(upbeat music)
- I love the sport of football.
I love my players more.
When I played,
getting dinged, getting your bell rung,
you never thought twice about it.
Is the game at risk?
I think it certainly is.
- [Quarterback] Hike!
Either we change the way we coach the game,
or we won't have a game to coach.
(upbeat music)
Walked in a staff meeting and I said,
"You know fellas, we're not gonna tackle this spring."
So guys say, "Yeah okay, what's the punchline?"
I said, "No I'm serious, we're not tackling."
But, we're probably the most effective tackling team,
I would say, in the country.
Why?
We practice it more than anybody in the country.
We just don't do it against people.
(upbeat music)
(players yelling)
Be ready as the off-pulley.
If you attack this thing, get the inside hand up.
(whistle blows)
- [Narrator] Football runs deep in America.
But right now, the game is at a crossroads.
- [Anchor] The settlement provides as much as
five million dollars per player,
for serious medical conditions
associated with repeated head trauma.
- [Anchor] Diagnosed with a brain disease, CTE.
- [Reporter] The league's 19,000 former players,
will all be eligible for a medical exam.
- [Narrator] Recent attention on concussions
and the long term health risks
created by repeated hits to the head,
have put America's game on its back foot.
Youth participation continues to fall,
this year reaching its lowest levels since 2000.
Dartmouth Head Football Coach, Buddy Teevens,
is trying to reverse this trend, and keep players safe.
And he may be leading a revolution in the process.
- Man, if you cut through, all good stuff, yeah.
- Yeah, it's a second card for you.
We have a spring scrimmage,
and two of my guys go head to head.
(dramatic music)
Starting runningback, starting linebacker, both concussed.
And I thought, this is nuts.
(upbeat music)
So I did a little bit of research,
and decided that we were not gonna tackle any longer.
My players were a little bit backed up.
"What do you mean we're not tackling?"
(whistle blows)
(helmets crash)
- [Narrator] Most brain damage in football
isn't usually suffered via one devastating in-game blow,
but from repeated knocks,
the onslaught of sub-concussive hits,
suffered again and again in practice.
(crowd shouting)
- Kieth again, man.
Guys come here,
they may have 4,000-10,000 fewer sub-concussive hits
during the course of their career here at Dartmouth,
than they would at another Division One program.
- [Quarterback] Hike!
- [Narrator] But Teevens faced a fundamental question:
how could you really sufficiently mimic in-game scenarios
under a coaching philosophy that doesn't allow tackling?
- When I eliminated the live tackling,
one of the frustrations was I didn't have anything
that simulated a moving target.
And we tried everything, guys pulling bags,
a golf cart and a blocking dummy.
And nothing worked.
(upbeat music)
One of my classmates, and a good friend,
John Currier, works in the Thayer School of Engineering.
- We were looking out the window of his office suite
down on the field, one day,
and he said, "it would be nice if we could make
"one of those big tackle bags move."
And I said, "Buddy, I think we could do that."
- [Narrator] The result was this,
a padded robot called the MVP, or mobile virtual player.
(upbeat music)
- There's tension growing
between the tradition of high contact
and science that's showing that we need
to pay more attention to player health and safety.
So, by being at the confluence of those two considerations,
we're able to apply technology,
and allow teams to train just as effectively as they need to
to perform well on a Saturday,
without subjecting their players to the number of hits
and sub-concussive contact.
(dramatic music)
We got a prototype working.
And as soon as we had something that worked on the field,
it took off.
(upbeat music)
- [Coach] Go get it!
(upbeat music)
- Guys are healthier, they feel better,
they're not all banged up.
(upbeat music)
- You know, just how your body feels on game day,
it's just a lot different,
especially coming from high school.
By game day, you were pretty much broken down.
Everything was hurting.
Versus here, it preserves your body a lot.
- [Coach] Go deep!
(body slams into pad)
Nice!
- We approach everything with an open mind.
I think what really spoke was the success that it had.
- [Narrator] Indeed, Dartmouth's radical approach
has paid off.
In year one, post-tackling,
Teevens says the team's overall injury rate fell 80%.
By year two, the concussion rate had plummeted 58%.
And the Big Green's football, it was pretty good too.
Missed tackles were cut in half.
And since 2014, Dartmouth has won, an Ivy League Best,
78% of its games.
And this year, Conference Championship.
(players shouting)
Other big college programs, and even NFL teams,
are using the MVP.
But starting at a few thousand dollars each,
teams at every level will have to decide
what they're willing to invest
in the long term health of their athletes.
(upbeat music)
Coach Teevens is always looking
for the next revolution in the game,
with a constant focus on player safety.
- Trying to figure out what is, in fact, a concussion.
Respiratory tests, auditory tests,
blood drawing, and whatnot.
And that's really the push that I make,
and we make as a staff,
is how can we keep our guys even safer.
(dramatic music)
- A lot of the athletes here are going to go on
and have long careers, long lives after they retire
from the sport that they're playing.
So, from that standpoint,
it's really important to protect the health of your brain,
protect the health of your body,
so that you can go on and live a long
and healthy, fulfilling life.
- I think about the philosophy of football
and changing the game.
It's a wonderful game.
And I think that's a great way to train student athletes
for a productive life.
(upbeat music)
I'm involved with a lot of different sports
over the course of time.
It's something special about it.
And I'd hate to see it go away.
- Hey guys, thanks for watching.
We had an awesome time here with Coach Teevens
and the Dartmouth football team.
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