NFL Players Should Support The Recently Modified Safety Rules

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In the past four years, the National Football League “NFL” has made several changes to the NFL rulebook advocating safety by adding rules and implementing fines on players who fail to follow these policies. Rules such as the two-a-days ban, kickoff return rule change, helmet to helmet contact fines, requirement of NFL players to use the HITS System, and banning of players to return to playing football the same day they received their concussion were examples of measures taken by the NFL that promote safety. Although most of these players oppose the reformed rules, the NFL executives support these rulings feeling it reduces the amount of serious injuries. It is imperative for the NFL to retain its recently added safety rules, since it will reduce the amount of concussions or serious injuries experienced by football players.

It used to be that National Football League “NFL” teams participated in two-a-day practices. (Thomas) Most two-a-days practices feature five hours of on field practice time. These practices were primarily used to condition football players in the summer. Negative effects caused from these practices were fatigue, heat exhaustion, and injuries due to the players increased play time. Heat exhaustion was common in these practices, due to the fact that football players were exposed to excessive amounts of heat. Heat exhaustion proved to be costly, when it was found that five football players died as of a result in participating in these two-a-days practices. (“USA Today”) This sent a wake up call to the NFL that they needed to implement safety on this issue. After the NFL realized that the two-a-days intervened with player’s safety, the NFL restricted the players to 2.5 hours of on-field practice time. ...

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