Many people wonder why football only plays one game per week and why it has the least amount of total games. There are two main reasons for this. One being, it takes time to study the opponent and what strategies you’re going to use in order to beat them.
Then, the second and more important reason, is injuries.
Football is one of if not the most physically demanding sports. Play after play is full-contact hitting. Over time this builds up and affects your body. No matter what, after a game, a player’s body will have some sort of pain that negatively affects them.
Football is a violent sport and there is no denying it. According to the National High School Sports-Related Injury Surveillance Study, more than 500,000 high school football injuries occurred between the 2014 and 2015 school years.
I kept tabs on a high school football player at Sutton High School throughout the week following a Friday night game. I asked him about what actions he took after the game and what the rest of the week looked like for them. He had received a head injury during the game, possibly a concussion.
Jacob Bastardo played most of the game on Friday but suffered a blindside block early in the third quarter. A blindside block is an illegal hit when a player is hit where they have no vision/cannot see, essentially their blind side. Bastardo had to leave the game early because the trainer believed he had a concussion.
The following day he told me he had “stayed home most of the day, and basically just sat around because I had like no energy.” Now this is pretty typical for most sports players the day after they have a game; however, suffering a head injury increases that feeling of drowsiness and feeling a lack of energy. He also told me “I called the doctor to see if I could get an appointment but they said I had to wait until Tuesday.”
Jacob was forced to sit out of practice until he was cleared by a doctor. He went to the doctor on Tuesday and was told that he would miss the upcoming game as a precaution. He sat out of practice for the remainder of the week.
Now not everyone ends up injured after a game, but the process of healing your body afterwards is still long and demanding. Football is one of the few sports that depends on the contact of hitting one another.
In the NFL, after each game, players recover by specialized treatments from: stretching to cupping therapy, IV hydration therapy, deep tissue laser therapy, contrast baths, ice-water baths, salt baths, cryotherapy, acupuncture and more.
This is a week to week routine just to be able to heal your body in order to play in next week’s game. This brings up a big debate in the NFL on whether or not they should keep the Thursday night game because how is a team supposed to recover in three days compared to the regular full week they get?
Jacob was eventually cleared by a doctor and granted eligibility to play in the next game. In order to play after concussion protocol a player must participate in practices, each with different restrictions. A player must practice with only their helmet to begin, then wearing shoulder pads along with a helmet, and on the final day wearing full pads.
Jacob finished the game with no major injuries after playing in almost every snap. He now has no further restrictions or protocol to follow as long as he remains healthy.
