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Time - Man of the Year
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Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso
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1993-04-08
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MEDICINE, Page 58Can Football Be Made Safer?
Two massive football players colliding at full speed can
generate in excess of 1,000 lbs. of force -- more than enough to
snap a player's bones, rip ligaments and wreck joints. So it's
not surprising that nearly 500 N.F.L. players have been injured
seriously enough to miss a game so far this season. What's
perhaps more surprising is that there aren't more accidents like
Dennis Byrd's. In the previous 15 years, only two pro players
have suffered permanent spinal-cord injuries. (Diving holds the
dubious distinction of being the most backbreaking sport.)
Sports doctors and equipment engineers have struggled over
the years to make football safer. Voigt Hodgson, a Wayne State
University bioengineer, says helmet improvements have led to an
85% decrease in serious brain injury among all football players
since 1958. Research by Dr. Joseph Torg, director of the
University of Pennsylvania's Sports Medicine Center, led to
rule changes in 1976 that banned "spearing," in which a player
uses his helmet as a battering ram to tackle an opponent. Torg
had shown that spearing was a leading cause of neck injuries
(indeed, experts are debating whether Byrd accidentally speared
his teammate). Since the ban, the number of permanent
cervical-cord injuries among high school and college players
has plummeted from 34 reported in 1976 to just one last year.
Nevertheless, players are still using helmets as a weapon.
Houston Oiler quarterback Warren Moon was speared by a tackler
last month and remains sidelined. In a SPORTS ILLUSTRATED
article last week, he charged that "creating turnovers has
become so important that players today are being coached to
strike with the helmet first" in the hope of jarring the ball
loose.
"No equipment I know of will protect the cervical spine if
kids use the wrong technique," contends Torg. The N.F.L., he
argues, should set the exam for safe play, since less
experienced players are influenced by watching pro games.
Frederick Mueller, a University of North Carolina
physical-education professor who conducts annual surveys of
catastrophic football injuries, says "announcers do a
disservice" with their enthusiasm for particularly violent hits.
"They're putting the wrong message across to young players."