Football, a sport of determination, hard work, true grit, and risks. Football is a well-known sport to millions of people, but it is a sport of full on contact and no limitations. To be a notable football player, you must be willing to give up certain boundaries and safety limits, but at times players get injuries that affect their long-term health, mental wellness, and personal life.

When somebody says the word injury, you probably think of a short-term one like a broken arm or sprained ankle, but that’s not what comes to mind of football players and their families. Each year, twelve high-school and college students will perish on the field or in practice. Researchers have reviewed data that has led them to hat there have been 243 deaths caused by football injuries between July of 1990 to June 2010. Sixty-two of these deaths were due to brain injury or concussions. Concussions can lead to diseases such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy- a progressive degenerative disease which leads to memory loss, depression, and dementia.
Your brain is an incredibly important part of your body and in the National Football League,(“NFL”) twenty-one percent of players incure damage that crucial body part. Prior to 1994, having a concussion was not taken seriously. It was such a minor predicament, sometimes players would be back in action before the end of a game. In 1994 the Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee. A more serious look at NFL related head injuries. In the years the Committee was founded, an increasing amount of evidence has linked the repeated blows to the head suffered by NFL players with mental health problems later in life.
Friends and family care about you more than you think, when you feel pain, they do as well. “You would hear the clapping of helmets,” said Garland Radloff, whose husband played five season at the center for the Atlanta Falcons. “but then you’d hear cheering… You know you didn’t think about any injury.” She said she wasn’t thinking about any long- term injury effects even after the time her husband was out cold for five minutes. Over twenty years passed, and Wayne Radloff at fifty-two years old was diagnosed with a form of early form of onset dementia that was caused by repeated blows to the head and concussions. This has caused him to lose his job and the bank having to foreclosure proceedings on his home in South Carolina. All of this has left Garland Radloff’s wife to take care of their kids, make a living, and fight for what they believe the NFL owes their families.

There are millions of football fans, but maybe the fans should be focusing of what is happening behind all of the action of the game. It may be more of an issue than meets the eye.