The Concussion Problem in Football
According to an article titled, "Three reasons why participation in high school football keeps dwindling", the amount of high schoolers in California playing football dropped by 3.16% from 2018-2019. The attendance for high school football has been declining for close to a decade now. A big reason for this decline is the growing awareness about concussions in football. To add on to this, some players who played in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s are now dying due to brain related injuries sustained while playing football. A study conducted by the University of Pittsburg Medical Center found that 300,000 concussions occur each year due to football. This is far more than any other sport. The NFL, in the past couple seasons, has began to advertise safer equipment in their advertisements in order to convince viewers to believe football is a safe sport even though there is a lot of contact involved. More importantly, these advertisements are designed to convince younger children to take up football without any fear of sustaining concussions. The NFL has tightened concussion protocols in order to make sure players recover fully. However, almost 50% of the concussions sustained in any sport go undetected. Therefore, the statistics released by the NFL about the number of concussions decreasing every year are not fully accurate. There is no way the sport of football can change in order to reduce the amount of contact. The amount of High School football players will continue to decrease every year, until one point where it will affect College Football and the NFL. In 50 (to be generous) years, I believe the NFL will be a non-existent league.
https://www.upmc.com/services/sports-medicine/services/concussion/about/facts-statistics#:~:text=We've%20found%20that%3A,concussions%20go%20unreported%20or%20undetected. (Study on concussions)
https://www.desertsun.com/story/sports/columnists/shad-powers/2019/08/06/3-reasons-why-high-school-football-participation-california-dwindling/1932258001/ (Article detailing why High School football participation has decreased in recent years)