Bird's Eye View: Tackling Tragedy, Why Football Must Change

Aaron Hernandez was diagnosed with stage III chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).The 27-year-old former New England Patriot committed suicide in jail after being convicted of murder. His was the worst case of CTE doctors had ever seen in someone his age. Hernandez is the latest high-profile former NFL star to have brain damage diagnosed after committing suicide.

CTE is a progressive degenerative brain disease that can be caused by repeated sub-concussive head trauma. Measured in four stages, CTE symptoms range from headaches in stage I to executive dysfunction, aggression and dementia in stage IV. Researchers are now coming to terms with the fact that what they once thought was a rare disease is actually widely prevalent among football players. And not just in the NFL.

Boston University researchers studied the donated brains of 202 football players and diagnosed 177 with CTE.The study looked at 111 brains of NFL players and found that all but one had CTE. College-level players barely fared better, as 91 percent exhibited signs of the disease.

With over 3 million children playing organized tackle football, according to USA Football, there is real urgency here to protect the brains of youth. The NFL hopes to improve the safety of the game by focusing on improving the shock-absorption capabilities of helmets and implementing safer tackling techniques. These initiatives are a step in the right direction, but they assume the inevitability of hits to the head. That is something we cannot concede.

Pop Warner, the United States' largest youth football organization, banned kickoffs for players between the ages of 5 and 10. Eliminating the kickoff, a dangerous play in which players sprint at each other from opposite sides of the field, is a huge positive development. The question I’d like to ask is, why are 5-year-olds playing football in the first place?

In a different Boston University study, it was found that individuals who play football before the age of 12 double their risk of developing CTE symptoms, including a threefold increase in the risk of “clinically elevated depression scores.” Tackle football before high school simply cannot exist now that we are aware of the consequences.

The NFL and NCAA should, at the very least, follow the lead set by the Ivy League, which banned tackling during in-season practices in 2016. Reserving tackling for games allows football leagues to leave the sport relatively unchanged while significantly reducing the number of hits participants are exposed to throughout their careers. An added benefit is that players may even perform better as a result of less wear and tear on their bodies. Many NFL coaches have already conformed to this practice for at least preseason training camps.

Hernandez’s story is tragic. He elevated himself to the national stage playing the game he loved. But that same game may have been what drove him to violence and eventually killed him. The data are in. It’s time to protect current players and those to come from a similar fate. Left unchanged, football shouldn’t be played at all.