Academia, Lawyering, Science, Society

Can More H.I.T.S. Save Football?

By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger

Va. Tech’s HITS. See video below from Discovery Science

The NFL is facing a daunting number of lawsuits contending it knew of the dangers of traumatic brain injury resulting from concussions but hid that information from its players. Those suits have been consolidated and a local Richmond, VA resident is the lead plaintiff. The widow of former Atlanta Falcon Ray Easterling, Mary Ann, has continued a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the NFL following her husband’s suicide in April. The former all-pro free safety suffered from depression and insomnia following his playing days on the famous “Grits Blitz” defense during the 1970s.  Nineteen Hall of fame players have joined the roughly 2400 other plaintiffs in the suits. Among them are legendary tough-guys Eric Dickerson,Tony Dorsett (and his son, Anthony), Rickey Jackson, John Hannah, Bill Bergey,  Bob Lilly, John Randle, the late Lee Roy Selmon and Randy White.

The NFL is aware of the risks to its fiscal well-being, and has implemented tougher rules on concussions. It has also publicly come down hard on teams like the New Orleans Saints for so-called bounty programs designed to knock players out of games. What is curious is the league’s slow pace in adopting technology to disclose concussive hits on the fly and thus prevent further injury to its players. The technology to do that already exists but  the league has not yet incorporated it into its safety program.

Down the football food chain in major college programs, there has been little reluctance to protect its players from injury  — and themselves from the inevitable lawsuits. Leading the charge is Virginia Tech located in Blacksburg, Va.  Partnering with Tech’s own bio-mechanics lab and Simbex corporation, team physician Dr. Gunnar Brolinson developed a system for measuring football head trauma in real time. The system known as HITS (head impact telemetry system) uses wireless technology to monitor up to 18 players while the game is being played. Composed of six quarter-sized sensors (known as accelerometers developed from car airbag technology)  embedded in the Riddell helmets worn by Hokie players,  a constant stream of information is wirelessly beamed to Simbex headquarters and then to computer monitors on the sidelines. The system even measures cumulative trauma which is also a risk factor for traumatic brain injury.

“We have a pager that alerts me when we receive a high head acceleration,” Brolinson said. “We set the pager at 98g – an impact of 98 times the force of gravity at the Earth’s surface – . We think that’s a fairly significant head acceleration.”

If a hit records above a threshold figure, team physicians or trainers monitor the player for the next play or two. If they detect any sign of concussion, the player is removed from the game and a pre-established protocol is utilized to assess his condition before a decision is made to return him to the game. Virginia Tech has also implemented use of HITS in practice sessions where most concussions occur.

Brolinson says its unreliable to wait for players to complain about head injury. “We frequently find that players sometimes don’t notice that they have a concussion,” Brolinson said. “Most sports related concussions don’t involve a loss of consciousness. This system will generally allow us to determine that the athlete has received a head blow that could result in a concussion.”

There are 1.5 million traumatic brain injuries on a national basis in a given year and about 300,000 are athletes. Football has the largest total,” Brolinson said.  The National Institutes of Health is currently studying a proposal to grant funding to the HITS program. “The NIH has recognized that head injury in children is a national problem,” said Rick Greenwald, president of Simbex, adding that the information being gathered using the football helmets is directly related to a number of other areas as well.

“The military is very interested in understanding injury to their soldiers either from direct impact or impact caused by IEDs,” Greenwald said. He noted that his company is providing helmets with similar wireless telemetry to the military for use in the field.

The use of real time head injury information could aid NFL team physicians too in assessing player injury on the fly. Just this season a player suffered a collapse on the field when his head injury went undiagnosed and then suffered a seizure episode on the plane ride home. HITS provides a way for the NFL to protect what it calls its most valuable assets  — its players. The delay in implementing the system is hard to fathom — and perhaps doubly so for jurors assessing the cases brought by the former players.

Here’s a video on how the system works:

Source: UPI via PhysOrg

~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger

39 thoughts on “Can More H.I.T.S. Save Football?”

  1. Rugby World Cup packages to tour with other spectators and players to take part in the ultimate festival of rugby will appeal to followers of the game. Every four years the World Cup tournament comes around. This is like a climax that aficionados will patiently wait for. It builds up over years, months, weeks, days, and hours until the moment of the finals kick-off. Many people will save assiduously for years o be part of a tour.A party of rugby followers is likely to be a diverse group. The game knows no social, physical or psychological barriers. Quick small people have become legends of the game. Giants, both tall and wide, are central to the scrum and normal men are needed on the flanks. It is known as the gentlemen’s game for hooligans and both types are likely to be represented in any game.,

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  2. Tremendous issues here. I’m very satisfied to see your article. Thank you a lot and I am looking ahead to contact you. Will you please drop me a mail?

  3. A university supports a sport that knowingly causes brain damage because?
    Thanks to medical science, we now know the risks. Telling your son to play football is like telling him to text and drive.

    Ask your college president to explain in writing why he/she supports a sport that causes brain damage.

    Ask your university’s legal department what it expects the cost will be in upcoming litigation.

