One Football Rule Change Might Lower Concussion Risk

Article by Dennis Thompson. Full article here. En Español aqui.

TUESDAY, Oct. 2, 2018 (HealthDay News) -- The most dangerous play in football can be rendered safer through a simple rule change, a new study out of the Ivy League suggests.

Moving the kickoff line forward by just five yards -- from the 35- to the 40-yard line -- reduced the average annual concussion rate in Ivy League football by more than 68 percent, the study revealed.

That change makes players less likely to run the ball forward, eliminating the potential for high-speed collisions during kickoff returns, said study author Douglas Wiebe, director of the Penn Injury Science Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

"At the end of the day, the results are really quite compelling," Wiebe said.

Kickoff returns account for more concussions than any other play in football.

In 2015, kickoffs accounted for 6 percent of all plays during a game but 21 percent of all concussions in the Ivy League, the researchers said.

The findings were published online Oct. 1 as a research letter in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about sports-related concussions.

SOURCES: Douglas Wiebe, Ph.D., director, Penn Injury Science Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Bernadette D'Alonzo, MPH, clinical research coordinator, Penn Injury Science; Kristen Dams-O'Connor, Ph.D., director, Brain Injury Research Center at Mount Sinai, New York City; Michael Stuart, M.D., co-director, sports medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.; Oct. 1, 2018, Journal of the American Medical Association, online