Can Football Be Made Safer?

TWO MASSIVE FOOTBALL PLAYERS COLLIDING AT FULL SPEED CAN GENERate in excess of 1,000 lbs. of force -- more than enough to snap a player's bones, rip ligaments and wreck joints. So it's not surprising that nearly 500 N.F.L. players have been injured seriously enough to miss a game so far this season. What's perhaps more surprising is that there aren't more accidents like Dennis Byrd's. In the previous 15 years, only two pro players have suffered permanent spinal-cord injuries. (Diving holds the dubious distinction of being the most backbreaking sport.)

Sports doctors and equipment engineers have struggled over the years to make football safer. Voigt Hodgson, a Wayne State University bioengineer, says helmet improvements have led to an 85% decrease in serious brain injury among all football players since 1958. Research by Dr. Joseph Torg, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Sports Medicine Center, led to rule changes in 1976 that banned "spearing," in which a player uses his helmet as a battering ram to tackle an opponent. Torg had shown that spearing was a leading cause of neck injuries (indeed, experts are debating whether Byrd accidentally speared his teammate). Since the ban, the number of permanent cervical-cord injuries among high school and college players has plummeted from 34 reported in 1976 to just one last year.

Nevertheless, players are still using helmets as a weapon. Houston Oiler quarterback Warren Moon was speared by a tackler last month and remains sidelined. In a SPORTS ILLUSTRATED article last week, he charged that "creating turnovers has become so important that players today are being coached to strike with the helmet first" in the hope of jarring the ball loose.

"No equipment I know of will protect the cervical spine if kids use the wrong technique," contends Torg. The N.F.L., he argues, should set the example for safe play, since less experienced players are influenced by watching pro games. Frederick Mueller, a University of North Carolina physical-education professor who conducts annual surveys of catastrophic ) football injuries, says "announcers do a disservice" with their enthusiasm for particularly violent hits. "They're putting the wrong message across to young players."