Are football rule changes making the game 'soft'?

On this week's "TechKnow," contributor Kyle Hill travels to two of the most celebrated schools in college football history—Virginia Tech and University of Nebraska, Lincoln—to explore cutting edge research and technology devoted to reducing the risk of concussions. One thing the experts he talked to agreed on is that there is no magic bullet to eliminating the risk.

“You got to have the right rules, you got to have the right coaching to try to minimize all that exposure and then you have the best equipment,” says Prof. Stefan Duma, head of Virginia Tech’s Department of Biomedical Engineering. “We want to look at football and work with the coaches, work with the leagues, bring the exposure down and make it a sport that's on the level of the other sports in terms of risk. And I think we can do that.”

But change is rarely easy, especially in a sport that’s so embedded in our culture that its main event commands the attention of more than a third of the country’s population, according to Nielsen. 

Baseball may be the national pastime, but football is the national obsession, and if you’ve ever been in a sports bar during a game, you know that big hits are a crowd pleaser. Will changing the game to reduce the risk of concussions ruin it or make it “soft”?

Not so, says Duma. “People need to go back and look at history and look at what football was like 30 years ago when we were having 30 players a year die playing football.” 

Duma says rule changes and the modern helmet have greatly reduced the fatality risk. “Football's a lot safer, it changed, you know, you can't walk up and whack a guy in the head anymore and does that make it softer? Well, maybe it does but you know, 10 years from now, we'll look back and say, how did they play like that? You know, the game's going to evolve.”

The concussion crisis has already had an impact on the evolution of football.  In 2009, the National Football League tightened its return-to-play guidelines, saying that if a player shows signs of memory loss, persistent dizziness or headaches, he should not return to the game.  Before that, the guidelines only said a player should be removed from the game if he lost consciousness.

In 2011, the NFL moved kickoffs up to the 35-yard line, a move that reduced concussions from the play by 43 percent.  But the change was controversial among players and coaches, who worried the move would reduce scoring, increase touchbacks and make the game less exciting.

This year, the NFL banned “forcible contact with crown of the helmet” outside the tackle box. A violation carries a 15-yard penalty.  But when a low dive tackle resulted in a fractured fibula for Green Bay Packers Wide Receiver Randall Cobb, some players blamed the new rules. 

While changes in the game of football are controversial, Professor Duma says they are the number one way to reduce the risk of concussion – and that is ultimately good for the game.  “If we can reduce the number of head impacts, that's going to be a huge step forward. Is the game softer? Maybe it's a little softer, It's still really fun to watch and it'll be fun to watch going in the future.”

Watch "TechKnow" this Sunday at 7:30pm ET/4:30pm PT for more about the science of concussion prevention, diagnosis and treatment.