Browsing by Subject "Football"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    Is bigger really better? Obesity among high school football players, player position, and team success.
    (Clin Pediatr (Phila), 2013-10) Skinner, Asheley Cockrell; Hasty, Stephanie E; Turner, Robert W; Dreibelbis, Mark; Lohr, Jacob A
    OBJECTIVE: American football is one of the most common high school sports in the United States. We examine obesity among high school football players, and variations based on positions, team division, and team success. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We used 2 data sets from the North Carolina High School Athletic Association (n = 2026) and MaxPreps (n = 6417). We examined body mass index, calculated using coach-reported height and weight, by player position, division, and success based on win-loss percentage. RESULTS: Most players (62%) were skill players, with 35% linemen and 3% punters/kickers. Most skill players (62%) were healthy weight and 4% obese or morbidly obese. In contrast, only 8% of linemen were healthy weight, with 21% morbidly obese. Team success was correlated with size only for skill players. CONCLUSIONS: Obesity is a significant problem for high school football players. Pediatricians should consider the context of football playing in assessing long-term health risks for these young men.
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    Is the Blind Side Tackle Worth It?: An Analysis of the Salary Allocation of the NFL Offensive Line
    (2013-05-03) Froelich, Kelly
    The importance of the left tackle position in comparison to the other offensive line positions in the National Football League (NFL) has been widely debated amongst sports commentators, as the left tackle is traditionally the second highest paid player on a football team behind the quarterback; yet, this debate lacks empirical findings. This paper aims to quantify the impact of the individual offensive linemen on the chance of winning a game on a game-by-game basis and then compare the impact of the left tackle to the other offensive line positions. Using a conditional logistic regression and the marginal effects from that regression, the results do not dispute the NFL's current trend in spending more on the left tackle in comparison to the other offensive line positions. The results show that optimal spending for the left tackle could extend to 15.976 percent of the salary cap. Thus, the possibility remains that the optimal spending for the left tackle can range up to fifteen percent of the salary cap, seven percentage points above the next highest optimal offensive lineman spending.
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    Offside
    (2011-05-02) Arnstein, Benjamin
    For nearly a century football has been emblematic of the United States and its society. This will be compared against soccer, which is far and away the most popular and important sport in Europe. The United States economy is theoretically a free-market system. In contrast, Europe’s economic system is rooted in regulated and interventionist principles. Interestingly, the economic policies of soccer and football as industries do not follow the economic philosophies predominant in their respective home regions; in many ways they actually operate directly to the contrary. In both soccer and football the inflow and outflow of capital are derived primarily from the same three sources: media and televisions rights, merchandising and sponsorship rights, and player salaries. Examining these areas shows the ways in which the economic structures confound societal expectations. The four primary reasons behind this paradox are: the different structures of the governing bodies, the different ownership structures of the teams/clubs, the different levels of competition between teams in each region, and the difference in length of outlook for economic decision making by those in charge of the two sports. The current consequences are superteams causing unbalanced competition in European soccer and a potential work stoppage in the NFL.
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    Piecewise Multivariate Linearity Between Kinematic Features and Cumulative Strain Damage Measure (CSDM) Across Different Types of Head Impacts.
    (Annals of biomedical engineering, 2022-11) Zhan, Xianghao; Li, Yiheng; Liu, Yuzhe; Cecchi, Nicholas J; Gevaert, Olivier; Zeineh, Michael M; Grant, Gerald A; Camarillo, David B
    In a previous study, we found that the relationship between brain strain and kinematic features cannot be described by a generalized linear model across different types of head impacts. In this study, we investigate if such a linear relationship exists when partitioning head impacts using a data-driven approach. We applied the K-means clustering method to partition 3161 impacts from various sources including simulation, college football, mixed martial arts, and car crashes. We found piecewise multivariate linearity between the cumulative strain damage (CSDM; assessed at the threshold of 0.15) and head kinematic features. Compared with the linear regression models without partition and the partition according to the types of head impacts, K-means-based data-driven partition showed significantly higher CSDM regression accuracy, which suggested the presence of piecewise multivariate linearity across types of head impacts. Additionally, we compared the piecewise linearity with the partitions based on individual features used in clustering. We found that the partition with maximum angular acceleration magnitude at 4706 rad/s2 led to the highest piecewise linearity. This study may contribute to an improved method for the rapid prediction of CSDM in the future.
