The Head's Up DVD is designed to be an educational/ instructional tool for football players. Although it was designed with this audience in mind, it has plenty to offer anyone with an interest in football, including coaches, officials, administrators, parents and medical professionals. The DVD addresses the dangers of head-down contact and spearing along with contact techniques that reduce the risk of catastrophic head and neck injuries. In 2006 the DVD was sent to every NCAA school with football. In 2007 it was sent to every high school, NAIA and Junior College in the country with football.

It is available for a free download or the DVD can be purchased for $10 at the NATA wesbite. It builds
upon two previous video's on this topic "Prevent Paralysis: Don't Hit with Your Head" and "See What You Hit". In addition to catastrophic cervical spine injuries we designed the Heads Up DVD to also address catastrophic head injuries and correct contact techniques. It also addresses the contact techniques of all players including ball carriers, blockers, and special teams players.

The DVD runs about 15 minutes including the credits. It includes commentary from Dr. Jerry Punch, Tony Dungy, Grant Teaff, Dr. Joe Torg, MD, Dr. Bob Cantu, MD, Ron Courson ATC, PT and myself. The game clips are from major college football and include hits that resulted in injury, hits that demonstrate dangerous contact and hits that demonstrate correct technique.


Production Details (for anyone interested):
The Head's Up DVD was released at the NATA Convention in Atlanta on June 14th 2006. It was funded by Riddell and made possible by collaboration with the NATA. The project was born out of the CUATC Task Force on Spearing in Football, which met in January of 2005. The DVD was produced by AMS Productions in Dallas. Filming began for the project in April of 2006 and the DVD was completed in early June of 2006. We originally intended to use game footage from the NFL, but NFL Films would only allow us to use footage showing correct technique. They would not allow us to use any hits resulting in injuries (ie Dennis Byrd, Reggie Brown) or any footage showing dangerous hits. The NATA also could not offer the DVD for a free download on their website without an additional cost. Because of all of these factors the use of NFL footage was scrapped.