Is the NFL Safer Than Excessive College Soccer?

[ad_1] Close to the tip of the high-school soccer season a number of years in the past, John Pizzi realized he had an issue. Due to season-ending accidents, the soccer group at Riverdale Nation College, the New York personal highschool the place he's the athletic director, didn't have sufficient youngsters to complete the season.

He canceled the group’s final recreation after which referred to as Chris Nowinski, the CEO and co-founder of the Concussion Legacy Basis, who has been speaking for years about the necessity to higher shield athletes of all ages from persistent traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the degenerative mind illness attributable to repeated hits to the pinnacle.

“I stated to him, ‘It's important to assist me: soccer is both not going to proceed right here or now we have to determine one thing out,’” Pizzi says.

Nowinski dove into analysis and checked out how Riverdale and its sports activities league, the Metropolitan Unbiased Soccer League, would possibly tweak the sport in order that gamers had been injured much less incessantly. He discovered there have been some simple wins—analysis had discovered that faculty kickoffs within the Ivy League particularly made up 6% of performs however 21% of concussions, so eliminating kickoffs might assist simply keep away from some accidents—and put collectively a presentation with a couple of dozen options.

Among the adjustments had been minimal, like limiting groups to six hours of full-contact observe within the preseason and 20 minutes per week within the common season. Some had been larger, like eliminating kickoffs. Pizzi and Nowinski offered the concepts to the league after which to oldsters, and although many individuals had been skeptical, most understood that they wanted to do one thing to get participation up and accidents down. So that they determined to check out the brand new guidelines.

Their adjustments had been extraordinarily uncommon outdoors of the world {of professional} soccer. Though the NFL, pushed by the gamers’ union, has made some important adjustments in recent times to attempt to scale back head accidents, youth leagues like Pop Warner, the Nationwide Federation of State Excessive College Associations (NFHS), and even the NCAA have completed little or no.

“Everyone in soccer is conscious of what the NFL has completed and has made an lively selection to not observe,” Nowinski says. “It’s only a dramatic failure of management.”

<img alt="Riverdale football" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-nimg="fill" class="absolute inset-0 h-full w-full object-cover" style="position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent" sizes="100vw" srcset="/redesign/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.time.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2025%2F10%2Friverdale-football.jpg&w=320&q=75 320w, /redesign/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.time.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2025%2F10%2Friverdale-football.jpg&w=480&q=75 480w, /redesign/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.time.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2025%2F10%2Friverdale-football.jpg&w=640&q=75 640w, /redesign/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.time.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2025%2F10%2Friverdale-football.jpg&w=750&q=75 750w, /redesign/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.time.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2025%2F10%2Friverdale-football.jpg&w=828&q=75 828w, /redesign/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.time.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2025%2F10%2Friverdale-football.jpg&w=1080&q=75 1080w, /redesign/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.time.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2025%2F10%2Friverdale-football.jpg&w=1200&q=75 1200w, /redesign/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.time.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2025%2F10%2Friverdale-football.jpg&w=1440&q=75 1440w, /redesign/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.time.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2025%2F10%2Friverdale-football.jpg&w=1920&q=75 1920w, /redesign/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.time.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2025%2F10%2Friverdale-football.jpg&w=2400&q=75 2400w, /redesign/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.time.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2025%2F10%2Friverdale-football.jpg&w=3840&q=75 3840w" src="https://time.com/redesign/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.time.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2025%2F10%2Friverdale-football.jpg&w=3840&q=75"/> Participation in Riverdale's soccer program has elevated because the faculty modified some guidelines to make the sport safer. Jim Anness—Riverdale Nation College Modifications to make soccer safer have met resistance in any respect ranges—even from the very best workplace. In a September social-media submit, President Donald Trump referred to as the league’s new kickoff coverage “‘sissy’ soccer” and stated that “the NFL has to eliminate that ridiculous trying new Kickoff Rule.”

Scientists, in the meantime, are beginning to higher perceive CTE as extra athletes say they imagine they've it. “Our greatest understanding of what causes CTE is that it’s the cumulative pressure that an individual will get uncovered to,” says Dr. Daniel Daneshvar, chief of the division of mind harm rehabilitation at Harvard Medical College.

