ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS.
Patrick Hruby stressed this quote. “In order to get the right answers, we would
need to ask the right questions,” he mentioned. However, what exactly are the
right questions.
Hruby is a journalist for Sports on Earth, the joint venture
USA Today and MLB Advanced Media sports website. Hruby's work focuses on the
politics and social issues of sport, writing extensively about amateurism
issues in the NCAA, the use of Native American imagery in sport, and safety
issues in sports. His presentation at the Sport For Social Change Conference
focused on concussions in the NFL.
He started off by talking about a man by the name of
Mike Webster. For any of you that have read or seen League of Denial, you know
why or what he was referring to. It is an issue that is huge today in the NFL
and it is one they are struggling to deal with. The NFL has been accused of
hiding and lying information about head injuries and concussions from the
league. He mentioned how originally Webster’s brain looked normal but after Dr.
Bennet Omalu double checked his brain there was microscopic brain damage
similar to that of a boxer’s brain (CTE).
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| Photo via Alexa Fontanella |
“What if
getting hit in the head in football even with a helmet is similar to getting
hit in the head in boxing? What if it causes invincible brain damage?” This is the right type of question. Hruby
then asked us to imagine if there was a game out in stores. This game was fun,
it was a workout, and if one was good at this game it would make him very
popular. The game sounded great. But then he said what if every now and then a
boxing glove would hit you in the head. Sometimes it would be a little tap and
other times it would knock you out. He then asked us, “Would you allow this
game to be sold in the shelves at toy stores? And if it was allowed in stores,
would you sell it to kids?” This game he was talking about is football.
“Not playing football is not
an option to most of America right now. Should we consider it as an option? One
of those questions I was telling you about.” He then went on to what the NFL is
trying to do about this issue. USA Football has a campaign called “Heads Up”
out about safe tackling and how that can reduce the number of concussions in
the game of football. Roger Goodell mentioned that he was trying to take the
“head” out of football. Question to ask Roger Goodell, Why do football
players need to wear helmets then if you are trying to take head out of
football with safe tackle techniques?
Patrick showed these videos
to his classes with college football players in it and they
laughed. Showed it to former players and
they laughed. Not at the fact that they didn’t support it, they do, but at the
fact that the NFL thought they could take the head out of the game. “To make a
tackle, you need to get leverage. To get leverage you lower your shoulders.
When you lower your shoulders, your head follows.”
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| Photo via Alexa Fontanella |
“When football causes brain damage, who is going to pay for
it? We’re not just talking about people dying, were talking about people living
but living poorly. These kind of brain problems makes life hard, hard to work,
hard to do much of anything.” He ended
his presentation with a bold statement. “We have to ask for Austin, for
Mike Webster, for the people that have been or will be hurt by football. We owe
them an answer and we wont have an answer if we don’t ask the right questions.”
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Archived Presentation:
http://goodwincollege.adobeconnect.com/p5qcaowrgg7/
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Archived Presentation:
http://goodwincollege.adobeconnect.com/p5qcaowrgg7/
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Lindrit Shkodra is originally from Diber, Macedonia but lives in Maple Shade, NJ. He is a sophomore in the Sports Management program and is currently the Treasurer of the Drexel Sport Management Student Union. He has work experience with Ron Jaworski's Celebrity Golf Challenge and Ridgewells Catering at the 2013 U.S. Open. Follow Lindrit on Twitter @LindritShkodra.
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