As scrutiny over American football in terms of health has increased over recent years, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has released new guidelines to protect younger players from potential sports-related brain injuries.
Due to the rough gameplay involved in the sport, a number of reports of players experiencing long term brain trauma have surfaced over time, and the AAP hopes to avoid this to happen among children by releasing guidelines supported by evidence and research to prevent injuries that may build up to long term ones.
"We're trying to bring the evidence to the decision-making process as opposed to simply emotion and anecdote," said Dr. William P. Meehan III, Director of the Micheli Center for Sports Injury Prevention at Boston Children's Hospital.
One of the report's key recommendations is for teams to have zero-tolerance for head-first plays. The AAP found that head-first hits are the most dangerous to the brain. While players wear padded helmets to protect themselves, experts said that if these helmets are used improperly, they can actually do more harm than good.
Coaches are advised to strictly monitor players and encourage the use of safer tackling techniques to prevent head trauma. They should also ensure that players follow the rules of the sport and to discourage illegal moves that are highly dangerous such as spear tackling and head on collisions even with helmets on.
"We need to get rid of impacts to the head entirely in football," Meehan said. "There's no known benefit to an impact to the head, and it doesn't need to be part of football."
The report's authors have also looked into the possibility of removing tackling in football. Non-tackling football may make the sport less dangerous, but the guidelines also acknowledge that this will make football lose its appeal to both the players and audience as it will change the core gameplay entirely.
Despite this, the guidelines still encourage the formation and promotion of non-tackling football leagues.
There is still no concrete advice on when to introduce tackling to young football players. On one hand, it will most likely reduce risk for injury of beginning players, but on the other, it will be riskier for them, as they are unaccustomed to the typical force associated with the game once they reach the age when bigger, faster and heavier bodies will translate to more forceful tackles.
Considering this, the football leagues and associations are advised to consider enforcing that only older players are allowed to play full-contact and to teach younger players proper tackling technique to prepare them for future full-contact play.
