 Good evening Good evening and welcome to everybody and thank you for coming. My name is Andres Martinez I'm the editorial director of future tense Future tense as you may know is a collaboration between New America Slate magazine and Arizona State University We are we call ourselves a citizens guide to the future. We like asking big provocative questions about how emerging technologies are impacting the way we live And we certainly don't pretend to have all the answers where we're all about asking the questions We have content on Slate's Website, we have Tori Bosch in the back of the room is our fantastic editor at Slate and you can follow us at future tense now our events range in Broadly in terms of our subject matter the last event we had in this room was on whether we pose a question of whether collaboration or competition was going to get us to Mars and we have upcoming events on Whether technology is changing language We have another big event Coming up on what algorithms want so as you can see we we roam broadly asking questions about the impact of technology on society It's it's particularly exciting tonight to be revisiting sports one of my favorite future tense events of all time We did on the on the day the last rule cup opened and we had Soccer playing robots down from the University of Pennsylvania, and then we watched we all watched the first game, so and I have a very particular parochial interest in this subject because I Still pretend that I can play soccer and I played last night and my knee is absolutely killing me So and I root for a professional soccer team that doesn't seem to be able to Keep a majority of its players healthy at any one time Nick next middle knows knows who they are and Also on a serious note. I as a kid I grew up rooting for the iconic Steelers of the 1970s and of course I was way too young and and Not aware enough to realize the the terrible toll that that playing the sport at that time Inflicted on some of the players that I that I idolized and in retrospect I often think about whether you know the extent to which we are complicit as fans and sometimes romanticizing Injuries as part of of the game, and I think that's one of the interesting themes That hopefully will come to light tonight in addition to looking at some of the really interesting technological efforts Being made to make sports safer So I'm just on the housekeeping front. I'd like to remind everybody to Turn off your phones, which I haven't done myself and then also when we have Q&A's please Wait for a microphone and introduce yourself because this is being live-streamed and We do appreciate questions in the form of questions with question marks at the end and Now I'd just like to hand off the baton to we have two fantastic moderators for this evening Nick Schmiddle We'll go first. It's funny Nick. Nick and I coincidentally with our with our boys separate boys, we don't have boys together, but watch the Eurocup final over the summer and Tragically Cristiano Ronaldo's team one, but I remember that night Chris said oh we were talking about a longer Running project that Chris was working on. I mean Nick was working on and Nick said, you know I have to do I might have to write something on football too And I was a football like this football No, he said you know the concussions the whole debate and I said that sounds really interesting But Nick said this in a way that I sometimes say I have to write an 800 word column And it was like this offhand it I have to do something on football and you know fast forward Many months and my New Yorker copy comes and there's this fantastic very long read piece on You know Nick following this St. Thomas Aquinas high school program in Florida and giving all of this great background on the on the issues of injuries and technology and just through that through the The story of this one team and it was just fabulous so so well-known But I was there when you first told me like I have to do something on football So Nick is going to tell us a little bit about that story with the headline of which the title was Ken technology make Football safer and then he will moderate our first conversation and then hand off the baton to Josh Levine who is our He's an executive editor at Slate our key partner in future tense And also as many of you may know that host of the podcast hang up and listen so Nick Floor is yours. Thank you All right, thanks for coming out I'll talk for just a few minutes about about that sort of that story and how I was deemed So much appropriate to moderate this panel even though I don't really know anything about technology in my Experience of football was short-lived as a sixth grader and then four months this summer in fall but actually so the the the the story The magazine there was this conversation about sort of what what I should do after having finished forget what piece I had finished in the spring and And the editor in chief of New Yorker said well, we should do a story about football And I was like, all right. Well, that's a good idea boss. Like is there are there any angles? Are there any ideas about how we should approach it? And it was Just sort of you know, we should take stock of football in 2016 Capturing all of its legal challenges health concerns Excitement sort of the whole shebang so I Sailed on trying to figure out a Way that if we could write a story about how football is being coached and parented differently now in light of the concussion crisis and in doing that I was very quickly turned on to buddy Tevins here sitting in the front row who is the Dartmouth football coach and Buddy has done a number of things that are that are Quite revolutionary and at the sort of at the elite level One of which is is no longer tackling and practices having banned tackling in 2011, right? And then a few years ago introducing robots their Mobile virtual players that are sort of six foot hundred and eighty pound remote control tackling dummies and so as buddy was explained and you know Coach's explanation was was so articulate about concerns about you know if we don't save the game There's not if we're not sort of thinking about coaching the game differently. There's not going to be a game left to coach Then I said, you know, this is this is fascinating, but it's hard for me Dartmouth is there are there are there big schools that are sort of you know competitive at a national level schools that are doing this particularly maybe at the high school level and Coach pointed me down to st. Thomas Aquinas, which at that point I had maybe heard the name once or twice I proceeded to go down there. They they they opened their doors. They were very welcoming They in the preseason high school football rankings. They were the number one team in the country They were the only high school football team to be signed on to using these dummies They did not tackle in practice. They were sort of they seem to be in terms of Conscientious sort of they seem to be at that level the the purveyors of sort of conscientious football What made it more interesting is that half of the coaching staff had previously played 345 members of the coaching staff had previously played in the NFL several of the players fathers have played in the NFL in fact Cornelius Bennett the the the Buffalo Bills linebacker Hall of Fame nominee His his son was one of the defensive tackles and for me that actually It just there was it was such a mix because here you had all these players people like Cornelius Bennett whose peers were You know suffering from early Issues related to playing football, you know, they were players suffering from from You know either having suicidal thoughts drooling their soup at age, you know mid 40s And yet Cornelius Bennett sort of wanted nothing more than to see his son go and have the same illustrious career that he did and so So I and look when I started the piece I was talking to people I talked to you know several People who sort of politics and general worldview mirrored my own and they said I you know when I started a story about football Or I started a film about football. I can't watch the sport after that for me It was sort of the opposite Because the more that I watched it the more that I realized that I was sort of intoxicated especially following this this incredible high school football team around the country Intoxicated by the drama of it all and it actually It has brought a great deal into relief Sort of had brought a great deal into focus in my own house because now my son who was at time last summer was five when we met Andre said we met them in Barcelona We happen to both be in Barcelona to watch this to watch this Euro game and And I was like, okay, that's fine. My son's gonna become a professional soccer player. This is gonna be great I start doing this high school football story all about how you know The sport is potentially going to make you brain dad in some ways if you're not careful and all my son wants to do now is play football and so, you know, in fact yesterday or this morning Said I'm not interested in playing soccer anymore I just want to play football and you know the kid is like really tall and skinny and all elbow And I thought this is not gonna be good, but he's also he had a really good arm He's sort of you know, he's whatever sort of you know His dad has been reporting on this high school football team and so It's been it's been an interesting sort of reacquaintance with the sport I had played one year in sixth grade. I was the punter and the kicker in the right guard It was I did one year and I thought all right, that's good enough for me. I'll go back to playing soccer. So So all those issues are sort of what I tried to capture in the piece and As a result of that, I think we're going to now we're going to talk a little bit about some of these technological innovations some all sort of ask questions based on things that I Saw with the team and how they had dealt with the these robots And then we'll open it up for everyone else. So why don't we bring everyone up now? We can coach Stevens. You know about first Yeah, we've got all just sit down and then I can do a quick introduction and we can then turn to we have a Video teed up, right? I think my throat. Okay My sitting on this or standing better sitting good, okay, so I'll do a quick introductions. Why don't we start at the end with with coach Stevens? So coach Stevens. I mentioned Dartmouth football coach since 2008 5 okay Had developed these mobile virtual players with the engineering five students in the engineering program I think we have a video that we can show so that everyone can kind of get a sense of what these look like Can we play that? Mobile virtual player