CTE is nearer to Alzheimer’s illness than it's to a traumatic mind harm, Daneshvar says. Scientists imagine that repeated hits to the pinnacle injury the mind cells, which causes persistent irritation and cells to transform right into a diseased and dying state. That sort of diseased mind cell is much like the sort present in Alzheimer’s and a number of different neurodegenerative ailments.

As a result of CTE is attributable to cumulative head impacts and never only one huge blow, individuals who begin enjoying soccer as youngsters—and who typically don’t play previous highschool—can find yourself with CTE. One 2011 research discovered that high-school gamers in some positions skilled as many as 868 impacts to the pinnacle over one 14-week season. One other Boston College research discovered that the danger of growing CTE doubles for each 2.6 years of enjoying soccer.

Shane Tamura, the gunman who killed 4 folks in Manhattan in July earlier than taking his personal life, believed that he had developed CTE despite the fact that he by no means performed professionally and even in faculty. (CTE can at present be identified solely after an individual has died.) Tamura, who began soccer at age 6 and performed via highschool, reported having frequent, debilitating complications as an grownup. He left a three-page be aware in his pockets referencing CTE and asking researchers—together with, reportedly, Nowinski— to check his mind. In September, New York Metropolis’s health worker launched a press release saying that it had discovered “unambiguous diagnostic proof” of CTE in Tamura’s mind.

What the NFL modified to cut back accidents Lately, as analysis about CTE has grow to be extra conclusive, some sports activities leagues have begun to concede that head impacts are an issue. In 2016, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell acknowledged that football-related head trauma was linked to mind illness, a giant step for a league that had been reluctant to confess any connection.

Since then, the NFL has made a variety of adjustments to recreation guidelines and observe tips to attempt to scale back head impacts. The league has prohibited tackling throughout offseason practices and in early levels of preseason, and permits just one full-contact observe per week. It decreased the size of extra time within the preseason and common season to 10 minutes from 15, and prohibited gamers from decreasing their heads to make contact with an opponent utilizing their helmet. Maybe most significantly, the NFL considerably modified the kickoff within the 2024 season, transferring groups nearer collectively to restrict how briskly gamers run at each other.

The adjustments seem like decreasing concussions. Recorded concussions decreased 17% in 2024, the yr the brand new kickoff guidelines went into place, in comparison with 2023.

However apart from Pizzi’s Metropolitan Unbiased Soccer League, few faculty, highschool, or youth leagues have made main adjustments to how the sport is performed—and even acknowledged the connection between the sport and CTE.

“If the identical rule adjustments which have been carried out on the NFL stage had been carried out on the faculty, highschool, and youth stage, it could considerably scale back the variety of people who develop CTE and the severity of CTE for many who develop it,” stated Daneshvar.

Fewer adjustments on the faculty stage The NCAA, for instance, nonetheless permits a comparatively excessive variety of dwell contact practices—these through which gamers put on full pads and observe tackling and blocking—based on its Division I handbook. Whereas preseason begins with 5 days of observe with out dwell contact, college students can observe in full pads starting on the sixth day. After that, faculties are allowed to have eight full-contact practices within the preseason, and they're allowed to observe tackling and blocking for so long as 75 minutes in every observe.

The NCAA has additionally not adopted the NFL’s kickoff adjustments. (Trump alluded to this in his submit: “Thankfully, faculty soccer will stay the identical, hopefully endlessly!!” he wrote.)

“The NFL makes adjustments to the kickoff rule, and that looks as if a rule that may be carried out extensively. I at all times marvel why that hasn’t been carried out throughout different ranges,” says Dr. Michael Alosco, a neuropsychologist who's the co-director of scientific analysis at Boston College’s CTE Middle. “When you consider CTE, one of the best ways to mitigate it's to cut back your quantity of publicity.”

The NCAA has made some adjustments, although far fewer than the NFL. Sure drills—just like the Oklahoma drill, through which two gamers primarily collide head-on—have been prohibited in faculty soccer since 2021, the NCAA says. Again in 2012, the NCAA additionally moved kickoffs to the 35-yard line from the 30 within the hope that extra balls can be kicked out of play and never returned. Nonetheless, many kickoffs are nonetheless returned, and NCAA kickoffs are vastly totally different from these within the NFL right now as a result of they nonetheless contain gamers working at one another from nice distances, permitting them to construct up pace that may result in arduous hits.

