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Five ways to end football head injuries
By Jeff Pearlman, Special to CNN

March 4, 2011 6:26 a.m. EST

• Change the helmets: When it comes to helmets, the clichéd belief is that the NFL needs to delve into its bag of technological tricks to come up with a safer, more secure, more layered product. That's nonsense. In professional football, a hard hit is a hard hit. The solution, as suggested by former Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman: Go old school.

Until the NFL made the plastic football helmet legal in 1949, players' headgear was made of leather -- soft, relatively cushy leather, which protected, well, no one. Because brain injuries are internal, and often take years to manifest, football players usually give little thought to leading with their noggins. Were leather helmets to be implemented, however, nobody would do such a thing. Well, maybe they'd try for a game or two. Then, heads would turn bloody. Skulls would crack. Ears would bleed. And that would be that.

Read the other 4 suggestions to reduce football head injuries here.