Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 9, 2026

Impact Mitigation in Modern Football Helmets: Advances and Limitations of Position-Specific Designs
Published on: January 13, 2026
The Incidence of Spearing During a High School's 1975 and 1990 Football Seasons
1Jonathan F. Heck is Coordinator of Athletic Training at Richard Stockton College, Pomona, NJ 08240.
Abstract:
Spearing and head-first contact in football pose significant risks of cervical spine injury and concussion. Reduction in the number of catastrophic head and neck injuries in football has been attributed to the 1976 rule change banning spearing. In this study, I examine the incidence of spearing before and after the rule change. I reviewed 18 game films of a New Jersey high school football team (9 from 1975 and 9 from 1990) to determine the incidence of all types of spearing by ball carriers and tacklers. The cumulative incidence was 1/2.5 plays for 1975 and 1/2.4 plays for 1990. Over 14 ball carrier spears and over 26 tackler spears occurred per game for both seasons. Spearing by running backs increased during the 1990 season, but the overall incidence of ball carrier spearing did not change. Tacklers were more likely to spear when a ball carrier speared and the incidence of concurrent tackler spearing increased significantly during the 1990 season. Independent tackler and defensive linemen spearing, however, decreased. Linebackers and defensive backs accounted for the most spears among tacklers. Overall, it does not appear that the rule change had a favorable impact on the incidence of spearing.
Related Concept Videos
Robbers Cave
The Stanford Prison Experiment
Testing a Claim about Mean: Known Population SD
Estimating a population mean requires the samples to be distributed normally. The data should be collected from the randomly selected samples having no sampling bias. The sample size needed to be higher than 30, and most importantly, the population standard deviation should be already known.
In most realistic situations, the population standard deviation is often unknown, but in rare circumstances, when it...
Social Facilitation
Reliability and Validity

