Playing head games with the future

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“Boom!
Here comes the Boom!
Ready or not,
how do you like me now?
Is that ll you got?
Haha, I’ll take your best shot.”
P.O.D. - “Boom”

This song, performed by the Christian rock band P.O.D., was actually banned from Christian radio airwaves for a time in the early 2000s.

The song, which is primarily talking about the band’s rise to the point of financial self-sufficiency due to the success of their previous album, was popular in sports arenas and workout facilities due to its high-energy chorus. However, in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Clear Channel, which owns a majority of Christian (and many non-Christian) radio stations across the country identified the song as one that should not be played due to the song’s chorus including the phrase “here comes the boom.”

During the state high school football championships this fall, a moment stuck out for me.

A play was strung out toward the sideline. The runner, looking to gain a few more yards before heading out of bounds leaned forward, but the linebacker for the opposition laid a fierce blow into him, driving him out of bounds just short of the first down marker. The linebacker went back to his defensive huddle with the camera focused on him smiling and nodding his head, satisfied with his big hit.

Then replays were shown.

The big hit was a targeted hit of the linebacker’s helmet into the face mask of the runner, which is why he stumbled and fell sideways. It is an illegal hit at every level of football, and the runner’s sideline was going crazy as soon as the hit was made looking for the flag, to no avail.

Later in the game, the linebacker, now a running back on offense, was handed the ball, his team now certain to lose, multiple times in order to make individual accomplishments.

He met the final accomplishment he needed, but he had to be carried off the field after the play due to injuring himself in the process.

The next week, the same player was celebrated in a news release for signing with a local college to continue his football career there.

Meanwhile, the International Conference on Concussion in Sport (ICCS) at the end of October released a draft statement that stated not only is the overall data on concussion research still in its infancy, the data that has been explored has primarily been on one particular subgroup - white males.

Yet, American football only barely outpaces female soccer in the number of diagnosed concussions reported across the United States each year. Why researches within the ICCS haven’t picked up the data on females that are suffering concussions to study for short-term and long-term effects is quite easy - money.

Dollars drive research, research drives knowledge, and knowledge allows us to potentially prevent other tragedies like what happened to Junior Seau, Andre Waters, Dave Duerson, Jovan Belcher, Aaron Hernandez and Phillip Adams.

None of us wants to think of it like this, but with the preponderance of women’s soccer concussions, could the next tragedy come from a former member of the United States Women’s National Team?

Players who aren’t doing harm to themselves or others are still seeing their quality of life affected. That’s why they are finding answers.

Ben Utecht, a former NFL tight end who won a Super Bowl with the Indianapolis Colts in 2007, has become an advocate for players from all sports who suffer from head trauma.

Utecht released a book in 2016 recounting his battles with post-concussive disorders since his playing days, and he’s utilized his platform to speak nationwide while also writing and performing music, which was a passion of his when he was a student-athlete at the University of Minnesota, before five NFL concussions led him to question what his future may look like.

He had even written a song to his daughters for their future weddings, worried that he’d not be able to mentally perform the duties of a father of the bride at their wedding — if he were to survive to that day.

Utecht has since worked with LearningRx to regain cognitive abilities that were lost after his playing career, like memory lapses and emotional regulation to “little” things that consistently impact daily life like shape recognition.

He went from testing at in the twelfth percentile in recall at the beginning of a 100-hour course to testing in the 78th percentile when the test was repeated at the end of the course.

Now, Utecht is advocating that hits to the head need to be avoided, but also that athletes should be required to be doing memory and cognition exercises just as much - or as often - as they are doing bench press or sprint workouts.

Whether anyone will listen to him or not is a viable question.

The NFL is an $11 billion industry that knows the hard hitting is part of the draw for fans. Plenty out there will argue that a high school athlete should “lay it all out” without regard to future physical condition, such as that young athlete being helped off the field at 18 this fall without regard to his future life.

When it comes to the health of your brain, consider Utecht’s advice and do some exercise today.

No, you don’t have to strap on any athletic shoes to do so. Simply take the time to do a puzzle, attempt a crossword, or read a novel.

Challenging the brain in such ways is vital to the long-term health of the most important organ in your body.