USA Football, NFL form safety advisory group

By BARRY WILNER

Associated Press

NEW YORK — Pro Football Hall of Famers Deion and Barry Sanders and Howie Long will join 18 others in meetings in New York on Thursday to promote player safety for children in all 50 states.

The group, known as the Heads Up Football Advisory Committee, will work through USA Football, the governing body for youth football in the United States. Also involved are Brett Favre, Bill Cowher, Marvin Lewis, Cris Collinsworth and Michael Straham.

“This group believes in football’s team-first values and is inspired to be part of Heads Up Football to help change the game’s culture to a safety-first approach,” said Scott Hallenbeck, executive director of USA Football.

Heads Up Football is a comprehensive youth football membership program developed by USA Football and supported by the NFL to strengthen youth player safety. More than 1,800 youth leagues representing more than 375,000 players and 54,000 coaches have committed to the teaching techniques of the program.

“I think we have to do a better job of teaching it, teaching the updated techniques at the grass-roots level so that players can play the game and get all the benefits that come out of it,” said Cowher, the Super Bowl-winning coach of the Steelers and now a CBS commentator. “The concepts of teamwork, commitment and camaraderie.

“There are so many positives and I feel like, at times, we focus on the one negative and what we’re trying to do is address that, so that we realize there are so many more positives that the game of football provides young people.”

That negative, of course, is the number of injuries in the game, particularly concussions and the medical problems they can lead to. Dr. Elizabeth Pierot, a neuropsychologist at NorthShore University HealthSystem in Chicago, and a member of the committee, stresses the need for free-flowing information among all parties: coaches, players, parents, administrators and medical personnel.

“Every day I talk to parents about their fears about contact sports, not just football,” she said. “They worry they are allowing their kids to play contact sports that will cause permanent ‘brain damage’ that will result in life-long disability. They do not understand how the brain responds to trauma and how it heals.

“Parents today are also utterly overwhelmed with information on concussion and worry that they are making a wrong decision. It is not any medical professional’s job to talk a parent into allowing their child to play a contact sport. Our job is to help them understand the current state of the science so they can make a reasoned, well-informed decision.”

Heads Up Football emphasizes: coaching accreditation; concussion recognition and response protocols; proper helmet and shoulder pad fitting; tackling techniques that aim to take the head out of the line of contact; proper fundamentals. The key instruction points will be player safety and a uniform approach to teaching football basics.

Christine Golic, the wife of former NFL player Mike Golic and mother of two players who attended Notre Dame, believes that by “arming coaches with widely accepted rules and guidelines, the variation to what players are learning and how a coach approaches safety can be reduced.”

“Every parent’s main concern when it comes to their child’s participation in any youth sport is twofold,” she added. “Are they having fun? Are they safe doing it?

“Most youth coaches are volunteers, each with a different level of proficiency in the sport they are coaching. As a result, the child’s experience can vary greatly and be impacted both positively and negatively.”

Other organizations supporting Heads Up Football include the NCAA, National Federation of State High School Associations, American Football Coaches Association, and Sports and Fitness Industry Association.

USA Football’s goal is to encourage all 10,000 youth football leagues across the country to sign up for Heads Up Football.