The NCAA declined to remark for this story. Its Division 1 handbook outlines a technique it units itself aside from leagues just like the NFL: “Faculty soccer is totally different from skilled soccer and collegiate coaches depend on these observe alternatives to show their student-athletes the basics of the sport,” the handbook says.

Nominal adjustments to highschool soccer Highschool soccer has completed even lower than faculty. Though each highschool and league can change its personal guidelines, just like the Metropolitan League did, most look to the NFHS for steering on participant well being and security.

When requested whether or not it had modified any elements to the sport, like kickoff, to cut back head influence, a NFHS spokesperson cited a 1975 rule change that outlined “spearing”—utilizing the highest of a participant’s helmet to provoke contact—as a disqualifying private foul.

In 2014, NFHS issued suggestions for minimizing head influence publicity and concussions in soccer that included limiting full-contact observe to the common season and limiting contact in practices. However the suggestions nonetheless allowed full-contact practices two to a few instances every week and restricted full-contact time to about 90 minutes per week. The suggestions additionally acknowledged that preseason practices would possibly require “extra full-contact time” than practices within the common season.

It’s not sufficient, says Nowinski, of the Concussion Legacy Basis. “There may be nonetheless a unprecedented tradition of CTE denial on the faculty, highschool, and youth ranges,” Nowkinski says.

Karissa Niehoff, CEO of NFHS, wrote in a 2019 weblog submit that there was no hyperlink between CTE and enjoying highschool soccer. She says she nonetheless believes that right now, and that there’s no method for researchers to disentangle the potential results of enjoying different sports activities once they research this query. “It is actually arduous to strictly pinpoint high-school soccer with CTE, as a result of we regularly see that the concussion harm is sort of a snowflake,” she says. “It is totally different for everyone.” (Scientists say that CTE is prompted not solely by concussions but additionally by repeated head impacts.)

“I believe now we have to keep in mind that on the decrease ranges, from youth to highschool, these should not elite athletes,” says Niehoff. “We have to essentially assist our athletes be taught the game, after which as they grow to be extra expert they usually get larger and sooner and stronger, we simply have to observe how the principles assist shield them.”

In her weblog submit, Niehoff cited a research by Munro Cullum and colleagues that studied 35 former NFL gamers over the age of fifty who had sustained at the least one concussion of their careers. It discovered no affiliation between the variety of years they'd performed or variety of head impacts they'd sustained and their cognitive perform later in life. (The research didn't have the brains of the gamers so it couldn't report on CTE.)

Cullum, a professor of psychiatry, neurology, and neurological surgical procedure on the College of Texas Southwestern Medical Middle, says that though there’s a correlation between repeated head hits and CTE, that doesn’t imply that one causes the opposite. It could possibly be that some persons are at larger threat for CTE due to genetic or different elements. He additionally believes there’s not sufficient proof to hyperlink repeated head hits to irregular conduct or cognitive decline later in life.

“We imagine that concussions and head hits generally is a threat issue for cognitive decline later in life, however not for most individuals,” he stated. CTE continues to be very uncommon, he says, and lots of NFL gamers don't have any cognitive difficulties once they become old.

Some current analysis, nonetheless, means that CTE is probably not as uncommon amongst skilled soccer gamers as as soon as thought. One 2023 research from the Boston College CTE Middle studied the brains of 376 former NFL gamers and located that 345, or 91.7%, had CTE.

NFHS has taken some steps to cut back contact, equivalent to limiting the quantity of enjoying time youngsters have in every week, as a result of some youngsters on each the varsity and junior varsity groups had been enjoying in two video games on a weekend, Niehoff says. Each state has a sports activities drugs advisory committee that's concerned in occupied with defending youngsters, she says.

However some states go even additional than NFHS requires. In 2019, New Jersey’s Interscholastic Athletic Affiliation decreased the period of time that groups might interact in full-contact drills to fifteen minutes per week, down from the restrict of 90 minutes that NFHS suggests. The state additionally restricted preseason contact drills to 6 hours whole and banned spring and summer time practices. In 2019, Michigan set a restrict of half-hour of full-contact observe every week.