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    Tackling the NFL: An analysis of the role of the government in workplace safety
    (2014-01-06) Green, Melanie
    This research analyzes how the federal government can play a role in solving the concussion crisis in the National Football League (NFL). The government has intervened in private sector industries in the past on the grounds of improving safety and health, most notably through the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. The government has intervened in several issues that affect the sports industry, such as antitrust issues and substance abuse, but has not made any significant impact on concussion legislation. Based on three case studies of other industries, the NFL concussion crisis prompts government intervention. However, because the phenomenon is so recent, football is a unique industry, and the NFL has particularly addressed the situation with internal policy, government intervention has not taken place.
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    The Adjudicatory Audible: The Impact of Social Media on the Punishments of NFL Athletes
    (2016-01-31) Lazarus, Danielle
    Under its Collective Bargaining Agreement, the National Football League (NFL) has the ability to punish players who have been charged with a crime or arrested. Individual teams have the ability to punish players for off-field conduct, most commonly by releasing them to free agency; however, their authority is extremely limited. Thus, the power to discipline players is bestowed overwhelmingly to the commissioner’s office, which has assigned league discipline to 28.6% of arrests between 2000 and 2014. The severity of these punishments only increased slightly between 2000 and 2014; however, there exists a statistically significant, positive relationship between the number of Tweets about a crime and the severity of punishment of the resulting NFL punishment. Most disquieting, more-valuable players are punished less severely than less-valuable players, measured in terms of both better fantasy football rankings and in higher salaries. The results of this study clearly demonstrate that league punishment of NFL players is determined by the public response to the crime, and that the commissioner’s office allows for better players to escape more-severe punishments—or punishments at all—more frequently than their worse-performing counterparts. An impartial, independent arbiter, as opposed to an all-powerful commissioner’s office, would more effectively grant punishments that fit the crime as opposed to the degree of public outrage.
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    The Glass Ceiling of African American Assistant Football Coaches
    (2020-03) Keimach, Eli
    African American assistant football coaches in college and the National Football League (NFL) alike face a gauntlet of challenges in their quests to become head coaches. Much of the systematic exclusion of qualified African American head coaching candidates stems from archaic and baseless biases. In 2018, 49.2 percent of college football players at the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) level – the highest classification of college football – were African American. During that same season, only 37.63% of the assistant coaches, 14.72% of the coordinators, and 8.53% of the head coaches were African American. NFL officials have begrudgingly recognized this issue and enacted policies to mandate minority interviews and consideration for open roles. However, these policies have been weakened by teams that “game” the system with sham interviews with no serious consideration given to African American candidates. My original research on 62 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I FBS College football teams showed an undeniable connection between playing quarterback and becoming a head coach. 30.6% of the head coaches in the study played quarterback – an overwhelming majority. It remains to be seen if the unprecedented success of African American quarterbacks in recent NFL seasons will spark a change in the coaching racial landscape for years to come.
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    The Impact of Collegiate Athletic Success and Scandals on Admissions Applications
    (2019-04-12) Battle-McDonald, William
    This paper examines how the quantity and quality of admissions applications to Division 1 colleges and universities were affected by two non-academic factors: (1) performance of a school’s men’s basketball and football teams; and (2) scandals associated with these athletic programs. Admissions data from 2001 – 2017 were compared to team performance during their football and basketball seasons in order to understand how these non-academic factors contribute to an individual’s decisions to apply for admission. A multivariate linear regression model with school and year fixed effects supported the hypothesis that athletic success positively affects the quantity of applications, increasing them by up to 3% in basketball and 11% in football in the following application period. Seasonal football success was also shown to have negative impacts on the distribution of standardized testing scores of future applicant classes, however these scores were shown to increase when a team played their best season in five or more years. Additional analysis of the effects of athletic program scandals reveals a significant negative effect on the number of applications received, although a deep dive into a few of the most prominent scandals suggests that the benefits associated with violating NCAA rules may, under the right circumstances, be well worth the risk.