College Football has gone under some major changes in the past 20 years: In 1998 the sport indoctrinated the BCS- Bowl Championship Series. It was an idea to settle who “really was #1 and #2” in college football. However, it brought more critics than fans and rarely got the top two right. In 2014, the college football playoff became the law of the land and so far it’s been a huge success with some minor flaws but what system is flawless? And of course, there have been some new rules as far the fair catch, shortening the game, etc… But there is a rumor that simply will not go away and its making me lose sleep( not really): banning kickoffs in college football- completely.
I understand the reason for this speculation. Player safety has become more and more a priority in college football, as it should. Players need to be protected and I think we should always put their safety at the top. NCAA studies have shown that concussions account for 7.4 percent of all injuries but 20 percent of kickoff injuries. Contact sports like football come with risks and those risks need to be addressed, but at what costs? Take away the kickoffs and the game looks very different. And I don’t think the NCAA would stop at kickoffs; punts would be next as well. The more they take away, the more the sport looks like flag football and who would want to watch that? I can play that with my family and friends for free. The Kickoff is special- it’s intense, it’s the beginning of the game and of a series, and it’s tradition. It entertains fans and can alter momentum and the outcome of a game. But if the NCAA takes away the kickoff, I’m afraid it would alter more than just injuries. It would change the game forever and it wouldn’t be a good thing. So how do we find a happy medium? I say new technology will be our savior.
Technology is changing and growing at a fast rate, specifically in sports medicine. Today, less than a handful of programs are using a new wearable GPS device known as “Catapult”. Catapult measure’s how fast a player is running, how often and quickly he is changing direction, accelerating, decelerating, and a variety of other options. One of the schools using this new technology is Georgia Tech. Director of applied sports science, Ryan Horton had this to say about Catapult: “If you take one of those guys and you go and you look at the numbers, (and) he’s doing 20 high-speed change of directions to the left but he’s only doing two high-speed change of directions to the right, that leg isn’t strong enough yet to be able to plan and accelerate, or he doesn’t have confidence in it,” said Ryan Horton, Tech’s director of applied sports science, a new position created by Head Coach Geoff Collins. “Either way, that guy’s not ready to be back in live action yet.” This to me is progress without sacrificing the game’s best qualities/features.
The evolution of sports medicine is the cure for football injuries and we should hope and pray it continues to get better. If technology can save a players life, prevent a concussion, or any kind of injury without having to alter the rules, then everybody wins.
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