WHILE THERE ARE many ways for football players to become injured, the biggest risks come with head and neck injuries. The key to avoiding as many of these injuries as possible is teaching your players to avoid using the head as a primary and initial contact area for blocking and tackling.
Frederick Mueller, a University of North Carolina educator who chairs the American Football Coaches committee on football injuries, says most football fatalities over the past 40 years have been due to head and neck injuries.
“Coaches who are teaching helmet-or-face-to-the-numbers tackling and blocking are not only breaking the football rules, but are placing their players at risk for permanent paralysis or death,” says Mueller. Looking back in history, the helmet tackling and blocking technique caused an astounding 36 football fatalities and 30 permanent paralysis injuries in 1968 before the new rules went into effect in 1976.
Mueller is convinced the rules eliminating leading with the head during blocking and tackling, coaches teaching proper blocking and tackling fundamentals, extensive helmet research, improved physical conditioning, proper medical supervision and a good medical data collection system have sharply reduced the number of fatalities and serious head and neck injuries in football. In 2002, there were only five football fatalities at the youth, high school and professional levels.
Checklists For Avoiding Problems
The National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research has produced several excellent checklists for reducing head and neck injuries, dealing with heat stroke concerns and recommendations for reducing football injuries based on the nationwide 2002 football injury data.