it's a tackling dummy that actually moves as a wide receiver. It's a running back. It's an offensive tackle It's a defensive lineman having an opportunity to react drop your pad level deliver through actually tackle something That's part of our practice protocol get guys out do the things that you're going to do on game day Just don't get hurt nice job. That's it. We're teaching skill sets repeatedly my guys practice it more We hit more than anybody in the country. That's it Good form man. Good form. That's it the applications would quickly find in a really endless That's huge. It saves players. I mean health safety fresh and legs. I mean it's big, you know It never gets tired all the position groups are getting an opportunity to use it It runs at an appropriate football speed all right next Roger Moore who is the The vice president of catapult sports and has developed the technology Can you talk a little bit about sort of the the it's essentially mobile sensors wearable sensors? It's one wearable sensor that fits just below your t1. I have one actually here in my pocket But with it it's a GPS tracking device So with the device sits below the t1 captures a thousand metrics per second So this could fit in your shoulder pads if you're a basketball player We have a garment where it fits on the athlete's body. So it's an indoor and outdoor capability Obviously indoor you rely more on the micro movements when we call the inertial movement analysis Whereas the outdoor you rely on the GPS and technically is GNSS Since it's Australian base we have access to the US satellites as well as Russian satellites So we have more coverage What's the genesis of this Genesis is started really out of the Australian Institute of Sport There's Olympics where they didn't metal metal and so as a result they brought in a group of scientists for scientists strength coaches athletic trainers Sport coaches and develop this group called that in the AIS Australian Institute of Sport from there the two co-founders of catapult Igor van de Griet and Sean Holt and Holt house asked the government if they could sell to elite sports So one of the first sports was actually rowing There's a device that fits on the boat as well as on the athletes that captures the movement Of the boat as well as the athletes and the player load that they're Accompanying during that movement or doing that activity and they're from there moved across the pond So here in the US I started with catapult three and a half years ago. It's been here in the US about five years So when our first teams were Jacksonville Jaguars Oregon State Florida State San Antonio Spurs Houston Rockets to name a few so in the football sense This can get Department-wide deal exciting Dharma What and so it's measured what can you talk a little bit about sort of what is it exactly measuring it measures your speed your distance Acceleration deceleration change direction collisions impacts Tackles is validated for tackles for rugby, but now we have new metrics coming out that's specific to American football As well as player load is an accumulation of work So a lot of coaches will use the player load metric because it's consistent no matter if you're inside or outside So they use the player load metric to periodize their their activity their practice so that they know during team period I want my athletes to be have a high player load Whereas in another period where it's more teaching less physical that I want my player load to be higher So it's another tool for the coaches and and so in my reporting I had and this I think had been reported even oh nine and a Malcolm Gladwell piece for the magazine There were there were some sensors that is the University of North Carolina That's using the helmet sensors or is it Duke that has that measures the impact Is that it can can are the these sensors able to measure impact of you know I could not from a collision from a head impact and cusp type impact more from Impact of an athlete hitting an athlete so from a g4 standpoint. Okay, cool. Cool. All right Derek Belch Who is former Stanford football player and is now assistant coach with the team used to be okay. Yeah, um, so This is this is wild. I mean, so do we have a video as well for this that we can show real quick and then we can talk about it because You see one DC one Ready Cool so 360 degree Virtual reality headset that the players can use the quarterback can use and anyone can use yes I mean, is it mostly quarterback focused at this point mainly quarterbacks, but we can do pretty much any position on the field depending on how forward thinking the coaching staff is and wants to Build that library out which is difficult But quarterback is the most high-impact position and the easiest one to do Yeah, so I was I was coaching at Stanford in 13 and 14. I actually played there from 0307 for coach Stevens So it was a little weird to go back and sell our product to Dartmouth and call him buddy and not coach Stevens couple years ago, but yeah, I was coaching there and My master's thesis while I was coaching was to come up with a way to train football players Using virtual reality and my advisor is a guy named Jeremy Balanson. Some of you that know VR may know that name He's one of the godfathers of the VR space not as far as building headsets building cool gaming experiences Graphics all that stuff more about what is the effective VR on your brain? So my research in his lab Fed what we made for the football team academically And in the back of my mind the whole time for two years. I thought this is something that could be a business. So pay attention I had an MBA. So I was a little different than most football coaches and because of that David Shaw the head coach sat me down at the end of my two years and kicked me out of the office and said go start a Company get out here. So that was in January of 2015 and we hit the road about six weeks later to start selling Basically nothing and we got Sam when buddy bought it. It was nothing But it's a it's a lot today and we work with today. We work with six teams in the NFL 13 in college one in high school couple NBA teams a couple major league baseball teams couple NHL teams Using VR to train athletes and we're also doing a lot of work just in the corporate world as well using VR for general Wow, very cool We'll talk a little bit about sort of plus the benefits of I mean I guess the biggest thing is that in practice is where most injuries take place, right? So whether it's tackling the robots or whether it's using whether it's it's taking snaps with the VR I mean, you're you're avoiding the essentially Monday through Friday. Yeah, so I'll be honest I don't walk into the room to meet with anybody and talk about injuries It's probably the last thing that we talk about we focus on and in performance and in human improvement, right? I only get the rep once on the field. I can get it a hundred times if I want in VR Coach Tven's quarterback from last year is a great example His starting quarterback last year earned the starting job in his competition And we were a result of one of the things that he did I think he watched like 1200 plays in VR over the two weeks of that battle during training camp Well, that's 1200 more reps than he would have gotten otherwise from a mental standpoint now They don't throw the ball, you know, it's all mental. They don't run around So I never go in and talk about injuries. However The result of what we do does have a very significant impact on keeping your body fresh If I'm already injured and I shouldn't practice but guys do it anyway to prepare for the game Can I get those virtual reps instead? Carson Palmer was in the media a lot a couple years ago using our product quite a bit And you know, he stops throwing in December because he knows that he's old and he shouldn't Where his arm out in practice every day. So he limits his team reps in December and instead he went and got on on Our machine so a lot of different use cases a lot of a lot of different things where we're what we're doing could significantly impact Health and safety in the game. Wow, very cool. Very cool. Very cool. Um, and finally Ellen Arruda who is a engineering professor at University of Michigan and is developed has developed is developing a Polymer technology that will that can be fitted inside helmets. Is that my clothes? Yeah, okay And essentially this is the notion that we focus mostly on impact But but I from my right to assume that they're conclude that this is sort of this is the brain slosh Concern right is preventing is that secondary? So we we tend to be concerned only with the force of an impact and not the energy So, so those non so There are two harmful effects of an impact one is it's just the magnitude the force the other is is the impulse or the fact that the person has momentum and That momentum has to be conserved. So you can't Swerve it around and send it in some different direction, which a lot of helmet manufacturers are trying to claim you can do You have to take it out before it gets to the brain. So Current helmets don't do a good job of dissipating that energy taking it out Your skull doesn't dissipate any energy. So then that leaves it up to the brain And the brain does that by moving relative to the skull and by deforming both of which are harmful Where where are you in this sort of in the development? I mean so we've been Part of this head health challenge that's funded by the NFL under armor GE and NIST to develop materials for impact mitigation and We're one of the finalists and the only university group in that The others are our startups And we've been working on it for about a year. We've submitted our final report and we're waiting to hear what the outcome will be and we're working with material suppliers and helmet manufacturers to Put these improved designs into their helmets and what is the gen I mean I saw you have done work with with DARPA I mean, so how do you go from sort of DARPA secret spooky government stuff to helmets? So the the funding that initially led me down this pathway was from the Navy And it was for lightweight body armor lightweight tough materials at high strain rates and We started looking at the advanced combat helmet and the enhanced combat helmet These are much more complicated than a sports helmet because it they also have to survive a Penetrating threat right so so then we went to the sports helmet as a lower hanging fruit because you don't have to worry about something a Bullet piercing it and so that's that's how we got onto sports helmets. Yeah, there's a Video I guess it's produced by the University of Michigan that that there's a there's a point that you make in the video Which is that