Heartbeats not Headlines.
Written by Jerry Fife
By Jerry D. Fife, M.Ed. | ProTect Athletics | September 7, 2026 In the span of eight days in September 2026, two peer-reviewed studies landed in the same conversation about the same disease in the same population. One told us how many former NFL players have chronic traumatic encephalopathy. The other told us what happens … Continue reading “Broken at Both Ends”
Written by Jerry Fife
Opinion | Athletic Safety They Didn’t Want a Law Every law named after a child who died in sports is a monument to our failure to act before they died. Jerry D. Fife, M.Ed. | COO & Co-Founder, Athletic Safety Organization dba ProTect Athletics | August 31, 2026 Zackery Lystedt was 13 years old when … Continue reading “They Didn’t Want a Law”
Written by Jerry Fife
Athletic Safety Athletics is spending billions at the bottom of the safety ladder while ignoring everything above it. JF Jerry D. Fife, M.Ed. COO & Co-Founder, Athletic Safety Organization · August 2026 This week, Science magazine published a deep-dive on the evolution of the modern football helmet. “Inside the quest to make a safer football … Continue reading “The Upside-Down Pyramid”
Written by Jerry Fife
Series Note: In our companion article “The Illusion of Armor: When Safety Equipment Becomes the Hazard”, we established why Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is the final and most vulnerable layer of risk management, and how relying on gear creates a false sense of invulnerability while dampening the body’s natural sensory feedback. Here, we apply that … Continue reading “Don’t Believe the Hype”
