a bare minimum, we need new more stringent standards, testing on at least an annual basis, and a basic design to drastically reduce the ever-growing crisis with concussions related to football.

I ask that you refer to the previous CDC report concerning “Head Injuries in Football.” We made one mistake at the very end of the report, and that was the assumption that there had been significant improvement and technological advances in helmet production, especially at the youth level. From what we have found, there has been little progress in decades, and in fact, a bit of a relapse given the age and use of much of the equipment for our nation’s youth. A good deal of equipment still in use should have been made obsolete and taken out of service years if not decades ago. In conclusion, if you have been following our most recent series of reports concerning the dangers of football in America, the results concerning the sustainability of this sport are quite disconcerting.”

Two Congressional panel members who were paying the closest of attention to Dr. Mendoza’s dissertation were Senator Margaret Leahy of Arkansas, and U.S. House Representative Lenny Wilson. Ms. Leahy, a longtime enemy of football and the injuries associated with it, was very pleased. These hearings combined with the Mendoza Reports were garnering a lot of attention that she could never quite attract on her own. Lenny in the meantime was as troubled as ever. Talk of football injuries made him unconsciously reach down and stroke his ruined knee, that old nagging injury that would never go away.

“If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.”

Erma Bombeck