When the parents of a prospective Colorado football player express worry about the health and safety of their son playing the game, Buffaloes head coach Mike MacIntyre is quick to offer a rebuttal. He asks if that player ever rides a bike.
“He is a lot more in trouble riding that bicycle than he is ever playing football,” MacIntyre said. “It’s a proven fact.”
Well, not exactly.
MacIntyre’s argument likely stems from the coverage of studies in recent years that show bicycling is more dangerous than football. The American Association of Neurological Surgeons study tracked national emergency room visits for traumatic brain injuries in 2009. It found that bicycling accounted for the highest number of incidents (85,389), well ahead of football (46,948). But those statistics account for men and women across all age groups. According to a similar Center for Disease Control study that tracked emergency room visits for boys ages 10-to-19 over eight years, reported head injuries from football (13,667) well exceeded those from riding a bike (4,377). Bicyclists are also not required to wear a helmet and not subject to repeated blows to the head.
But therein lies the difficulty of assessing the true impact of head injuries. What data most accurately represents concussion rates? The University of Colorado is spearheading an effort to find answers.
The NCAA and Department of Defense’s Concussions Assessment and Education (CARE) Consortium have provided a $1 million grant over three years for the Pac-12 Brain Trauma Task Force to study the diagnosis and treatment of head injuries — with CU picked as the coordinating school responsible for creating “a conference-wide foundation of reliable, consistent, and uniform basic-level clinical brain trauma and concussion data among all Pac-12 institutions,” according to a news release.
For its research, the Pac-12 has partnered with “SyncThink EYE-SYNC” technology: a head-mounted eye-tracking virtual reality system for recording, viewing and analyzing eye movements to help identify visual tracking impairment. Each Pac-12 school received two EYE-SYNC devices last month to begin baseline testing for student athletes across all sports. When a potential head injury occurs, athletes will receive additional testing to cross-reference those baseline results to better determine the severity and symptoms.
It will be CU’s task to organize that data in hopes that it will provide further information about both the prevalence of head injuries among college athletes and possibly prevention ideas.
“The safety of the game is improving,” CU athletic director Rick George said. “When I played (cornerback at Illinois in the early 1980s), we didn’t have the protocols that they do today.”
MacIntyre has praised safety improvements the sport has made over the years, including the NCAA’s elimination of two-a-day practices, emphasis on proper tackling methods and upgraded helmet technology. But MacIntyre’s distaste for football detractors who claim the sport unsafe for youth participation is understandable. As the son of a former college head coach and someone who has coached his son at CU, MacIntyre has lived the game his entire life. He wants to see football flourish.
“There are a lot of issues out there that attack football,” MacIntyre said, “but I still think it’s a phenomenal game.”
