This is no coincidence.
Football isn’t NASCAR. It’s demolition derby. The collisions aren’t accidents. Head trauma is baked into the game. Boston University researchers estimate that the average high school football player absorbs 1,000 blows to the head per season. In a pair of studies, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest researchers recently found that seven- and eight-year-old boys received an average of 80 head hits per season, while boys ages nine through twelve received 240 hits. Some of the impacts were 80 g’s of force or greater, equivalent to a serious car crash.
Now consider the human brain. It’s essentially a blob of Jell-O, floating inside the skull like an egg yolk. Getting hit in the head—or just experiencing a sudden change in momentum, like the kind that comes from a blindside tackle—can cause the brain to stretch, warp, and collide with the bony inner surface of the skull. This produces damage. The damage can be structural, akin to a cracked microchip in a laptop computer. It can be metabolic, like the same computer suddenly losing its electrical supply. Some damage is obvious, visible from the sidelines. Other damage is subtle, almost impossible to detect, even for trained experts in a clinical setting.
With adequate rest and recovery, most concussions resolve themselves in a relatively short period of time. But other damage—such as neurodegenerative diseases and severe cases of postconcussion syndrome—never does. Current research indicates that damage can be cumulative; that getting hit in the head repeatedly is worse than getting hit once or twice; that both concussive and subconcussive blows are dangerous; and that getting hit while recovering from a previous blow or concussion is particularly risky. There currently is no definitive causal link between youth football and long-term neurodegenerative disease. Yet depending on duration and severity, brain damage can mean missed games. Missed classes. Learning disabilities. Changes in mood, memory, personality. It can permanently alter who you are, and who you have a chance of becoming.
Three years ago, Purdue University researchers compared brain scans of concussed and nonconcussed high school football players. They found changes in brain function—evidence of damage—in both groups. The results were stunning, so much so that the researchers initially thought their scanners were broken. The changes appeared to subside in the off-season. However, the researchers still don’t know what that means, or if those same players’ brains suffered lasting harm. In a subsequent study, they found that high school players exhibit brain function changes long before they have recognizable signs of a concussion—and that the more hits a player endured on the field, the more their brain function changed.
“No brain trauma is good brain trauma,” Cantu says. “We’re not paranoid about it, but when you can reduce it—or every chance you get to eliminate it short of stopping something completely—it’s a good thing.”
Should your child play football? Start with a simple fact: no helmet can prevent any of the above.
As a child, Monet didn’t worry about what football helmets can’t prevent. She enjoyed what the sport could provide. The game took her father, Mel Sr., from a home without indoor plumbing in segregated Beaumont, Texas, to his first drink of cold water from a refrigerated fountain on the UCLA campus. He parlayed his standout career with the Lions—two Pro Bowl selections and the 1967 Rookie of the Year Award—into an off-season job with Ford, later building a network of car dealerships that eventually became one of the largest black-owned businesses in the U.S.
“When I went to college, I shrunk my first comforter,” Monet says. “Because I didn’t know how to do laundry. I had never bothered to learn. That’s when I realized I grew up rich.”
Monet grew up with money, and she grew up with football. Lions running back Billy Sims was a frequent guest at her family’s suburban Detroit home. Hall of Famer Barry Sanders showed up to watch one of her high school plays. Dad had a box at the Pontiac Silverdome. Monet was there with him for every Lions home game. When her brothers played at UCLA, Monet would get out of school on Friday afternoons, hop on her father’s plane, and fly to wherever the Bruins were playing. When her brother Mel Jr. played for the Los Angeles Rams, she went to the American Bowl in Germany, right after the fall of the Berlin Wall. “I had pieces of it,” she says. “I can’t find them. That’s how carefree we were. It’s all a blur. We were always at a game. Every single weekend.”
In high school, Monet played tennis. It was a choice made out of chromosomal necessity. Her uncle, Miller, played 10 seasons in the NFL and the American Football League. Cousins Jerry Ball and D’Marco Farr also played in the NFL. When Mel Sr. met Monet’s mother, Mae, he told her that he wanted 11 sons. An entire football team. Some of Monet’s earliest memories are of her father coaching her brothers in Pee Wee football. Dad was a drill sergeant. Every morning, he ran the boys through backyard agility exercises. He would sit in a sled and have his sons drag it up a large hill. On the sidelines, he wore a leather visor and pork chop sideburns. He smoked Kool Milds. The Birmingham-Bloomfield Vikings went undefeated. Didn’t give up a single point. Monet was a cheerleader—and again, it wasn’t her first choice.