Most Pressing Sports Issue of Our Time

I believe one of, if not the most pressing sports issue in the sports world in our time, and right now I would say it is head injuries and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). CTE is a progressive degenerative disease of the brain found in people with a history of repetitive brain trauma and they are often athletes. This includes symptomatic concussions as well as asymptomatic hits to the head that do not have any symptoms. The symptoms that arise from this injury include memory loss, confusion, depression, and dementia. And these problems can arise even years after the blows to the head have stopped. As I mentioned CTE is most common among athletes who play contact sports, and is the most prominent in American Football. In the NFL and NCAA college football there is constant contact where the force of two players are being thrown into one another, and more often then not these hits are lead with the helmet or around the head area. The disease seems to be most common among athletes who play the linemen position in football, because every snap they are lined up against one another and their job is to literally throw their bodies into the opponent and like I mentioned, head first. One of the first cases this disease was found in would be with offensive linemen Mike Webster who played for the Steelers in the 1970s. More recently after former Patriots Tight End, Aaron Hernandez died in prison and they examined his brain, they found that he was suffering from this disease, and he was the youngest recorded with CTE at the time (23). The concern here is that football starts at a young age, and if you are a linemen from the time you start football until you finish, that can be constant blows to your head for over a decade. Kids want to continue playing contact football when they are in grade school, but CTE is making it seem like that would not be the best idea. Football is by far the most prominent sport of where this disease is coming from, but it is far from the only sport. You look at other contact sports like the NHL and Ice Hockey, Ultimate Fighting and the UFC, and even soccer. In ice hockey guys are constantly taking shots to the head whether it is smashing their helmets off the ice, getting crashed into against the boards, or even bare knuckle brawling with the opponent. For that same reason is why the UFC is so dangerous and should be a red flag when thinking about CTE. In the UFC the entire sport is trying to beat your opponent in a fight, and what better way to knockout or defeat you opponent then hitting them in the head? Athletes work tremendously hard to master their crafts, and to play these sports at the highest level. That is all great, but some of the ways sports are being played today do not cater well to these athletes lives once their careers are finished. Safety with athletes brains is a huge issue in sports today, and I think it needs to be addressed more.