Happy New Year!

A s 2014 slips away and 2015 barges in, it's a good opportunity to review where our world of sports is headed. As clinicians, many of us are associated with professional, college, and high school teams and consequently affected by the politics, environment, and social issues of these organizations. Yet our primary concern, as clinicians, is the health care of the developing, current, and former athletes, along with physically active nonathletes. Contact sports— especially football—command a major portion of many of our professional lives, so let's start there. It's been one tough year for the NFL! Many significant questions still remain regarding head trauma and concussions. It's hard to kick back and enjoy a game on the " tube " at home or stand on the sidelines without wondering what effect that helmet-to-helmet hit that you just witnessed will have in the short and long term. While some encouraging news surfaced this year, 1 many questions remain unanswered, and more questions are surfacing. Unfortunately, because we don't have the scientifically sound answers that we need yet to make decisions about who is most susceptible to head trauma, many assume the worst, and understandably so. For many, this translates into not letting youngsters play at the junior level and below. If kids don't play and develop good blocking, tackling, and safety skills at the entry level, does that mean that they should not participate later? Are they at more or less risk by not playing in youth leagues? It's hard to counsel parents with our current depth of knowledge about kids. Furthermore, I'm concerned most about the insurance issue. With the mounting medical scientific data on repetitive head trauma, will it eventually become impossible for school systems and colleges to afford the needed insurance coverage before we have the answers that correctly address the risk? Multiple entities could be at liability risk in a worst-case scenario. On the social front, domestic violence by NFL players dominated the news media for weeks in the summer and early fall. Clearly, professional players are role models—whether they like it or not—which would seem to necessitate a higher standard of behavior, especially for the youth that adore these gridiron heroes. Hopefully the worst has passed! At the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) level in football, with its first National Championship playoff formula taking shape, it's difficult to comprehend how the billion dollar business of college …