7A - Testing the Hypothesis, Part 1

Preventing Concussions in Football Athletes (Helmets)

1) Identifying the...

who: the NFL as well as any football players.

what: there are very many cases of concussions while playing football, despite wearing helmets.

why: the composition and design of the helmets used today are not enough to prevent concussions.

2) Testing the...

who: everyone in my current 'who' shares the common need. this need branches out to anyone involved in the sport. 

what: considering all helmets are relatively the same, there aren't any boundaries to this need. it's actually true that the most 'protective' helmet wear even don't protect against concussion.

why: as this is a general need, the why is typically the same and doesn't contain many boundaries. it could be possible that people might need a helmet to prevent concussion because they've already had one, they could blame the helmets themselves, the manufacturers, or even the sport for being too rough. 

3) Interviews...

#1

My first interview was with my dad, who had played football his entire young life, has suffered some concussions in his life due to the sport and is an avid football fan. My dad believes that concussions are quite a problem in the football realm, especially the NFL where they play so many games in a year. My dad seems to believe that there should be a way to prevent this, but he's unsure if extra padding will prevent these problems from occurring. 

#2

My second interview was with a friend of mine, who currently plays club football and has not suffered any concussions himself, but has witnessed it before. He does not believe concussions in football are as reported as they should be, due to the fact that there are probably so many that actually happen. Since this is such a widespread issue, he believes that there should be some sort of change to the roughness of the sport, or an invention of some kind of shock resistant stuff for helmets to help.

#3

My third interview was with a team mom of a recreational football league. As she has seen time and time again concussions happen, even in younger children, she believes the sport is just too rough on the human body. There are many instances where she observed children's lives being taken because they got hit too hard during the sport. She is a true advocate for the change of the sport to make it less rough in order to stop this from happening, and doesn't believe there are any helmets that can help this from happening unless they were to come out with a new one. 

#4

My fourth interview was with another friend of mine who plays football in college. He himself has had a few concussions in his lifetime both from rugby and football. He believes that there is definitely a way to come out with technology that can help the force of blows to the head in the game. He doesn't think that we need to change the sport to make it less rough, we need better protective gear. He also doesn't seem to think that concussions are a big issue in sports, as they're so common. But, what he doesn't seem to realize is the lives this takes and dramatic effects it might have on your life. 

#5

My last interview was with my uncle, who played football in his younger years and is an avid coach and football fan. He has witnessed many concussions occur over the course of his life and coaching career in high schools. He believes that both should happen: they need to make the sport less rough and there should be a new helmet design. My uncle is still going through the effects of his concussion that he had and he thinks that football is very hard on the body in more ways than just the one. It's important to even think about the outside of helmets instead of just the insides. 

Summary:

Based off of my interviews, I now know that there are many lasting effects of a concussion on a person, and that they are even more common than I had though originally. There is definitely an opportunity to create a helmet device with shock resistant technology in order to help people prevent themselves form getting a concussion so that they don't have to worry about this during the game. I also learned that in order to make something shock-proof, we'd have to pay attention to the outsides of the helmets as well to relieve the impact as well as the damage to the brains of many football players. Although, I don't see anything changing about the sport and its roughness, as many don't wish to stray away from the original game.