  4. Woosty’s still a Cat 1, June 24, 2012 at 8:47 pm

    “Rugby is a Hooligan’s game played by Gentlemen, Soccer is a Gentleman’s game played by Hooligans and Football is a Hooligan’s game played by Hooligans.”
    ————————————-
    hahaha! Kraaken that says it all!
    =========================
    Kick them with your legs if you need to. You can snap their necks.

  5. There has been some attempt at comparison between rugby and NFL football. Also in a peripheral way, soccer. I think it is like comparing checkers and shuffleboard. Different rules are key. Whether a fit NFL player would last in a rugby game is an argument of false equivalences. The same could be said that the best rugby player in the world would not last two plays in an NFL game before being carried off on a gurney. That is, if he wore a rugby uniform. He might last a few plays longer than that if in pads and helmet. Fortunately for our hypothetical rugby player, Jack Tatum, Dick Butkus and Alan Page have retired.

    Getting back to the main point, I am concerned about the number of players with post-concussion syndrome in both football and soccer. When I was a kid, I used to listen to the Friday Night Fights, sponsored by Gillette. I was still a boxing fan until I started understanding neurotransmitter better, and the consequences of head injuries.

    A famous comedian had a routine as a “punch drunk” prizefighter. When I was a kid those sketches were funny. Now that I know what I know, they are about as funny as pushing grandma down the stairs. At this point in my life, boxing, cage fighting and full contact karate turn me off and I refuse to watch.

  6. I used to watch Rugby games while channel surfing in the wee hours (colicky baby) — the real stuff from the South Pacific. I’m ready to wager that no one without pads and a helmet hits with the same force and the same manner as one with pads and a helmet. Especially when that helmet is often used as a weapon.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0vKO-sHZTY

    Quite frankly a badly thrown ball over the middle towards Jack Tatum — the QB caused this injury

  8. “Rugby is a Hooligan’s game played by Gentlemen, Soccer is a Gentleman’s game played by Hooligans and Football is a Hooligan’s game played by Hooligans.”
    ————————————-
    hahaha! Kraaken that says it all!

  9. So what about concussions. You get hit in the head, you might get a concussion. That’s part of the game.

    I hurt my lower back in 1998. I stay away from that particular game. I won’t win.

  10. Woosty, My favorite saying:

    “Rugby is a Hooligan’s game played by Gentlemen, Soccer is a Gentleman’s game played by Hooligans and Football is a Hooligan’s game played by Hooligans.” 🙂

  12. Kraaken, interesting name when crackin’ skulls is the topic : )

    With 15 years in the ER you have a much better idea than I do of what we do to ourselves and each other.

    I’ve never seen a rugby match and, since I’ve really tried to replace my competitive stuff with cooperation, I really don’t want to.

    Until we get our “leaders” to appreciate the joys and harmony of cooperation maybe they should be required to play a rousing rugby match or football every day until they realize that there’s a better way. The regular “boys” can still play whatever whenever they feel the need to chase or pound others.

  14. Woosty;
    LOL! Even though I love my rugby, you couldn’t be more correct!

  15. OS, I would suggest you watch a Rugby game and then comment on the knocks taken by a Rugby player. BTW, I am not referring to the line of scrimmage. I am referring to the scrum, a set piece. Along with a ruck, it is an area of extreme contact which, I will dare to say, NFL players couldn’t survive very long. If you don’t want to watch a game, watch the movie ‘Invictus’.

  16. BettyKath;
    I understand that there is the ‘possibility’ of TBI. I spent 15 years as an ER nurse and I have seen what happens. I think the operative word is ‘possibility’. If we all lived our lives afraid of the ‘possibility’ something might happen, we wouldn’t have much of a life. I think the more salient point is the ‘eyes wide open’ theory. If you engage in risky behaviour and something adverse happens, you have only yourself to blame. The whole point of my admittedly long-winded post is that with all it’s protections and high-tech gear, the NFL has a far higher morbidity and mortality rate among it’s players then does Rugby Union which has NONE of those things. BTW, bettykath, I really enjoy your posts on this blog!

  18. I don’t know very much about Rugby, but the lack of padding has not gone unnoticed, inasmuch as brain injury is one of my long time interests. Improper training is not the problem. If the average Rugby player had to engage in the level of contact as NFL, or even NCAA football, they would have similar injuries. Ending up on the bottom of a pile of 300 pound players, or getting slammed while going full tilt by a 315 pound tackle who can run forty yards in 4.4 seconds, generate forces the unarmored human body cannot take. And from the neurological data being generated, even the pads and helmet are not protecting them. When a player is hit so hard his head bounces twice when hitting the turf, it does not take much imagination or knowledge of physics to understand what is happening to the soft squishy stuff inside the skull.

    If you will notice, the really hard hits do not occur at the line of scrimmage, but in the open field where the players have had time to build up a full head of steam and are running full out.

  19. Krakken, “I have not seen any cases of traumatic brain injury, nor have I seen any deaths directly attributable to a Rugby match. Yes, there are broken arms, thumbs ankles and legs, and there is the occasional concussion. ”

    Anytime there are concussions there is the possibility of traumatic brain injury. You’ve probably seen it but didn’t recognize it.

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