With new medical discoveries related to head to head contact, the game of football has been trying to balance keeping players safe and the physicality that makes football entertaining.

Recent medical studies have found a link between head to head collisions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, known as CTE. Symptoms of CTE vary, but the most common ones are consistent headaches, memory loss, and impulsive actions. The repeated head to head contact is different from a concussion. A protein called Tau forms in the brain from this repeated contact, which kills brain cells.

The NFL has taken steps to protect their players with new targeting rules. If a player tackles his opponent and makes helmet to helmet contact, the player is ejected and their team is penalized fifteen yards.

“It’s ridiculous,” NFL cornerback Richard Sherman said. “(It’s) like telling a driver if you touch the lines, you’re getting a ticket.”

Sherman, along with many other players, feel football is heading too far away from the roots of the game in attempt to protect the players.

Although some of these current players think the rules are too strict, many former NFL players are seeing the later effects of CTE controlling how they live. Multiple of these retired players have committed suicide due to their CTE symptoms.

“I think I lost count at 15,” former NFL player Andre Waters said. “I just couldn’t do anything.”

Waters was known for being a hard hitting safety in the NFL. After the permanent brain damage he acquired from football, his life was full of scorching headaches and depression. He couldn’t even count to 15. At the age of 44, Waters committed suicide, and wanted his brain to be donated to the NFL for research.

With the recent links between football and CTE, youth football participation has been on the decline. For example, the Chicagoland Youth Football League has gone from 10,000 athletes to 7,500 within a decade. Most of the media on head injuries is negative. In 2015, the movie Concussion was released speaking on the risks of playing football.

“Letting children play football is the definition of child abuse,” Dr. Bennet Omalu said. ”Someday there will be a district attorney who will prosecute for child abuse on the football field, and it will succeed.”

Omalu was the first to identify and name CTE. His research found 110 of the 111 brains donated to the NFL for research had CTE. He then made it his mission to make athletes and parents aware of the permanent damage football can cause.

Here at Millard West High School, the football team recently got new helmets with better protection for the athletes. Along with new helmets, the coaches now take tackling practice much more serious. If a player gets a concussion, the athlete has to pass concussion protocol in order to get back on the field.

Football has made a great effort to prevent head injuries at all levels.