Comparing The Treatment Of Concussions Between The NFL And NHL

Cassie McClellan has a great article today on Raw Charge, comparing the issues of hits to the head and concussions between the NFL and the NHL. The NFL has just recently started to acknowledge the severity of these injuries, after years of league-wide neglect and basic ignorance concerning concussions.

It's been well documented that the National Football League has had serious problems with concussions. The latest findings, however, suggest that the NFL has an even bigger problem than they had previously thought. Many football players aren't reporting their concussions for fear of ridicule and losing their spots on the roster. Part of this is due to the military-esque culture within football, but it's also due to the fact that the NFL does not guarantee player contracts.

Cassie goes on to compare this to the NHL, where head injuries are at an all time high as the game becomes faster and more violent.

The NHL knows that part of its appeal lies in the level of violence in games. This contradicts its desire to be a family-friendly show, however, which is why it tries to walk that fine line between boxing and figure skating. Fighting is technically illegal in the NHL, but no one gets suspended for it.

A five minute penalty is nothing but a mere slap on the wrist as compared with other sports penalties on fighting, and a two-minute penalty for roughing is even less than that. Suspensions are often handed out in Major League Baseball and the NBA if the situation degenerates into a brawl of some kind. In the NHL, the instigator penalty and associated fines and suspensions are to make sure that the game still keeps some semblance of respectability among the easily offended.

Cassie makes the argument that the NHL and NFL are more concerned with appearing as if they care about head injuries, while they have yet to make the big steps to truly prevent them. She goes on to suggest a number of interesting theories on how to help curb the rise of injuries in the NHL, including removal of the instigator penalty to allow the players to police themselves if the NHL won't do it consistently themselves.

You can read the entirety of the article here.