As part of the effort to reduce football-related concussions, especially among younger players, some youth and high school programs have begun putting sensors on helmets, which send alerts when they have taken a particularly hard impact.
The working assumption is that those hits are coming on the field. But that might not be the worst of it for some players -- instead, the hardest head shots might come from their own teammates or coaches.
A series of tweets from Bleacher Report columnist and sports-injury expert Will Carroll, coupled with my own observations from watching high school football, have me thinking that football coaches at all levels should ban their players -- and themselves -- from slapping a teammate's helmet for any reason. I've condensed Carroll's series of three tweets into one statement:
HS coach just told me his team has several players fitted with hit counters. Qb came up with very high count despite no big hits. Watched tape next day, counted hits, way below number. Replaced sensor, same thing next week. Noticed something ... Players congratulating big plays slapped him on head, sometimes repeatedly. Tried to count them and came very close. Wow.
In case you need that translated from Twitter into English, what happened was that the violence visited upon the head of the quarterback (of a team Carroll did not identify) wasn't being rained on, with rage, by the opponents. It was coming, with joy, from his own team. There are no statistics I've found attributing concussions to a celebratory or inspirational head slap, but it stands to reason that they don't help the cause of preventing head injuries.
What we know about concussions is that often one appears not out-of-nowhere after a bit hit, but as the cumulative damage from multiple head shots. Also, we know that a blow that causes whiplash -- the quick snapping of the neck -- also can result in a concussion. What we tend to forget is that the head and neck don't care whether that slap or hit comes from an opposing linebacker trying to hurt you, or your own linebacker trying to fire you up.
After reading Carroll's tweets, I thought of what I've seen watching high school football the last three years, while my oldest son has played it. I haven't counted how many I've seen, but I've witness enough of them to know the celebratory or inspirational head slap is still an accepted part of football. It's not just after big plays, either. I've seen players, trying to fire up their teammates on the sideline, slapping each other on the helmet. And not gently -- the arm is swung way back, and the hand is coming through with full force.
Carroll advocated on Twitter that USA Football -- the sport's national governing body, the organization that gave us the Heads Up "safe tackling" program to prevent concussions -- include in its coaching education program lessons about stopping the practice of head-slapping for any reason, including for presumed positive purposes with your own team.
That makes a lot of sense. The efforts to make football safer have focused on eliminating the nastiest head shots and limiting preventable, unnecessary hits. There is no hit as preventable and unnecessary as the teammate-to-teammate or coach-to-player head slap.
I don't expect that every coach, player or football advocate will readily go along with this line of thinking, because they haven't before during the concussion discussion. In teaching everyone that friendly fire is just as injurious, alternatives (Shoulder-pad pound? Butt slap? Firm handshake?) have to be offered. That's because when you're proactively changing the paradigm of football, the first gripe is that today's politically correct namby-pambys (or is it namby-pambies?) won't let you do anything football-ish anymore.
I offer, as an example, an August 2013 quote from Mark Guandolo, an esteemed, 30-year high school coach in Florida, following word of his his two-game suspension by the Broward County school district after a television camera caught him slapping his Cypress Bay High quarterback on the helmet.
From the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale:
“It’s disappointing and it’s not something I’m proud of,” an emotional Guandolo said [he formally apologized for the incident]. “I have great respect for the kid. I was trying to get him ready and fire him up. It was his first start ever and emotions were running high. He had people coming at him and there’s no easy way to get him ready for that.
“I was just trying to fire him up, but you can’t do it in today’s day and age.”
On the field, it's illegal for a player to slap another's helmet, and has been long before the current worry over concussions. It should be discouraged, if not outright banned, off the field as well. There is no sense when trying to protect young players' heads to allow an activity that, however noble its intent, does the opposite.