you wear a bicycle helmet you fall once the bicycle helmet is no longer good You throw it away and and it just sort of I mean I don't know why that didn't quite occur to me But it is crazy that you put on a football helmet and you expect that you're going to take thousands of Contact points over the course of that right and so like how do you build a product that is not? You know like Rick Moranis and Spaceballs sort of large helmet with Well, I believe you know the current Football and hockey and similar helmets haven't been designed to protect the brain They were designed to protect against skull fracture, which is a bad thing and they do that well, right? And it's only recently that we've started to be concerned About brain injury and taking a look at these designs and trying to figure out How can we dissipate as much energy as possible over and over and over again and in the case of the bike helmet when When you have a crash and your helmets in pieces it dissipated a lot of energy through fracture and And and you pick it up and throw it away, right? That's not a practical solution in a football game we all we all know that or in a hockey game and So you're you're left with other ways to dissipate energy that I feel haven't been fully explored yet in Helmet designs and that's what we're working on Are you all a Dartmouth? I mean are you all With this sort of cut with now and where you are in the in the Field is sort of the vanguard with the with the MVPs and all that are you all also working on on helmet technologies, too I mean, where do you certainly very aware of it because that will have an impact on the injury as well But we're trying to take contact limit the contact in the game The NFL has actually been a wonderful model their injuries in practice have tremendously reduced College game and Pop Warner and high school football each huge and what I've opted to do is just we don't hit in practice We hit other things the mobile virtual player bags and so forth So we practice the skill set of tackling and kind of the side benefit is we do it more often I think we're more proficient with it It will probably we average were five five missed tackles per game last year Which there's not many teams in the country that can say that and it's I'm convinced We just do it a lot more and that's it's kept this healthy certain the MVP It's another tool in the toolbox and it's been pretty well received by people at this point Is there any is there any concerns from on the on the health side of things that whether that there's kind of a false sense of security that if you can build a better helmet then it's sort of You know lures young players into thinking that They're more protective There's got to be a broad sense and I'm of the conviction the culture the coaching culture has got to address it And it's a better helmet. It's certainly going to help but not using your head as frequently is going to help you the more Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know I with this with this team. I mean it was interesting is that even as they sort of pride themselves on On sort of being this sort of conscientious Embodiment of sort of new football there are still coaches that admit And this was this is a helps to kind of go back and go back and keep going back to Florida the first two or three times Yeah, you know We don't we don't tackle in practice and then by the third or fourth time they say, you know those MVPs are great But you know they're hitting the guys in the shins, you know They're the hard plastic at the bottom and then they said I you know They said it's sometimes it's really just feels good to sort of you know lay the wood on somebody's they're coming across The middle of the field and it's like man, you just and that's what I wonder sort of how you're able to Do you have to sort of nod almost and they admit these coaches admit that you know I'm a dinosaur if you have to sort of nod to the dinosaurs and the sport while you're also trying to Kind of revolutionized it's become easier because there's more awareness But I had a linebacker was an all-league kid and led the league attack was he's a coach I called BS in the living room you're telling my mom and dad that you don't tackle at all I see a division one linebacker and I'm not going to tackle right Yeah, and then when he came in the hardest people to change the incoming freshman because the Invocation is hit blow people up excite and then all that type of thing and say no no no It's not what we do here and they get better at over over time. So our kids are pretty Capable and again, I I mirror the NFL and been to a lot of camps over the course of time You watch those guys some of the world's best athletes 100 miles an hour and they don't need anybody Yeah, and it's you just avoid My big push is he protect ourselves. He's quite often we'll see an offense in the defense pitted against each other and if it gets really Nasty, yeah, so look there are teammates, you know somebody's gonna win We'd play our best versus our best and they should win sometimes They should win sometimes come away and appreciate good play. Just don't feel like you had to dominate the whole time Yeah, do you with that with the virtual reality is there Do you feel I mean are there only certain teams that are able to afford I mean now you is there is there a how do you sort of prevent it from only going to the st Thomas Aquinas sort of high schools and the elite elite elite high schools I mean, how are you able to kind of more democratize these these expensive technologies? It's a simple answer. I mean, I wish I could say we could You know, I'm in a unique spot because I played I coached and now I'm running a company and We look at our balance sheet and we look at our revenues and say I'd love to give the thing away to make all players better safety implications, etc. But it just doesn't make sense so What we're doing right now is not cheap and if we were to just give it away or drastically cut price to In order to work with everybody no different than what these guys go through probably as well We'd be out of business in nine months. So you have to maintain Some sort of premium pricing strategy Also when teams do it right, there's a lot of value that's created. So it's not for everybody It's for people that want to create that advantage Because it's something that works and Unfortunately, that's how we have to treat it today. We're already looking at how can we build out? You know a virtual a static virtual library that would apply to all high school kids Would it necessarily replace practice? Probably not, but will it coach better than what the coaching that a lot of kids get from a decision-making standpoint? Absolutely, and we'll give them a chance to get more reps that they otherwise couldn't get in the real world Because essentially if you're if you're training for a team the following Sunday You have to be able to sort of simulate all of the formations that they could be running against you on Right after the previous Sunday's game to get right, right? I mean you have to New inputs every week, right? Yeah So football, you know, this is why what we're doing works so well for American football It's really not very good for soccer basketball hockey right now because there's just way too much movement those sports are way too fluid And the game plans don't change that often in those sports You know basketball has a lot going on mentally It also really comes down to who makes shots and who doesn't in the end of the day With football the game plan is changing literally every week And the NFL if you make it all the way it's 21 different game plans over the course of the year So what we do allowing the players to get more reps in a finite amount of time We'll hear from the NFL later and from Jeff and you know when the teams are on the field They're on the clock and if they go one minute over they get fine and so Reps come at a premium in college and the NFL and eventually we're going to see these rules going to high school as well, too So we think what we're doing has a lot of merit if it's really the right way Do you see overlap between the programs the schools and the programs that are? Investing in MVP and that are investing in virtual reality Yeah, I don't know how many of the schools we work with have and vice versa have each other's Stuff but the forward-thinking Programs and organizations really stand out from the rest as a matter of fact We're in our third year now going into our third sale cycle in the NFL I mean I wouldn't be shocked if we only added only a couple teams this year because we've already gotten the early adopters six Right and now that the other three, you know 25 are really hard to push over the hunt because it's just not a sport That that moves quickly. It's not a lot of people that question the validity of it. I don't want to change my practices I don't want to change the routines of my players. So it this is going to take time But we'll get there very comfortably The You know speaking about sort of the NFL, you know the NFL investing in this The development of this project One of the things that I was surprised when I started the story is that you hear that the NFL is is sort of taking the lead But everyone I think everyone's public assumption is that the NFL has sort of contributed the problem by turning a blind eye for so long Until you know three four five years ago. I sort of wonder I mean do you think that that's Is it is it genuine that that the NFL is I mean, how do you sort of balance the excitement that the lead that the sport is producing the safety concerns? And you feel like there is a tension there as someone who is who is or not even safety safety concerns or Performance, I mean is the NFL truly sort of At the vanguard of trying to introduce some of these changes You see their role as being a productive one Did you see that I see him aggressively so I think they get faulted off and then look in the coaching culture You don't go to school to learn how to coach you do what you would talk to do when you were a player and nothing has changed I said publicly if you're 25 years or older You can't you have no contextual draw for what's going on now because it was toughness bull in the ring Oklahoma drill and all that type of thing taking hits and just they had the warrior mindset and The science just wasn't their way back. I don't think anyone was trying to hide it Nobody thought about it. You get dinged. Okay, so now I'm taking the drink of water. Come on back And now there's just so much you know a catapult and all these things that never existed way back when I tell coaches It used to be didn't drink water and you took salt tablet