Player Safety

Unless you've been living under the proverbial rock the last few years you know that player safety, mostly focused on the NFL, has been in the limelight.  There are many issues at stake here.  Some former NFL players have actually gone so far as to file a lawsuit against the NFL asking for damages related to long-term effects of injuries sustained during their career.  My lawyer friends tell me that the legal format is similar to other lawsuits focused on "unsafe working conditions" which have become more and more popular here in the US.  Some of the players involved in this lawsuit (ironically enough) are actually beginning to work with the NFL in the hopes of increasing awareness of player safety.

On top of that, we also have the countless lawsuits filed by non-professional players, youth, high school, etc saying that some equipment manufacturers haven't done enough to "warn" younger players about the dangers of the game.  While I sympathize with these folks (I really do) and the injuries sustained while playing football this reminds me a lot of the old McDonald's hot coffee fiasco.

I play golf.  (sounds like an AA admission doesn't it?)  I enjoy playing the game and I like being out in the great outdoors being endlessly frustrated by something that should be very simple.  Occasionally, on the course I have come close to either hitting someone else with my ball (when I actually do make contact with the darned thing) or being hit by someone else's ball.  The lawsuits mentioned above give me pause to think, if/when I do get hit can I file a lawsuit against the ball manufacturer for not putting a warning label on the ball and making sure the offending person had read and understood the risks of striking this object?  What about those odd-shaped sticks that we use to play the game?  There's got to be a lawsuit in the making there.

Maybe sidewalks should have warning labels on them.  I mean, you could always trip over the curb or not look both ways - either way sidewalks are suddenly very scary...

My point is this, there is danger everywhere.  You need to identify those dangers, do what you can to mitigate the risk and go on living your life.  No one wants to be wrapped in shrink wrap bubbles their entire life.  Playing any sport is no different and I really hope most people don't let the media overreaction dictate their decisions.

Speaking of the media, they of course have done nothing but sensationalize this issue and make it extremely larger that it probably needs to be.  Sports are inherently dangerous, in fact football is the 3rd most dangerous for youth participation according to this study.  Note, this study is just based in America, I can imagine that European Football (soccer) would be pretty high on that list if more popular with youth in America.  I know that the only time I've taken my son to the emergency room for a sports related injury it was because of soccer (he was fine by the way, I was being rightfully over-cautious).  Any time you have human beings running around as fast as they can and running into each other you are going to have injuries.  The gelatinous substance floating in liquid surrounded by a hard bone material that we call a "brain" is suspect in such collisions to bruising and other damages.  It's been going on since the first cave man chased the first cave woman and ran into a tree.

Equipment manufacturers are spending billions of R&D dollars in a race to make the "safest" helmet, but at the end of the day, given the g-forces, rotational speeds and impact accelerations a player is subjected to during a football game, I have a hard time believing they will ever deliver a "magic pill" to make this issue go away.

The problem (and the subsequent answer) lies NOT with the equipment manufacturers, but in the methods used to teach and play the game.

So where am I going with this?

Today I am proud to announce publicly (we're not big enough yet to have a full-time PR person, we are looking for interns though) that Real Sports Analytics is introducing our "Player Safety Rating" (PSR).

Much like our "Player Effectiveness Rating" (PER) that measures how well someone is playing a particular sport our "Player Safety Rating" (PSR) gives us a way to effectively measure how safely someone is playing the game.

How do we do this?  Over the last few months we have added several former NFL/NCAA players, coaches and administrators to our advisory council.  I've spent a lot of time with each of them and we have developed not only the on-field components of this model, but also on the camp/seminar aspects of teaching a safer way to play the game.  We are also working with companies that deliver these camps/seminars as well as equipment manufacturers on how best to promote this safety model.

What does the PSR do?  Easy, much like our PER displays a very simple representation of how well someone is playing the game based on their position (7.2, 8.1, 6.5, etc) we now can represent how safely someone is playing their position.  As with the PER we observe each player on a play-by-play basis and apply safety metrics.  For example, a good "form" tackler like Brian Urlacher would probably score pretty highly (except that he has unfortunately retired).  Over his career he has been known as one of the hardest hitters in the game, but also one of the safest.  If you watch his film his form is good, his arms are out, he doesn't lead with his head and he focuses on his body position and control to make plays.

I was going to mention some players that do NOT play the game (in what we measure) in a safe manner, but I won't.  The NFL has singled out certain players that always seem to get an unfair share of attention when it comes to the "safety issue".  Or is that attention really unfair?  They don't know, why?  The old adage applies here "You can't improve what you can't measure".

Up until now it has been virtually impossible to measure this safety factor. That's why this is such an exciting time for us here at Real Sports Analytics - the future is now!