Part II: Concussion Legacy Foundation educator advocates for changes to youth football
“Start at the bottom, kids shouldn’t be playing tackle football, I would say until high school.”
When asked what he thought the future of football looked like, Brandon Boyd had no hesitation on his answer.
As youth participation in tackle football has decreased and medical research on traumatic brain injuries has advanced, it is that question that in the past decade has had to be weighed in some form by football coaches, players, executives, broadcasters, parents and fans.
Boyd is the education programs manager at the Concussion Legacy Foundation, a nonprofit founded by Chris Nowinski, Ph.D., and Robert Cantu, MD in 2007. The foundation works to support athletes and others affected by chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease found in people with a history of repetitive head impacts caused by playing sports or other activities that include hits to the head.
At the time of this conversation on March 3, the National Football League had just concluded its 103rd season less than a month earlier.
Football has always been a substantial part of Boyd’s life. Growing up in the Seattle suburb of Bellevue, he rooted for the Seattle Seahawks and the University of Washington Huskies. As an adult, his work has given him a new perspective on when players should start playing tackle football.
While he grew up playing sports with his friends, he did not play team sports past middle school. Boyd said he always thought his place in sports was elsewhere.
“[I] was more of a sports fan, thought I was going to be on ESPN, but not as a player, as a broadcaster my whole life,” Boyd said.
Boyd stayed in-state and enrolled as a communications major at Washington, but did not take a sports journalism class until his senior year. It was that class, which focused on concussions in sports, where he said he was first exposed to the foundation and his future career.
“The topic was just totally focused on the idea of, would you let your kid play football, because at the time President Obama had just had a White House summit about the topic, [former 49ers linebacker] Chris Borland had just retired from the NFL,” Boyd said.
Borland retired after his 2014 rookie season due to concerns about head trauma.
In his reporting, Boyd contacted CLF and was able to set up a meeting between the foundation and his class. Boyd came away from the story he wrote interested in the topic, but he said he never expected a career to come from a class.
Boyd moved to Massachusetts and became a teacher at New Bedford High School through the nonprofit Teach For America, but continued to admire CLF’s work. Midway through his second year in 2017, he reached out to the foundation about the possibility of working with them. The foundation remembered Boyd from the interview years earlier, so away he went.
Over his nearly six years with CLF, Boyd has been in charge of numerous educational programs and workshops. The CLF Media Project is a first-of-its-kind workshop designed to educate student and professional sportswriters and broadcasters on protocols and how to properly describe and report on concussions.
Since Boyd has been around, he said that broadcasters’ coverage of concussions has improved — he does not hear the oft-used clichés “he got dinged up, or bell rung” as much anymore. Despite the progress, there is still more to be made.
“We’re still not hearing all the way on the other side where we’re hearing, that’s a sign of a concussion, that should trigger concussion protocol, like this really detailed discourse about concussion in an accurate way,” Boyd said.
David Korzeniowski, a play-by-play broadcaster for Brown University football, basketball and other sports, participated in one of Boyd’s first workshops as a graduate student at Northwestern. Over the past few years, the two have kept in touch. Additionally, along with many other media members, Korzeniowski is a Media Project Fellow, given to those that pass the foundation’s Concussion Reporting Certification.
“It’s helped me report because I’m more informed about what potential injuries might be happening down at field or ice level,” Korzeniowski said. “I’m also more informed about concussion testing protocol, and I also understand some of the ways that the media has failed or come short in coverage of head and neck injuries and serious brain injuries.”
Another project Boyd has been involved in is “Flag Football Under 14,” a campaign that strongly recommends that parents not enroll their children in tackle football until high school, rather than at a young age.
A link between CTE and the length of time one played football has been explored. According to a study titled “Duration of American Football Play and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy,” published in the journal Annals of Neurology in October 2019 by Jesse Mez et. al, the odds of CTE double every 2.6 years of football played. Children that start playing tackle at five, rather than 14 are 10 times more likely to develop the disease.
“The issues really lie with youth football,” Boyd said. “I mean, all of the values and positives you can find in those higher levels of football are essentially gone when you’re talking about kids playing.”
So what of his own fandom?
Boyd watched his Seahawks win their first Super Bowl as a college student in 2014. He said he remembers the victory parade a few days later being a joyous day for the city. He recognizes the economic impact and local pride professional, college and if properly coached and staffed with an athletic trainer, high school football, brings to communities. But he watches the game from a different viewpoint today.
“It’s very hard for me to forget my fandom or to betray that,” Boyd said. “I certainly watch the game a lot differently. As soon as I see a big head impact happening, I’m concerned that, I want to make sure that the players get the treatment that they deserve,” Boyd said.
“But then also, how are the broadcasters talking about it and how is the media covering that injury in the days and weeks to follow? I’m very attuned to that and very, very, very hard-line against youth tackle football,” he added.