The American Orthopedic Society for Sports Medicine now reports that college football players are receiving brain injuries at similar rates to high school players. Until recently, the focus on brain injury in sports has rested solidly on high school football injuries. Now a study by this orthopedic society shows that concussions are increasing amongst the service academies players.
This information is all the more shocking due to the nature of the game played by the service academies. Recently, the service academies tend to play schedules dominated by teams that would seem to allow the schools less severe collisions between helmets. The severity of injury must be expected to be greater in the power conferences where the collisions between helmets would be more forceful causing greater injuries.
It may however be that the service academies face a greater risk of head injury due to the schedules they play. The schedules tend to be split between games where they are heavily overmatched by power conference teams and games where they are on a level playing field with their conference colleagues. The result may be that being unprepared for rougher play they are more apt to receive severe head injury.
Luckily, most head injuries in college football are not very severe, mostly concussions. The number of reports of brain injury at the services academies was 23 in the 2009 season and 42 in the 2010 season, which should be alarming given the total number of players involved was around 450.
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