TOW #6: We count pitches to save arms, It;s time to track hits to save lives.

High school football is an American institution. Where quarterbacks are lauded as high school heroes, and Friday nights are dominated by high school showdowns for many a Middle American town, football reigns supreme in the American high school hierarchy. That being said, as of late this fall tradition has come under fire for its blatant disregard for the safety of its players as traumatic brain injuries become more and more common on the football scene. Senior sports writer for TIME Magazine Sean Gregory takes on this topic as he argues for the implementation of preventative measures that would in theory reduce the devastating brain injuries that mar the face of American football. In his op-ed, Gregory argues that much like the pitch counting in baseball to preserve the pitcher's arm, football should implement "hit counting" where the number of hits to the head of a player are counted in order to potentially prevent brain injury. As he argues to his audience of football watching Americans that it is necessary for these precautions to be implemented, he effectively uses statistics and comparisons to prove his point. When speaking on the magnitude of head injuries amongst football players, he says "Last month, the Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University said 87 of 91 brains of deceased NFL players showed signs of CTE, a devastating neurological disease believed to result from blows to the head" (para 10). Through this statistic and others throughout the text, Gregory appeals to the reader's sense of logos by supporting his assertion that traumatic brain injury in football is a large problem with facts from credible sources. He also compares football hit counts to baseball pitch counts, showing how it is nonsensical that football does not count hits when baseball pitches are counted--and pitch counts protect arms not lives. This comparison once again appeals to logos and shows to the reader that it is obvious and logical for a hit count system to be implemented in high school and professional level football.