salt tablets back in the day Where did that get us? Yeah, and now I think the progression and the NFL I think is setting that I use them again frequently because they don't hit during practice, you know player player rules precluded Why can't we do that? Why can't that be done at a youth level or the high school level? It's an old-school mindset. Well, you know, that's not football People all the time they asked me about toughness. You can't develop toughness. I think he can in other ways if I go out in a School yard and I see guys running around pretty much identify a guy that he's inclined to could be a football player Someone else really athletic and doesn't like contact maybe a basketball players soccer player The kid the kid screaming on the sidelines probably to be a soccer player Just that's kind of kind of the mindset and you can kind of self-selective But I think the coaching culture has got to take hold of this and say it's a different era. We love the game I'm a tremendous supporter of the game, but let's change the way we prepare for it I know at the college and high school level probably 80% of the injuries occur in practice Yeah, so if you with with us we are 80% drop when we stop tackling Concussive head injury. I think we had six in two years. Yeah, and I think who I'd actually like to hear your opinion on this because these guys have been around for, you know, a handful of years in the United States and They're doing really really interesting things as it relates to player tracking load force fatigue all that stuff but A lot of the teams don't really know what to do with the data yet Yeah, right and so we are still same with us. We collect a lot of data too. We don't even know what to do with it We think we know so we are still, you know, three four five ten years away from the impact of new technology Really coming to fruition and give you know give the NFL and College teams that are embracing things like this credit because hey, we don't know what what it means yet But we're gonna do it anyway. Yeah, you know, I mean you probably go through this all the time when you talk to new clients I'm kind of curious. Yeah with that We we have if you take say NFL in particular will have close to 75% of the teams individually that will use catapult as More performance tool, but then also as a tool to for return to play So if they have an athlete that's injured they know exactly how to program that athlete back into Playing form so that they don't incur an injury again because a lot of times you'll you'll see athletes come back too early We see that all the time my background is the strength of addition I was a strength coach for 15 years So we would have a great relationship with athletic trainers and from your coach and I you would see an athlete and say hey He's about 90% but it was like 90% of what so now you have that what you have Is it symmetry the same when he moves to his right to his left? It does he have the same? Max speed if you look at the data we try to keep it simple for all of our clients coming in Everybody understands speed everybody understands distance Load gets a little tricky trying to explain that but you can look at speed is intensity and distance as your your volume of Work so if you look at volume and intensity you manipulate those you can be very successful So it's been you know a tremendous journey. I think overall and like he said Me in America. We're 10 years behind of what they're doing in Australia Australia They can use the day they've they've tracked so much they know every three minutes I need to sub this particular player because we know he'll give us our max his max effort His are her max effort during this time period and we know this we need to rest them for 45 seconds after that So they've really got it down to a side. That's interesting because I was thinking that My first question was like well, okay, someone pulls a hamstring How do you tell when it's time for that to know when the hamstring is healed? But it's not necessarily when the hamstring is healed it is when they're able to perform at their peak Right a lot of times even if you look at just speed and you see an athlete You know an athlete has a max speed Let's say of 20 miles per hour But over the past two weeks he or she hasn't run more than 15 miles per hour that sets off an alarm to say hey Is there an injury? Is there something you're not telling us telling us because a lot of times you're tougher quote-unquote Tougher kids won't tell you they're injured. They'll just push through it But it could be an injury. It could be girlfriend. It could be school social Whatever but then that gives you another avenue to speak to the athlete say hey, what's going on? Is there something we need to talk about so not only from the biomechanical the physiological nature But also that social aspect to say hey is there something going on that we can prevent this fatigue It's a regeneration. Is it hydration? Is it is it nutrition? So there's many factors that go into it Are you yeah, are you sort of ingrained with the football team? At Michigan I'm also co-director of the exercise and sports sciences initiative And this is a partnership between athletics and the whole research arm of the university and we we have the catapult system At least the football team does I think other I think other teams do as well And so you have the you have the challenge of Well coaches saying and trainers saying well, we don't know what questions we should be asking We don't know what data we should be collecting and what we should be Pairing with what and then we have other coaches who are who are saying well You know, I want to know x y and z anyway, and so at Michigan we've got the football coach has hired a data sciences expert PhD in data sciences, but The athletic trainer paired up with the student group of data scientists and the students are Crunching data for athletics right now. It's really fascinating and so the coaches are coming in and saying You know just just go through all the all these data and tell me this this and that right everything's de-identified I want to put that out there quickly and and early and often You know, we take great pains to make sure only the coaches and the trainers can can identify information back to a particular player, which is you know a huge deal on campus But the students have access to the data. They're crunching numbers. They're you know experts in The faculty who are experts in data sciences are starting to look at these data and say well What's causality versus correlation? What really would result in an injury versus being something incidental? so It's starting to become a big big effort this whole sports analytics Yeah, yeah, I think it's really important to note that like technology is really cool But it also just doesn't just happen right so the second catapult comes in the door or Stryver or MVP or anything Like if you don't take the time and to actually use it and understand it then what what are you doing? Like why spend the money? Why spend the time? It's completely pointless and I mean I've spoken a lot about what we've done over the last two years I do things like this all the time and my message is always the same like you're only gonna get in what you Get out what you put in right and there I feel really bad for people like him Because he is hit up by people like us every day every day I mean there's a 50 different things that come in the door and how do you discern? How do you sift through right a lot of it's crappy and then you know the cream rises at the top eventually But if you don't actually take the time to think for five minutes about how you could use this Or hire somebody who can interpret data and it's completely a waste But if you do then it can be really really powerful As a business strategy sort of akin to rehab after having a having surgery if you don't have if you know If you have your knee operated on but you're actually not sort of out there Redeveloping the muscles that injury that surgery is not gonna have that any good and similarly with the VR with the MVPs If you don't have I mean like what's the the emphasis on having representatives of the company out with the teams that have bought on Yeah, as it kind of leaves on one thing that we have done Which you know directly impacted as the founder of the company the fact that I made zero dollars for two years But one thing that we did which I think was very smart in hindsight Was we actually put a striver employee in the building with the NFL teams the six that we've had now for two years And they knew that whenever they need wanted to use VR they went to that person So, you know when a quarterback who will be in the Hall of Fame one day that uses our stuff regularly wanted to use it at 630 in the morning every day our guy was in there I mean you make sure nothing goes wrong you make sure they're getting the most out of it Trust me if a player walks up and hits on and it doesn't work It's dead to him forever and he's never coming back. Yeah, I mean we've seen it Yeah, and you know, but he's a customer of ours He can tell you that when things don't work it gets frustrating even if it has nothing to do with us And it's you know the computer manufacturer, right? So that's something that we did we take a lot of pride in that but that's not sustainable We can't do that 32 times. We can't do that 150 times, right? So, you know, you have to kind of get to the point where it is it is do it yourself But you also don't want to you know remove the hand holding too much or you may not succeed, right? And the tech gets better. Yeah, then yeah Other questions we have a few minutes. Yeah, please in the back Roderick, I think yes, I just want to ask you about the medical and legal ramifications of the catapult stuff And if the answer is I'm not a doctor or lawyer, that's fine I just want to know like Hypothetically if somebody like Hank Gathers or Reggie Lewis is wearing this back in the day Would it set off the alarm? I know it's different than an injury versus a life-threatening whatever So that's the medical question the legal question is if somehow it's supposed to and it misses it Are you worried that like the estate is going to like bankrupt your company or something? Well the to answer the first question there was a school a cc school with our with our equipment You can lock tracks you can see an athlete as they run around on the field You can see their speed their distance their player load different metrics accumulate over time So they were going through conditioning and he saw an athlete looked at his stats. It wasn't his normal stats So he brought the athlete over an athlete had a glazed look