Is football no longer a safe sport? This question has recently become a popular topic in the media. In the past year, the National Football League (NFL) has made many rule adjustments in order to protect the athletes. For example, they moved the kickoff line closer than it used to be so that there would be less returns, where many serious injuries previously occurred.

The NFL also has taken it upon themselves to educate the general public on changes that should be made to football. For example, they constantly aired the memorable commercial where Tom Brady answers a concerned mother’s questions on the progress being made and whether it is safe for her son, who the viewer later learns is Ray Lewis, to continue playing.  The NFL was able to spread their ideas and plan of action to millions of viewers tuned into the games. From there, this idea continued to evolve and is still often a popular topic discussed among sports analysts.

As this topic started to receive attention from the media, an important question surfaced. Do their need to be changes on all lower levels of football too? The Announcer spoke with Mr. Racki, Nazareth’s head varsity football coach, on this topic.

Mr. Racki has been involved with the game since he was seven years old, and has been coaching for 21 years. In regards to changes being made in the NFL, he said, “I think it’s good that they’re making the game safer, personally I think the kickoff will be out of professional football in about five years because that is a high-risk special team play that they run, but I also think people have to temper the fact when you’re talking about the NFL, and college and high school, the NFL is, it’s the best of the best, so you have a lot of bigger, faster, stronger men, moving at a high rate of speed and hitting a lot harder.”

Tom Harrington, a senior at Nazareth Academy who has been playing football since his freshman year, voiced his opinion on the topic saying, “I think..even though it’s been getting a lot of ridicule I think it’s actually a good thing for the NFL… because it’s going to help decrease head injuries and there really has, because you hear a lot less about concussions nowadays.”

So is it necessary for any changes to be made at the high school level? Many arguments can and have been made that it is still absolutely necessary, but at Nazareth we are lucky to be different, as Mr. Racki pointed out.

“I think it’s important to educate coaches on how often you should have your teams hit, we’ve been blessed here at Nazareth, since I’ve been here, with our team doctor….we’ve been ahead of the curve, I’m proud to say at Nazareth, as far as impact testing we were doing six years ago before this became an issue in the media, and sure enough our concussions have gone down since then…I do think that there’s a lot of coaches out there who are not educated, or as informed to do that, where I just, my philosophy is to help prevent the head trauma and the injuries, you just have to do less hitting throughout the year.”

Harrington supported this saying, “We’re taught properly how to tackle and I’ve had days where I’ve felt like ‘Oh my god did I just get concussed?’ but I didn’t because my helmet’s so good, and Coach Racki’s always telling us that that’s one of our main priorities–to keep our helmets pumped.” They put air in their helmets for additional protections. Harrington also explained how he feels “lucky to have such a good helmet for football, because if I had like a cheaper, less trusted brand I think I probably would’ve hurt my head at one point.”

Even though it doesn’t require as many drastic changes as the professional league, high school football still needs some adjustments. Educating coaches is one major example of helping to make high school football safer. Even while discussions of eliminating different elements of the game continue, the opinion of Nazareth’s head varsity coach remains the same, “I still believe that it can be a safe game…obviously I’m biased, being a football coach, but my kids play football, and they’re going to continue to play football, because I do think that it can be safe.”