The National Football League - Free Essay Example

Traumatic brain injury also known as a concussion is a serious health problem to athletes, especially to football players. Multiple concussions are the big concern in football, compared to war-related head trauma, which usually involves one battlefield blast and the impact of the head against a wall, the ground or other hard surface. The National Football League is a contact sport, in which involves the head a lot of the times, and one brain injury could disrupt a persons life forever. These concussions also can lead to a limit in the normal body functions of the players, and the National Football League is looking to limit this dilemma as best as they can. The concussion issue in the National Football League has gotten so terrible that the parents watching do not want their kids to play football. The last thing that the league needs, is for parents to not feel safe about their kids playing, because it would lead to a huge decrease in the number of players in the future. The National Football League wants to keep the brand that they built protected so that they can continue to exist as a safe enough league to remain around. The moment the National Football League is deemed too unsafe, it will crumble before every bodys eyes. An enormous amount of rule changes has now been brought about to the league in order to keep players as safe as possible. The league takes the concussion injury extremely serious and they have structured certain rules around keeping players from getting them. They have gone as far as causing fans to say that the National Football League has turned into a soft league, because of the unbelievable number of flags that get thrown for hits that are not as violent or against the rules as they may seem. The league wants to keep their players as healthy as possible, so that they can remain on the field and continue to provide their entertainment for the millions of fans around the world. The National Football League is currently putting tens of millions of dollars into research on trying to prevent concussions from diminishing a players life. The National Football League had given scientist their National Football League backed technology in order to examine blood samples for proteins that directly correlate with concussion injuries. Neurofilament Light is a protein located within the human body. The Neurofilament light subunit can be measured with immunoassays in cerebrospinal fluid and plasma and reflects axonal damage in neurological disorders. With the Neurofilament Light biomarkers in the National Football League they will be able to be certain about concussion injuries without a single doubt in it. Neurofilament Light will bring upon a massive change within the National Football League, when it comes to the safety of the players coming back from concussions. To affirm Lemire stated, Studies have since identified how important a specific protein is in diagnosing concussions, discerning their severity, and even helping determine a safe return-to-play time. That biomarker could be a major step forward for medical treatment in the NFL, and its name is neurofilament light†thats right, NFL (Lemire 13). The National Football Leagues have a few issues when it comes to identifying concussions and figuring out when players are 100% healthy to return to the field. Neurofilament Light aids the National Football League by protecting the players after their concussions just as much as it does by finding them. The National Football League has been going through a ton of tribulations, especially when it comes to monitoring players with prior concussions. The reason behind it getting so bad, was because of the effects it had on players long term. To confirm Bieler stated, The ability to spot sub-concussion injuries is important because they often go undetected by conventional methods and yet are increasingly seen as major threats to long-term health (Bieler 5). The National Football League has been researching for years, in order to find ways to detect concussions in an efficient manor, so that players do not go out on the field when they should not be. Playing after or during a concussion can alter a players career and life. A player can go from playing another snap in the National Football League and end up ending more than just their career, but their mobility and abilities outside of football. According to Savedge, A blood test that offers more quantifiable data would take the guessing out of it and give doctors, coaches, and athletes more immediate feedback about the potential risks of continued play (Savedge 4). With immediate feedback being received, the guessing game would no longer exist, and the National Football League would gain a lot more success when it comes to preventing a life altering change due to a concussion. In the year of 2015 Texas Christian University started doing research on their football team. A couple of professors at the University had measured the Neurofilament Light in the football players as the season progressed. They had gone to realize that the non-starters or players that did not play had remained flat throughout the season, whereas the starters or the players on the field had their Neurofilament rise. They had also included a control group who had already had concussions, so that they could see where the elevations in the marker had begun to rise close to the ones similar to the concussed players. Even if the player does not have a concussion the markers would aid the National Football League by providing them with the knowledge that there is at least something to be looked at, since the markers only rise when there is an issue. It would be very useful since there a huge amount of problems that go unreported. Athletes in the National Football League hate being pulled from a game, but if they suffer a concussion that goes untreated a suffer another one, the damage could be way greater. This is the last thing that the National Football League wants, and same for the players so it is better to be safe than sorry for both sides. With the emerging Neurofilament Light experiment the culture of the National Football League would be changed forever to make sure that the players stay protected. In order for the National Football League to keep their athletes healthy and in the game, they must act fast in order to increase the efficiency in their ability to diagnose and treat them when it comes to a concussion injury. They have been heavily talked about when it comes to their issues as a league with concussions and it is damaging their brand as a whole, because of their inability to increase their efficiency. Neurofilament Light biomarkers is the answer to this long-awaited solution for the National Football League. It comes with questions of course, but the National Football League owns the resources to answer them. The biomarkers will be able to protect players in the long term and prevent them from returning to the field when they are not ready. This would eliminate a lot of the criticism the league has gotten over the years. They would be taking a big leap by at least helping the athletes know when they have a concussion for sure, instead of them having to witness the pl ayers throwing tantrums on the sidelines, swearing up and down that they are not concussed. Neurofilament Light will give an undeniable amount of information for the league to decide when it is safe enough for players to return to action