on his face And they were wearing heart rate monitors as well so it captured the heart rate and so he looked at the two data points the The physiological as well as the mechanical it made a decision like hey, we need to pull you out They probably saved that kid from going to the hospital So now if you go to the flip side and say if we miss something with us It's all mechanical data not physiological and really the physiological part is what you want to capture to determine Hey to prevent an athlete from going to the hospital. So we don't capture the physiological We capture that as an addendum from up from the heart rate straps that will you so I don't know if I That's how Rick Lane Played football holy cross and was for the 87 team that a kid took third in the Heisman So some of the smaller schools can do well Played Dartmouth a couple times But anyhow Question for the coach, you know my son plays tackle football travel across and travel hockey And we run into a lot of parents who on the hockey team lacrosse I'd never let my kid play football because of the injuries yet I see more kids getting hurt in hockey by far Especially head injuries and concussions that I've ever seen on my son's football teams Are you finding with the recruiting and the coaches because Dartmouth has a great football program hockey and lacrosse Are you seeing a drop-off in all sports or is it just happening with football because of the bad publicity? teams but at our Sport talk to high school coaches attrition is a concern touch football starting to come in it's a skill set that the kids are learning It's but everybody has a concern. I mean it's not a week day a week It goes by that you're not reading something about because of head injuries CTE Dementia and so forth a couple of guys came out today, and it's how do you control that? It's it's concerning and certainly it's been helpful from a recruiting standpoint with us We say your son will never tackle another Dartmouth football player during his four years with us Hopefully more people will follow I growly I work here. I was a swimmer. I wouldn't know how to do the football, but I'm just curious the MVP the digital Does it tell you how hard it was hit and do you care? We're considering doing that But it's the rich we have helmets sensors So my concern is what's it's doing to the guy that's hitting it not how hard he's hitting it And it's not registering away with if you had a collision with another human I mean at St. Thomas Aquinas my sense is that even you know at Programs that are less developed that Participation numbers are going down but the number of kids that are lined up to go to schools that are sort of big feeder schools For big programs. I mean it's it's there's no shortage. I mean they suit up the hundred kids every day of practice, you know not just for varsity the the the other aspect of of The impact and the helmets and I wonder whether they're I There was a there was a coach who made a comment to me that they had not suffered any concussions this year They use the speed flex there is that speed flex almost the ones that have the kind of flat on the front, right? and He was boasting that we it was right after they had their first concussion He said we haven't had any concussions yet this year, but we've given plenty Oh, he just doesn't know how bad that's gonna look in print But like it you know and and I mean I guess it's it doesn't seem to be Limiting the aggression of the game I don't use aggression to sort of taboo negative way, but it doesn't I mean do you see a less aggressive Sport play my guys. I thought they were more aggressive on Saturday because they didn't hit all week long It's kind of like the racehorse mentality cut the reins at the at the end They're flying and they took a lot of pride in being an extremely physical team and they actually felt better doing it Because they just didn't beat up the peripherals shoulders backs and arms necks and so forth and didn't get worn down You hit a bunch. You're gonna get hurt. That's the way it is Hi, I'm Matt Davis. I'm a fellow here at a new America. I was wondering about Football without helmets. I know that's something you mentioned, Australia No, rugby is is a very violent sport. They don't use any helmets And I don't know what the rate of concussions are in rugby But I follow a football team here in DC and one of the coaches said that if you don't use helmets You might be more safer in terms of tackling in terms of contact You were and that's that's a very non technological answer to this, but I'm curious about your all thoughts on that Rugby actually has a higher incidence of concussions than football. Just the volume is as great It's not as many players. So I don't think that would be the answer Yeah, I'm certainly the least qualified person up here about these things But you know, I think a lot of research shows that it's not the bone crunching hit over the middle that leads to the concussion It's the repeated head injuries over impact Offense in the defensive linemen the little hits hitting each other in practice, etc So in that sense these other sports are identical And a scrum you're banging your head all the time, but I don't really see what that would solve And I wouldn't want to be the one to tell a bunch of moms of little kids that this year You know, it's gonna play football and they're not gonna wear the helmets I mean, it's it's a game of very high velocities very high relative velocities. That's the nature of the game two people coming at each other from opposite directions and making quick cuts and You know, I think that the those hits that eventually are the most harmful are Are not the intense. It's not usually the result of the intention. You know, I mean, obviously they're hitting hard Yes, that's part of the game but those Those hits you see that really send somebody flying in a really ridiculous direction are rare and Unintentional in that way. I'd also like to say quickly back to hockey and lacrosse I don't know how easy it is to to access this information outside of the university setting, but these helmets are certified by a group and the recent certifications of Lacrosse helmets show that one of the leaders offered basically zero protection I would rather have a football helmet on than a hockey helmet Or a lacrosse helmet Maybe you can hold your question maybe to the end of the next one and if it doesn't get answered We can boomerang it back to the people who are sitting in the front row. All right. Well, thank you all so much Moderate the second conversation. I'm only up here because I was remiss in my opening remarks I was so excited to get to Nick into the first conversation I should have mentioned that Derek was kind enough to bring one of the virtual reality sets correct and I want to encourage everybody to Stick around when we're done and have a refreshment and maybe Derek can can can help us work through some reps, you know But while you have a refreshment, so Josh Yeah panelists for panel number two, please come up And thank you guys from panel number one. That was great I have to tell coach TVNs that I grew up in New Orleans in the 80s and 90s And I still have the buddy system jingle from two lions stuck in my head So thank you for that To my left I have Georgia Tala who's the assistant executive director for external affairs at the NFL Players Association Spokesman for the players you might know him from such websites as twitter.com George happy to be here Thanks for being here Victoria Jackson is a sports historian at Arizona State University Also a star college athlete, I would say from UNCA UNC and Arizona State and was did cross-country and track and field and Specialized in college sports and women current Brooke book project is social justice and injustice in American intercollegiate athletics Connecting the effort to expand opportunity for college women in sport and the problems of big-time college sports Which it disproportionately affect young black men To her left is Jeff Miller executive vice president of player health and safety with the NFL Overseas the NFL's player health and safety programs Scientific research and youth football programs and overseas the partnership with GE which was mentioned in the first panel and On his left Ken Troptor Director of the Wharton Sports Business Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania Was the chairman of the school's legal studies and business business ethics department from 2000 to 2005 Thank you to all of you for being here Jeff. I want to start with you Folks were talking in the first panel about what the NFL is or isn't doing so just from your perspective What is the NFL doing now with regards to technology and making the sport safer? About the whole portfolio Maybe it's start by talking about Start by talking about the gene initiative Sure, I'm happy to talk about the the large-scale partnerships that we have in Significant investments, I think you heard from the first panel that I think we have a relationship with each and every one of the people Who were represented there either through the league or through the clubs through scientific research investments or as consumers Which I think is the a good representation of the mindset that the league takes towards innovation and advancement and and Investing and hopefully the right or interesting technologies to make these improvements that affect the health and safety of our athletes at the end of the day specifically to The GE partnership we formed a partnership called the head health initiative with GE Four years ago later under armor and then the federal government joined us and what we did was Develop with them Significant diagnostic tools of course if you're gonna improve diagnostics you would work with GE and They'll be new scanners and such it will come from that but we also ran which I think is the more public-facing aspect of this three innovation challenges crowd sourcing initiatives against Diagnostics against prevention and against material science The third one which is the one where University of Michigan is the finalist and I think just in a few short weeks We'll know who the winner is And from that too came a new helmet company out of Seattle a new company That was in the automobile industry that that produces a turf underlayer, which will cushion the blows when players fall In our game if we're talking about concussion just as an example It's why that's important in the last few years somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of concussions at the NFL level annually come from heads hitting turf and so a Surface that that absorbs some of that force would be a positive and we work the army research lab Which