Safety issues forcing changes in football

There is the scent of change in the air. It’s faint and, like the crocuses in the yard, has just begun to poke its head above ground, but it’s there and it’s drawing notice.

The great game of football suddenly finds itself steaming toward a crossroads. And as with every opportunity for change, choices must be made.

The changes may make headlines in the NFL, but they will impact the entire game, from peewees to the pros.

First, the headlines.

A linebacker for the San Francisco 49ers, Chris Borland, announced he was walking away from the game after one season in the NFL.

“I just honestly want to do what’s best for my health,” Borland told ESPN. “From what I’ve researched and what I’ve experienced, I don’t think it’s worth the risk. I feel largely the same, as sharp as I’ve ever been. For me, it’s wanting to be proactive. I’m concerned that if you wait ’til you have symptoms, it’s too late.”

Borland is the type of player NFL executives covet: He’s good, has a high ceiling and, best of all, is cheap.

He’s walking away from a game that would inevitably be paying him millions of dollars for his services.

And he’s saying it’s not worth it.

In the same off-season, University of Michigan center Jake Miller announced he would not play his senior season and is walking away from the game. Why? He’s concerned about the long-term impact of past, and possible future, concussions.

“I know I’ve had a few and it’s nice walking away before things could’ve gotten worse,” Miller told ESPN. “And yes, multiple schools have reached out. But I’m ready to walk away from it. My health and happiness is more important than a game.”

Former University of Washington quarterback Jake Locker walked away from the Tennessee Titans, citing the lack of “the burning desire necessary to play the game for a living.”

There’s been a rush of new knowledge from research into the dangers of brain injuries in football. What was first discovered only in players who have suffered a number of concussions is now being found in players who have never had a diagnosed concussion.

Rule changes already have been installed. States – including Washington – have enacted laws protecting players suspected of having sustained a concussion.

Such a knowledge base was behind a sustained outcry when former Michigan coach Brady Hoke sent a player back into a game who had been visibly shaken by a hit to the helmet.

It became the first public step on Hoke’s way out the door in Ann Arbor.

Simply put, the game of football has innovated itself to a dangerous level. It’s happened before. The introduction of artificial turf at the Houston Astrodome in 1966 was lauded in the beginning – allowing the game of baseball into indoor stadiums.

But it was soon discovered that the new surface caused a whole raft of problems – from a new malady known as Turf Toe to career-ending knee injuries. Current artificial turf surfaces are better, being so much closer to natural turf that most professional football stadiums have returned to grass.

Football equipment has evolved even more than playing fields. Knee braces have evolved to the point that many programs have linemen wear them BEFORE getting injured. Pads have evolved to take more and more G-forces.

And helmets have come so far that they now can be a communications center as well as head protection.

And that’s a problem. The synchronicity between shoulder pads and helmet allow some players to transform themselves into a guided missile that launches, head first, into the opposition.

The problem with that is a player’s head is like an analog product in the digital age, and the brain inside the skull can only take so much jarring without causing permanent, sometimes tragic, damage.

The game must find a way to safely reverse-engineer itself. It must find a way to get back to something more closely resembling Old School.

One of the all-time great players in the history of the NFL passed away last week: Philadelphia legend Chuck Bednarik.

Bednarik was the last of the game’s Iron Men – the last player to play both ways: offense and defense. Bednarik started at linebacker, where he was one of the most devastating tacklers the game has ever known, and at center, where he was an outstanding blocker.

In many ways, the game must return to the age of men like Bednarik, when the game was about the size of the heart inside a player and not the amount of padding heaped on him.

Especially if we want our youngsters to grow up and grow old without risking both their lives and their well-being to play a game.