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\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Monday, April <\/strong>4, 2016<\/strong> Montenigro assigned a value of cumulative head impact for each season each player played, based on the position played and number of games played per season, and totaled up the number. The higher the value, the more likely a player would be to have problems later in life. The \u201ccumulative head impact index\u201d was calculated through a combination of the football history reported by each player, along with the impact frequency recorded by the fairly new study of \u201caccelerometers,\u201d helmet sensors that have recently begun to record the number and intensity of subconcussive hits to players at different levels of football. This study focused more on the subconcussive hits (those that result in significant contact to the helmet but not a concussion-causing blow) than on concussions. Recent accelerometer studies, according to Montenigro\u2019s research, estimated that high school players average 600 subconcussive hits to the head per season, while college players average 1,000. Then, the 93 players were polled to see about their current mental health. The more subconscussive blows, the study found, the higher the chance of a brain-related malady later in life.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not a surprise, and it\u2019s not conclusive, either; 93 players is not an exhaustive study that proves anything beyond a doubt. But it is encouraging that Montenigro and his mentor in the survey, BU\u2019s Robert Stern, were able to quantify that players who took more blows seem more likely to have mental issues down the road.<\/p>\n I spoke with Stern on Saturday, and he left me with the idea that parents and coaches and even the NFL should be using this study as another brick in the wall, and a cautionary look at cumulative head trauma. \u201cWe\u2019re learning just enough now that we\u2019re in the toddlerhood of studying the long-term effect of subconcussive blows,\u201d Stern said. \u201cA good analogy is this: I used to be a Little League coach. It\u2019s been mandated for a while now that kids can\u2019t pitch more than a certain number of pitches per game, per week. The goal was to prevent that kid from an overuse injury, and everyone agrees that it\u2019s a good idea to try to prevent these overuse injuries. Yet we don\u2019t do anything about the number of times a head gets hit in football, with the most important part of your body getting jostled or taking a big blow. You drop Johnny off at youth football practice, and you don\u2019t ever think, \u2018I want to know how many times he gets hit in the head.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat is absolutely what this study should be doing\u2014getting people to start thinking about the cumulative effect of these repetitive blows to the head,\u201d said Montenigro. \u201cThis research can\u2019t say anything definitive, but it should give parents an idea that repeated blows at an early age, and not just concussions, should be monitored. What\u2019s apparent is that concussions suffered did not predict cognitive impairment. But subconcussive hits did predict cognitive impairment, depression and apathy.\u201d<\/p>\n Quotes of the Week<\/strong><\/p>\n I<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cWe will be able to accurately diagnose CTE during a person\u2019s life, perhaps in the next five to 10 years.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014Dr. Robert Stern, professor of neurology at the Boston University School of Medicine, and the clinical core director of BU\u2019s Alzheimer\u2019s and CTE Center in Boston, to me on Saturday.<\/em><\/p>\n This is not just a Quote of the Week. It doubles as Headline of the Week.<\/p>\n Stern has been working diligently on this, and if he does find a way to diagnose CTE in living people, it would be one of the great breakthroughs for former athletes, ever.<\/p>\n II<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cWhen Robert got hurt against Seattle [in the 2012 playoffs], he lost his LCL and his ACL. None of that had to do with the read-option. I think the read-option is what kept him healthy. He had faked the read-option where people were playing the run, and he was just outstanding with his play-action passes. He got better with the dropback passing game, because the secondary coverages we saw were fairly simple. And everybody said, you know, we can\u2019t run the read-option anymore because they\u2019ve it taken it away. The only guy that\u2019s really run it consistently is Russell Wilson, and he\u2019s had more success the last two years than even the first two years. Wilson doesn\u2019t care how many yards he gets. He gets as many yards as he can, and then he falls to the ground. You will never see him get hit running the read-option, or very seldom, because he knows when to give it, when to keep it, when to slide, and that\u2019s what quarterbacks who run the read-option have to do. He knows there is nothing more important than him staying healthy. For all these analysts that say, \u2018Oh, you can\u2019t run it because you take too many hits,\u2019 well, that was true about Robert. Robert did take too many hits. One thing I didn\u2019t do a very good job of is trying to emphasize to him that you can\u2019t take a hit; you\u2019ve got to slide, you are too valuable. He was very competitive, and he didn\u2019t want to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 Monday, April 4, 2016 Another Important Study About the Long-term Impact of Football By Peter King (The following is an excerpt from Sports Illustrated\u2019s Monday Morning Quarterback column posted on April 4.) We\u2019re getting weary, understandably, of the flood of information about the potential dangers of football, particularly at a young age, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31557"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31557"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31566,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31557\/revisions\/31566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAnother Important Study About the Long-term Impact of Football<\/strong>
\nBy Peter King <\/strong><\/p>\n(The following is an excerpt from Sports Illustrated\u2019s Monday Morning Quarterback<\/i> column posted on April 4.)<\/h6>\n