Tech to Protect Football Players' Heads

Oct. 12, 2004 — -- During a Saturday night football game under the lights this September, DeShawn Smith snagged a pass and turned to run when he was smacked by a defensive player — helmet to helmet. He struggled to his feet and walked to the sideline, where he sat down and collapsed.

Three days later, Smith, a high school sophomore running back at Tyhee High in Sea Tac, Wash., was dead. The cause was a ruptured blood vessel between his brain and its outer lining.

Two weeks after Smith's fatal collision, high school player Jacob Snakenberg died after taking multiple hits on the field in Centennial, Colo.

Although most don't end as tragically as Smith and Snakenberg's cases, head injuries are fairly common in the game of football. And studies show the youngest players are most at risk.

Research by the Brain Injury Association has found that high school football players have a 20 percent risk of a brain injury during their four-year careers. Even seasoned players can be seriously affected, as when quarterback Troy Aikman of the Dallas Cowboys and Steve Young of the San Francisco 49ers were forced to retire early as a result of on-field blows to the head.

Researchers are working on several ways to reduce players' risk of head injuries, from designing better helmets to using sensors and computer tests to assess the severity of a hit and determine when to remove a player from the field.

"The brain is more vulnerable after a concussion until it is completely healed," said Mark Lovell, a specialist in sports-related concussions at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School. "That's why it's so important to know when a serious impact has occurred and then get them off the field."

At Simbex, a Lebanon, N.H.-based company, researchers have developed a wired helmet system called HITS — Head Impact Telemetry System — that reads the intensity of impacts in terms of "G," or gravity forces, and alerts trainers when a player has taken a strong hit to the head.