The co-chair of an NFL committee on brain and spine injuries says players will soon be wearing impact-sensors. By next season, we may have–in addition to the crunching sound and the groans–hard, measurable data on precisely how head-crushing a hit a player has just delivered. The objective is to help stem the massive outbreak of concussions. But the move seems just as likely to have an opposite effect.Harborview brain injury expert Dr. Richard Ellenbogen–who was named co-chair of the committee this past March–tells the Puget Sound Business Journal “we are going to have sensors [on players], just like a radiation badge that doctors who perform X-rays wear.” Ellenbogen told the Journal “we are going to decide for next season if there is any way to detect [the force of impact that players feel]…I think that is coming around the corner, but we just don’t know which is the best technology yet.” (One Seattle company, X2 Impact, has been getting a lot of press in the last month for their sensor mouthpiece.) He says committee members will meet the week after next to decide.A little more data might be healthy. But come on, once you start measuring the brutality of tackles, how long before that data gets passed up to the broadcast booth? And then it’s going to have the opposite effect–creating even more competition among hit-artists as to who can deliver the most vicious blows. There’s two things football fans love most–hit porn and stats. Seems like this is a perfect way to give them more of both.
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