Chris Borland's NFL retirement doesn't change Lancers stance on concussions

Whether they’re playing on Monday Night Football or a weekend game at Alumni Field in Windsor, football players are coming to terms with the spectre of brain trauma.

Chris Borland, a linebacker who played one season for the San Francisco 49ers, announced his retirement from football in early March. For him, the risks associated with a career in the NFL were too high.

“I want to be proactive,” he told ESPN after his retirement. “I’m concerned that if you wait until you have symptoms it’s too late.”

Borland wasn't the stereotypical, broken-down football veteran who had trouble remembering the days of the week. He was a 24-year old rookie poised to become one of the NFL’s breakout stars, recording 84 tackles in 14 games last season.

“There are a lot of unknowns. I can’t claim that X will happen,” he said. “I just want to live a long, healthy life, and I don’t want to have any neurological diseases or die younger than I would otherwise.”

Borland was expected to move into a starting role in the fall. After consulting with neurologists and former players about the risk of head injury, Borland stepped away from the NFL.

This public decision appears to be unprecedented. Whether it prompts an exodus of young players from the game remains to be seen.

As the University of Windsor Lancers football held its spring camp this week, players said even though they knew about Borland’s story, they weren’t reconsidering their choice to play football.

“In all honesty, you just respect the fact that he made that decision,” said Randall Beardy, a Lancers offensive lineman. “In life, the first thing you have to think about is your health, when it comes to your head what else is there to think about?”

Beardy is a third-year biochemistry major and said he’s never personally had a concussion. The Lancers don't take reports of possible concussions lightly, he said.

“If you get any report of a concussion, you’re out for a week,” he said. “It’s pretty serious. It’s the most serious injury you can have. [The recovery process] is taken very slowly and cautiously.”

Violence is a part of the game

There’s been an awareness of football’s violent nature for more than 100 years. In 1905, Theodore Roosevelt commissioned a White House Conference to make the sport safer, and threatened to ban football altogether if changes weren’t made.

In 2005, Bennet Omalu, a pathologist at the University of California Davis described the brain damage common to football players as Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) after an autopsy of NFL player Mike Webster.

CTE interferes with both memory and anger control. The symptoms are similar to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

While these issues appear over time, the immediate effects of a concussion include: disorientation, trouble sleeping, irritability, depression and anxiety.

“There’s a checklist of about 22 different symptoms that we ask players to grade themselves on when checking them out for a concussion,” said Dave Stoute, an athletic therapist at the University of Windsor. “It’s probably really hard to figure out how many players have had an issue, sometimes they have a headache or symptoms that you don’t really recognize as a concussion.”

Prevention instead of reaction

A concussion, first and foremost, is a brain injury. Even though patients become symptom-free, every concussion is dangerous. Treatment has advanced but it’s not the same as preventing concussions altogether, said Stoute.

“[Football players] are hitting with their head, a lot of them. We need to get the head out of it. These new helmets are so comfortable that you feel like you can run through a brick wall,” he said.

The cause of most football injuries is tackling, and contact accounts for 79 per cent of all reported injuries on the football field, according to a three-year study of high school players released in 2009.

The Lancers football team has five or six reported concussions each year. Most players recover without issue, but it is still the most recorded out of any varsity team, Stoute said.

The first concussion for a player shouldn’t present a risk of long-term brain damage, said Chris Albeare, a psychology professor at the University of Windsor. He said research suggests 90 per cent of concussion patients recover within 7-10 days.

For Beardy, these are good odds.

“Football is what I love to do,” he said. “I’m not going to tell a doctor how to practice medicine, but football is the weird thing inside of me that keeps me going.”