Amending Sport Guidelines May Reduce Head Impacts

 

There are a number of ways the NCAA can update its guidelines to further protect its players from unnecessary head impacts.

“First, we would recommend enforceable regulations rather than enforceable guidelines. Our data suggests that if the NCAA were to adopt regulations inspired by the current NFL regulations (i.e. enforceable limits on the number of contact practices — shell or full pad), it would result in a large reduction in the number of head impacts experienced by the college football players,” Reynolds said.

“Right now the best way for someone to reduce their chances of sustaining a concussion is to limit the number of head impacts they sustain,” he said. “While this is not a study of concussion per se, the best thing the NCAA can do to reduce the incidence of concussion is to reduce the number of head impacts that athletes experience, and our study provides data that suggests that regulation of practice type might be an effective way to do that.”

Reference

1. Pelak M, et al. J Eval Clin Pract. 2015 doi:10.1111/jep.12341.

This article originally appeared on Clinical Pain Advisor