was another winner there around some rate-dependent tethers In addition we announced a Hundred million dollar investment this past fall called the play smart play safe initiative and a significant aspect of that is what we call our engineering Roadmap which is working with biomechanists around the country material scientists and others to create an environment where better protective equipment will Be created. That's again challenges crowd sourcing, but it's also Measuring the on-field environment that happens in the league video reconstructions of hits a cause concussion finite element modeling of Helmets, which doesn't currently exist working with the helmet manufacturers disrupting the helmet industry all sorts of things that Companies in the technology spaces often do and it's a little early to see the fruit of our labors on that but over the next three to five years we will and George what would you say is the current thinking of the players Association of the players about These initiatives that Jeff just described I think we have a slightly different philosophical approach to some of the things that Jeff has mentioned and You know, we've been to those of us who have followed the industry You know, we've been locked in this sort of existential health and safety battle At least since I've been at the players Association since 2009 and our essential philosophy is own the health and safety problems That exist in the game before we start Coming up with new technology or before we start Reaching out to other partners. I mean we have a Plan in our union to look at things from a very basic Workplace safety level. So you mentioned the turf initiative our joint quintile data now shows that there's a statistically Significant difference in the incidence of injuries that take place on grass versus on turf So how are we going to approach that problem? Concussions tend to get most of the headlines But our job as a union is to approach things from a workplace safety issue to look at health and safety Holistically everything from what the helmets are made from how we're innovating on the data elements of it the turf studies our drug policies And and everything in between so I think as advocates on behalf of the players We don't believe it's our Positioning to rest at any point to say okay great this one, you know initiative or these great initiatives Not that they're not great They are and we're happy that the league has come around to taking a proactive approach on a lot of these things But our position is to advocate on behalf of the players and when we see Things like the turf first grass for example You know Jeff not to tip you guys off, but we'll be coming You know full force once we have some more information about how to how to better advocate for those types of improvements It wasn't my Can when you hear that conversation your business ethics and and legal guy What do you think what about the balance here between workplace safety issues and developing new technologies? Yeah, you know I'm just like I can really be pretty pretty neutral and watch both sides Doing what they're supposed to do And and certainly both sides in quiet moments could say we could do even more It's it's you know the challenge for the Union is to to really get inside The players heads and really get them to understand the kinds of things they may need to do to make the game better It's litigation that's just kind of coming to have to head in some ways Always hovers over a business when they try to make change and do some things that are right I mean some ways when you make change it's an admission that something was wrong So it's not Surprising that we have this this conversation. This is Progress happens over time. There'll be a collective bargaining moment There'll be a great moment of progress because there'll be formal agreement and then the engagement will happen again But this this is what with both of these these men are charged to do from their organizations I work with a lot of student athletes and so right it's all predicated on sport is educational So my place is falling more in line with Georgia's place, right? These aren't employees that we're told a lot. This isn't a workplace. They're student athletes And so for me I take the educational value of college sport very seriously And so what does that mean as far as? Well-being of students they can't learn if they're concussed they might not be experiencing the same student life or Learning experiences the regular student body because of the structures of big-time intercollegiate athletics as far as travel and those sorts of things And so, you know, if this is all structured that college sports are educational We need to be acting in ways that prioritize athlete well-being when it comes to that education and also their their well-being and safety Be interested now. Go ahead. Yeah, I was gonna tell off of that actually so the active NFL players Have a union and resources to bargain and advocate and pay my salary and pay our benefits and have a marketing and licensing arm to to push against the business interests of the league at times the collegiate athletes have none of that and I think you sort of see my blood boiling having this discussion because especially for college football players Who are not subjected to the innovations that you are doing a Dartmouth coach They are actually in the other direction a lot of colleges still have two a days Which we can to your point eliminated in our collective bargaining agreement in conjunction with the league We're proud of the advancements that we've made jointly with the league in 2011 on those issues The fact that college athletes don't even have a seat at the table a formal seat at the table I think is the biggest tragedy in this whole thing. It's not a question of whether or not they should get paid Right. It's the money issue is secondary It's how do we best advocate to have a positive student life? And I think that's the one thing that I took away from your opening remarks that really sort of Struck a nerve. It's like we're not talking about should they get a salary or not It's do they deserve a formal seat at the table to advocate for the things that will improve their life. I Think we can stipulate or I hope we can stipulate that football is dangerous no matter What technology we have no matter whether you're tackling in practice or not and I'd love to hear from all of you guys What you feel like is an acceptable level of danger and maybe it might be different for the NFL For college for high school or for, you know pop Warner Whoever wants to jump on that? Can you have a thought? Acceptable level of danger, you know, I mean when you ask the question so Long time ago I played college football played at Stanford Got got paid to the scholarship for playing for four years I am often asked would I let my kid play I mean that's kind of a common question that that's kind of the way to be responsive Yeah, to your question Fortunately my kid didn't essentially at some point didn't want to play so I didn't really have to engage in that I think it's I think it is It is it is challenging to play a number of sports that were mentioned and I think it is something that Families need to to make an evaluation of it's I mean like like these guys I talked to a lot of guys that Benefit it greatly from the game that have to make that decision with their kids or work with their kids to make that decision So it's it's not you know, there are a lot of things that are Potentially dangerous in life and I think the goal of everybody that loves a game is to make it as safe as safe as possible So so it's it's a it's a journey. I mean if you know if if the game was the same as it was in the 70s when I played definitely not Lot of a lot of movement forward a lot of efforts I would love to practice the way buddy talks about now as opposed to the things that I had to do back in the 70s Maybe to restate a little bit. I think I would argue that it's reasonable to Expect that NFL players who are getting paid to play this game that and I think there is more Knowledge and awareness now of the risks than there was before that to ask as fans or as Coaches or owners to have them Kind of accept more of a risk of playing this game than for example a college athlete Where we think there's an educational benefit to be had from this game It's always struck me as a little bit odd that as a college activity This is one where there is a very high rate of injury Which is not something that is like a college student going on campus I was expecting to go to school and like get hurt So I was just wondering if not for sports reason now I was just wondering if if you guys had thoughts on Whether that's reasonable to think about different levels of risk for different levels of the game To jump in and be the woman who talks about manliness Yeah, I mean the sport develops at a specific and as a historian So be obnoxious in that way too But the sport develops at a moment in which there are like fears of the immaculinization of American men because now we're Imperialist to the point of being a continental nation and well We're gonna have to be imperialist beyond that space, but you know concerns about sedentary work Are part of what inspires something to help young men develop their manliness in the context of the South with You know the abolition of slavery and the lost cause, you know, we've been Emasculated we as in I'm a white male speaking right now We've been Emasculated through the loss of this war and what better way to Demonstrate our manhood than to play football and oh we happen to have Segregated schools, so we're only playing against other white men and our physical prowess is equated with our intellectual prowess and the people who don't play who go to you know these premier all white Institutions can watch and learn from manliness on the field and that's prowess and they can be the states next Political and business leaders, so so there's educational value in the violence I would say historically and although we might not speak about it in this way now that kind of has tentacles Into the present and certainly I mean you read about sons and fathers watching football together and the lessons they learn that are passed down generationally and Even better if I play to impress my dad now. I'm one of those manly men, too So I think there's a lot more culturally Going on here and and kind of assumptions that are now being questioned about the value of participation in the sport particularly When it comes to brain concerns, but isn't that just part of the sacrifice because now I can be Exceptional in this place too and learn from that experience of pushing myself