Health and Disability

The guidelines would put Michigan in line with states like Alabama, Iowa, Kansas, Georgia, Texas, California and Tennessee, all of which have moved to limit practice contact to 90 minutes a week. Ohio and Wisconsin are even more restrictive, limiting full-contact practice to just 60 minutes a week.

There’s just one catch: The guideline is a recommendation only – the official requirement of the Michigan High School Athletic Association still allows six hours of full-contact practice a week. Sports safety advocates and concussion researchers say Michigan should fall in line with other states and make the new, 90-minute guideline a mandate.

Purdue University concussion researcher Larry Leverenz noted to Bridge that repeated studies have shown that potential brain damage in football players is directly tied to the number of blows to the head, whether or not a player suffered a concussion.

“Our research is showing that changes that we are seeing in brain activity are related directly to the number of hits that a person receives to the head,” said Leverenz, a clinical professor in the Department of Health & Kinesiology.

“You can decrease the risk without changing the game. Limiting the amount of hits in practice is one way of doing that.

“It would make sense (in Michigan) to make that a policy,” he said.