Minimal protections for soccer’s youngest gamers Consultants argue that youth soccer is the least regulated of all. “In contrast to nearly each different sport in America, no person units the principles of youth soccer,” Nowinski says. “You might have a bunch of small, capitalist fiefdoms which are rewarded by enrollment, so no person is keen to be a pacesetter on these adjustments as a result of they don’t need to scare away shoppers.”

It’s simple to seek out TikTok movies of youngsters in youth soccer leagues working the Oklahoma drill or the bull within the ring drill, each of which pit two gamers in opposition to one another in shut contact. Each result in excessive incidents of harm and should not allowed on the skilled stage. However even with out these drills, youth soccer may end up in severe accidents. In 2024, a 13-year-old died from mind trauma after making a deal with throughout middle-school soccer observe; in 2023, three younger soccer gamers died of head accidents.

In contrast to on the faculty or highschool stage, there typically are not any medical professionals on the sphere throughout youth soccer video games or practices, which might imply that when somebody does get harm, their accidents can flip deadly. In 2023, a 12-year-old New Jersey boy died after collapsing at soccer observe; nobody on the sphere knew CPR.

Pop Warner, one of many largest youth soccer leagues within the U.S., made some adjustments to restrict publicity to go influence. In 2012, it banned full-speed head-on blocking or tackling drills the place gamers lined up greater than three yards aside. In 2016, it introduced that contact is restricted to 25% of observe time and stated that if a group has observe on two consecutive days, it might have dwell contact in solely considered one of them. In 2016 it additionally eradicated kickoffs for its youngest divisions, based on a spokesperson. But it surely nonetheless permits tackling for even its 6-and-under division.

The most effective technique to guard youth, Nowinski and different consultants say, is to set minimal ages for essentially the most harmful actions, like tackling. In 2011, USA Hockey banned physique checking within the 12-and-under leagues, and in 2016, U.S. Membership Soccer banned heading for gamers beneath 12. There appears to be little curiosity in banning tackling in soccer for teenagers beneath 12, although, Nowinski says.

“American soccer stands out as the solely sport on this planet that has zero dialogue of—and can most likely by no means themselves create—an age minimal for tackling,” he says.

The one method for bans on youth tackling to achieve all the youngsters who play can be state or nationwide laws. In 2023, the Concussion Legacy Basis labored with legislators in California on a invoice banning deal with soccer for youngsters beneath 12. The invoice had the assist of legislators and cleared a key legislative committee, Nowinski says, however in January 2024, Gov. Gavin Newsom vowed that he wouldn't signal it if it reached his desk. (Newsom has stated that he believes it’s potential to “strengthen” deal with soccer and develop flag soccer in California “with out implementing bans that infringe on dad and mom’ rights.”) If California gained’t move such a invoice, Nowinski says, it’s unlikely some other state will.

However making adjustments on the particular person league stage is doable—simply ask John Pizzi. The Riverdale athletic director says that though another coaches and oldsters had been hesitant at first, the league has totally embraced the safer recreation guidelines. That’s most likely as a result of they've led to decreased concussions and elevated enrollment. As highschool soccer nationally sees its numbers slip, enrollment within the soccer program at Riverdale is growing, Pizzi says.

Some households who had prohibited their youngsters from enjoying soccer have relented beneath the brand new guidelines, he says.

The varsity has found out methods to make the sport safer whereas nonetheless serving to gamers get higher, he says; utilizing a tackling wheel—primarily a giant foam donut—as an alternative of an individual helps train approach with out risking youngsters’ well being, he says. Not having to observe kickoffs frees up extra time to observe different elements of the sport. The varsity now additionally runs junior-varsity practices as “managed practices,” primarily having the coaches stroll gamers via what they’re doing fairly than simply presiding over chaos, Pizzi says.

Now, some gamers and oldsters at Riverdale’s video games have by no means skilled a season the place the group does a kickoff—they only place the ball on the sphere and begin enjoying.

Pizzi has heard from dad and mom of youngsters in different soccer leagues who're envious of the adjustments that Riverdale has made, wishing their faculty would do the identical. However, he says, he hasn’t heard from different coaches or leagues who need to implement what Riverdale has completed, and make soccer safer for teenagers to play.