and taking a lot of pain and Putting it away somewhere I'm gonna if it's okay. I'm gonna go a different direction I That's fascinating, but I don't know enough to react to it, so I'll stick to what I know in this case I was I was at an event with the NCAA Relatively recently and to put it in the context to go back to the question you asked about relative risk Men's football was ranked fifth in Concussion Among clean Now that's not a stat that often comes out. That's not a stat that fits with the public narrative That's not a stat that people really know what to do It's the most because there's the most programs the most kids playing all that kind of stuff But in terms of proportion of concussion suffered by the kids who are playing those sports that ranked fifth and as I understand it Not my stats That that's relatively consistent So so the reason I raise that is not because football is safe or not safe I raise it because this is this is a broader conversation than that The point of the matter is if you want to put football into that context Let's let's put other sports into that context too now that doesn't that doesn't alleviate anybody's concern including ours around ways to make the game safer I mentioned all of the investments the league is making the partners that we've joined with the Engagement with the government all of the fabulous experts that we've had the benefit of surrounding ourselves with and with the players association because George and I could probably fight endlessly about this, but it's also true then a lot of these that and a lot of these initiatives we partner We do they're they're biomechanical engineering consultants are working to develop a better sensor with ours hand-in-glove And we will meet next week at the league office with those people endlessly to talk about things that I don't understand But that are going to advance the safety of our sport over time and so and so whether it's the head or whether it's Advances we've seen in cleat and shoe technology to prevent turf toes and high ankle sprains and all those things the game is getting safer Because technology is allowing it to become safer and wise investments and good partnerships can permit those things to happen But if we're going to talk about sports, let's you know that that relative risk issue is a broad issue You know Historically is you know that the regulation of football in college began because people were getting killed Early 1900s playing the game. It's it's not a mystery that there needs to be focused on the health and safety of the players In the game. So so there's something about the choice to be involved in The game that's not you didn't know what you're getting into. I mean there There's certainly some degree of that but but the idea that there's the Big big issue that that parts on this This medical and ethical concept of informed consent, right? So I think part of the historical Trajectory of why football has this consciousness as the most dangerous sport is is Frankly, we can't ignore it for years and years and years. There was not informed consent there was quite the opposite there was a destruction of health and safety information that could have benefited players and when all of that came out the Union and the league worked together to try to Spring forward, right, but the consciousness of football is a dangerous sport didn't just start in 2008 2009 2010 yesterday it started as a result of a long and unfortunate history Where we had to see former professional athletes struggle post career to get to this point now where we are finally working on You know, I don't like to use the word making amends, but working on treating our professional athletes much better today And I'm hoping that the way that we are now conducting business on the professional level will eventually trickle down to other sports and and not just youth football You know, I have three daughters. They're gonna play soccer. I'm well aware of the Concussion risks that that Sammy is gonna have when she starts playing soccer or the or the ACL Injuries that she might have she decides to go play basketball So that informed consent. I think is crucial. There's got to be a transparency of information So coach even in the first panel mentioned sort of near the end the one thing they've seen with the MVP is fewer injuries for limbs right extremities and I think we often focus on head injuries for important reason, but I Don't think we can have this conversation without talking about chronic pain without talking about painkillers. There's news just out about potential litigation there George, is there anything that you can say about? Chronic pain about painkiller usage and if a locker room, yeah, of course I mean, you know the the lawsuits the lawsuits the lawsuit right and the NFL PA the union is not a party To the case. It's a group of former players. So my comments are not tied to the litigation My comments are more towards the overall philosophy for how professional athletes Are treated in general? Let's go back to the very first principle of the labor management paradigm our union advocates to ensure that the athletes are treated as people first and as patients if they need to be treated as patients and That means everything that comes with it. Hippocratic oath confidentiality informed consent When when anybody in this room goes to the doctor for the flu and you're given Tama flu That doctor is going to go over Whatever side effects of that pill is going to give you right? That needs to happen in the locker rooms no matter what sport we're talking about and when it doesn't it creates a very dangerous situation for the athlete as a human being right and The trick is not to find You know as some Harvard researcher Wrote a thesis a couple months ago is not to have independent people for everything. It's no do your job You're a medical doctor do your job as a doctor. You're a trainer. Do your job as a trainer. It doesn't matter who employs you you have a fundamental duty to Treat that person whether you're giving them a shot or a pill or surgery or a second opinion or anything in between and and I think You know the technology and springing forward in the investments and all this stuff is fantastic It all has to be fundamentally grounded in this sort of elementary principle That we all adhere to as a as a medical community ethical community business I don't think I don't think this was the intention but but if there's an implication that the NFL Physicians the medical staffs the training staffs are anything less than professional with great frequency the best people in their community in the sports medicine spaces nationally known experts People who publish people who teach people who are the leaders in their field then If there was implication they aren't that then that would not be true simply play Our our medical staffs put their players first. They treat them respectfully. They treat them well They care for those athletes to know these people and to know that they're standing in their communities is to respect them and I Think that that the players actions towards those medical staffs and the trust that they put in them is valued and and on a regular basis Supported it's something that's of great essence and importance the league as it should be to the players association as well It is a very impressive group of people who who work very hard on issues of treating the players and keeping them safe So in a hypothetical where I Football was made perfectly safe. Do you think we would like watching it as much? That's for the philosophers. I think I don't know you're a deep thinker Could tell from the last answer Another another way to another way to think about it is how much of Why we enjoy Football is because of the feeling that somebody could get hurt Mm-hmm. The person I think who writes very well about this is a former Pro football player actually Michael Oryard Played it under Damon played in the league for a long time and he he calls he writes beautifully I highly recommend his book reading football But he has this passage to open the book where he describes football is contact ballet And he describes this moment in which the receiver is going up to make a catch and you see the defensive player coming to hit him and he sets it up beautifully which Is beautiful to read but but he you know says as the person Watching this we want him to catch the ball And he might get hit in the process and he might just Hold on you know regardless of the power of the impact we want the impact though That's what we want to we don't just want him to catch the ball We want there to be the challenge and the risk and the threat and the danger and that's what makes it beautiful And so yeah, I mean it ends up being a completely different sport and Something I grapple with a lot is the difference between Viewing something from the perspective of the participant versus viewing something from the participant of the spectator and you you see the Kind of drooling for violence from spectators much More right. I mean we see it every time we put on a football game and see folks in the stands going crazy And and it's different from the perspective of the participant. So to a certain degree. I mean Describing the desire to hit someone really hard. I think during the conversation in the first panel That's absolutely like rhetoric you hear in practices trying to take someone out and that sort of thing But um, yeah, that the contact ballet idea is I think what is so compelling about the sport What about you can when you played How important was the Contact You know, I think I'm I think some of the best football I've seen says more personal anything else is Boise State their heyday trick plays that that sort of stuff is it is entertaining I mean, there's but there's certainly people that always want to see the crash people that want to see the accident They're there, you know, if it became somebody waved a magic wand and said let's make this a different game And this is the way and you touch touch somebody there's a penalty It would be a different game, but there's a lot to the sport that is by itself Can be just fascinating to watch and you know, they think of some of the best plays you've seen when when when he wasn't touched I mean that that sort of play or the past it goes over over everybody. So so it's you know My philosopher moment, so it's possible. I'm at it. I'm not not probable at all I mean the part of what part of what we're we're talking about is is the reality of a 13 billion dollar a year business is going to be here and What how can we make it as good as it as it can be? And the idea with all these changes These guys know I mean a lot of what