For several years, I regularly wrote about concussions and other injuries that occurred in youth and high school football. As a result, my wife and I decided our young son wouldn’t play the sport. He loved swimming and baseball; why risk a serious injury on the gridiron that could harm his performance in those other sports?
But recently I read about a new UW-Platteville study suggesting football in the absence of a concussion is no more dangerous to the brain than any other sport. I was skeptical, but I also wondered if my wife and I made a mistake in not allowing our son to play.
“Maybe football isn’t as bad as we think,” says lead researcher Matthew Rogatzki, an assistant professor of health and human performance at UW-Platteville.
Rogatzki and his team of researchers measured two biomarkers of brain injury in blood serum before and after a UW-Platteville junior varsity football game last fall. The biomarkers determine whether brain injury occurs when players experience sub-concussive impacts — head impacts not serious enough to cause a concussion.
The results showed that serum biomarkers of brain injury increase following a football game, even in players not experiencing a concussion, which is what researchers expected. But Rogatzki was surprised that the increase in biomarker levels of players without concussions were no different than those of athletes in other sports such as running, swimming and basketball.
The study was published in the July issue of the International Journal of Immunopathology and Pharmacology.
Although Rogatzki admits more research is necessary to prove that football is safer than previously thought, his initial work has the potential to be pioneering, and he’s collecting biomarker data from a wider sample of UW-Platteville football players this season.
Additionally, select Pioneers are wearing Riddell helmets equipped with technology to analyze the number and location of hits to the head. That data helps determine if biomarker levels correlate with hits.
“Currently, there is no single method of diagnosing concussion injury,” Rogatzki says. “Finding a biomarker to diagnose concussion will provide an objective test.”
Mike Emendorfer, head football coach and interim athletic director at UW-Platteville, says this research “has the potential to make the sport of football significantly safer at all levels.”
Rogatzki has applied for grant money from the National Institutes of Health to fund further studies, and he may partner with other universities conducting similar research.
“I would eventually love to take this to the NFL,” he says.