you hear from the fans and otherwise is You're making the game weak. You're what's a fly in the game and all that sort of stuff is What comes into play if you do? Try to get to the the injury-free game My kind of philosopher moment here is Helmets are the things that keep players safe, but they also obscure their faces and allow us to Dehumanize them and I was thinking the talk about the bike helmet that breaks apart The good thing about that is that you know that there was a crash But you can actually see that something really Dangerous happens. I was like maybe it would be cool if there was a football helmet that broke apart When there was a big impact so as fans we couldn't hide from what had actually happened That would drive our guys free You would sell so many more you would sell so many more helmets From those challenges that I mentioned to you the one that Michigan is participating in the others We've seen some very unusual ideas That would be a moment Thank you. I'll take that as a compliment. I think we can take some questions now so In the back there if you wait for the microphone Sure, I'd like to thank you for putting together a panel and it's a great conversation I would say though that the football that we see now for the most part is not as exciting So it used to be for the reasons that you mentioned I'd like to ask you the the helmet design that seems to be More I think spread across you now in Tyra NFL First you notice certain teams were wearing this sort of new design notched helmet What's the difference between that and the 20-year-old helmet that you typically what's the difference in the protection level? And then also the spinal is there been a difference in the spine of occurrences of fractures and spinal crushes and so on for head-on Accidences, do you know anything about that? statistics in the last 20 years on that short as I mentioned I think on the last panel that that Helmets are designed against skull fracture And have been and since the certifying body came out in the early 70s There's been a terrific improvement in limiting those sorts of catastrophic injuries and The helmets today also Reflect that as well. Those companies are trying to improve They're spending resources against new engineering design somebody mentioned the cannon levered helmet in the front What we do to measure it candidly we we do this again jointly This is this is off Georgia's thesis, but we work I'm going to keep saying we work together we in the Players Association evaluate helmets every year We do we do and we share those with the players so they can make informed decisions about helmets And we will do that again in the next couple weeks as we produce the next version of that the helmet poster and part of doing that is hopefully to encourage More innovation by those companies or new companies into those those spaces and I think it's it's fair to say We're beginning to see a fair amount of that. I think helmets are going to change. I think they're going to look different I think someday we're going to be talking about position specific helmets once we understand the different impacts that affect different players for the life of me or This is this is based on information from some of the biomechanical engineers we work with a Wide receiver sees the world very differently from an offensive one yet. They wear the same equipment It just doesn't make sense Given what we know now about material science what we do to measure the impacts to understand the parameters of what's going on on the Field and I think the infusion of that data over a period of time is going to change the technology and that's the sort of project We're working on now. So I think where we are today is Is okay, and it has the helmets do a good job of what they say they're going to do But where we're going to be three four or five years from now and after that is going to be significantly different Thank you about time I keep telling me I like George I'm going to use this as an opportunity to talk about data and science and technology and Challenges to think a little bit of the implications of that for student-athletes. It's really good to have all this information It's really good to get more reps, but if we're trained to want to win and You know we're reporting to a coach who needs to win to stay employed and we're Brought up in a society and culture which places right value on winning and we want to be the best at what we do, right? That's that's part of this. We're going to take what was it? 1200 reps with VR technology and that might just place studying for XYZ exams and We need to think about putting structures in place at least within the K through 12 and collegiate space to Make sure our student-athletes are still students and you know It's great to have all this technology particularly when it comes to performance and safety But we need to have that you know at the back of our heads kind of all the time Especially for people who are educators coaches are educators right developing well-rounded people right because this is all educational The data scientists at Michigan the students They're probably getting paid Possibly with athletics money. They're not getting paid. Are they getting course credit? It's a club Okay That's fantastic Okay, great Well killed my point So that's fantastic, but I imagine in other places there are students who are employed by athletics to develop Sort of scientific studies or they're working in some other way to support the athletics enterprise And isn't that interesting that they have worked study when? Others don't Or could get course credit for what they're doing in athletics. It's another thing to keep in mind Thanks for letting me co-op that question Yeah, I guess this is more for you Jeff But it kind of it goes back to that bigger point about acceptable levels risk at different ages and I guess I'm wondering what is the what could the league be doing in terms of Paying back to the community in terms of youth development like already we're thinking of like in the college situation There's much less protection for the players You know great what they're what they're doing at Dartmouth But when you look at youth sports youth football in high school Is there anything the league could be doing beyond the technology stuff to help their current players if they're thinking down The road to their future players We work we work with representatives all levels of the game Primarily we fund an organization called not primarily but significantly we fund an organization called USA football Which is in the job of certifying training educating coaches, which is I think over the course of the last few years since they've had Their certification program in place has certified hundreds of thousands of coaches representing millions of kids So kids are you know because usually the youth coach is the one that's the non-professionals people like me You'll get off work with a whistle around your neck and then try to figure out how to run practice There are nobody even I'm nobody Stevens when my 10-year-old plays football. I can assure you But but giving practice plans Teaching them about contact how to teach tackling and all those sorts of things or Platforms that the league takes on and we work closely with the high school associations to increasingly so the National Federation of High School in the state associations, and in fact they went to a chain They modified many of the states have modified the amount of tackling they permit in practices And that was patterned in part after what the NFL and NFL PA did And it in part was because some of the medical advisors that work with both of these organizations engaged with the medical advisors to those And those those folks in addition, you know, we've we've started programs like funding athletic trainers in high schools There's a dearth of athletic trainers at at the high school level and that's for obvious reasons the cost involved There's two-thirds of high schools across the country don't have a full-time athletic trainer That's a huge problem And so we've started programs to fund athletic trainers in schools and have added a number of them But there's so much more to do in those spaces and that benefits far beyond on the on football But I do think sports leagues have a responsibility to give back and I'd like to think that we're doing at least some of the right things in those spaces Quickly because I think we're at time so Given the accuracy of everything you said with respect to macho-ness and competitiveness and the desire to win I'm curious for the PA the league and the business and legal implications of as we're looking at how the rules are going to change and the CBA is going to change the next time around How are you guys going to take into account that players don't want to come out when they're hurt? They don't want to come out when they're concussed because their job and their paycheck and their manhood is on the line And they're open about it now We're seeing more and more players start to retire earlier listen to the independent neurologist and stuff But they still want to play. How is that going to be factored in as? Things go here, or is that too big of a question? For everyone I mean I'm freaking 38 years old and I still play in a secret pickup game at 6 in the morning And when I turn my ankle I want to go play in the next day, right? And I'm not getting paid so I love to play and And NFL players love to play football. That's what they do beyond the money beyond the fame You know we had our player rep meetings last week 90% of the conversations were had nothing to do with the economics of the CBA had everything to do with Health and safety and how do I keep playing this game at this level because I love it so much Okay, so that is just innate to anybody who's played a sport in the room and who's loved it You love to go out there The institution's job is to help temper some of that right to help Protect the players from that instinct when they can't go Further to ensure that that two three four year average career, you know a little less than four year average career Is not going to debilitate them for the rest of their lives at the professional level so You know to get deeper than that I'm not sure we have time because I've seen the stop sign go up a couple times But we can go all night about the institution Response institutional responsibility to protect the athletes from that instinct and you know I can't believe I'm doing this Jeff but I think the league in the union over the last seven eight years have done a good job of Jointly working together especially on the concussion protocols to to temper some of that Thank you George Victoria