A University of Michigan researcher releasing results Wednesday of a four-year study of concussion impact data drawn from a high school football team will continue his work at Skyline High School.

While research and media coverage of concussions in professional sports has been extensive, Steven Broglio, an assistant professor in the University of Michigan School of Kinesiology, turned his attention to the prep scene.

"To us, the larger public health issue is with the 1.5 million high school kids that play football each year. Not the 1,500 that play in the NFL," he said.

While working as a professor of kinesiology and community health at the University of Illinois, Broglio led a team that measured all 120,000 impacts absorbed by members of an Illinois high school football team over a four-year period using spring-loaded accelerometers inside helmets.

Twenty-five of those hits resulted in concussions and one measured the impact of a head-down tackle that broke the neck of an 18-year-old player.

Though other researchers have captured concussion impact data, this is believed to be the first time it has been captured for a spinal fracture. The data appears in a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine released Wednesday.

The Skyline football program recently forwarded a shipment of new Riddell helmets to the university to have them outfitted with padded sensors called the Head Impact Telemetry System (HITS), which will allow the Eagles to be the subject of Broglio’s continued research.

The system activates on impact and wirelessly transmits the location and magnitude of that impact to a sideline computer.

While bodies react differently to impact, research says concussions occur when an impact measures at roughly 90 to 95 g-force, a measurement of an object’s acceleration relative to free-fall. By comparison, a rolling fighter pilot measures about 5-10 g-force.

Broglio compares it to “smashing your head against a wall at 20 miles per hour.”

The research at Unity High School in Tolono, Ill., showed that an average high school football player absorbed about 652 impacts over a 12- to 13-week season. One player, a defensive end, took 2,200 hits.

"I challenge you to find a parent who will tell their kid to bang their head against the wall 652 times in 12 weeks," Broglio said. "It's an interesting way to think about it."

The continuing program with Skyline was already in place when Rod Jones was named the Eagles’ new coach in late March.

But the former college (Kansas) and professional (Cincinnati Bengals and St. Louis Rams) offensive lineman is excited to be part of it.

“It’s something I’m very interested in as a former football player,” he said. “I’m always curious to see how football affects the brain.”

Broglio says that the 90-95 g-force threshold for concussion isn’t reached as frequently on a high school football field as it is at the college or professional level. But high school players are more likely than higher-level players to receive a concussion at that measurement. College and professional players, Broglio says, have thicker and stronger necks that allow them to better brace for impact.

Along with recording Broglio's data, the sensored helmets Skyline will be wearing will serve as an “extra set of eyes on the field” to help monitor the health of players. If a player takes a big hit that registers in the dangerous level on the HITS system, the player will be pulled to the sideline for an evaluation.

Other researchers at Michigan are finalizing plans to complete a similar study with the boys and girls hockey teams at Pioneer.

"Ultimately, we're trying to use these measures to predict concussion," Broglio said. "If someone exceeds a certain level, then we would know they have a concussion and we could pull them."

That type of information being available to all high school programs is “years away from becoming a reality,” Broglio says.

Funding the Skyline project -- which includes 45 helmets, the sensors and a computer -- cost the university $65,000. Broglio knows of only one high school football program, a private school in North Carolina, using the system for clinical purposes.

Broglio -- who says he never played football, “much to my father’s chagrin” -- stresses that he’s not out to change the sport. But he would like to make it safer.

He says there are two things that can be done quite easily to decrease the number of concussions suffered by high school players: Improve officiating and rules so helmet-to-helmet contact is cut down upon, and teach appropriate tackling technique.

Jones agrees.

“Football is not about hitting, it’s about tackling. We’re really trying to push that mentality. It’s like the difference between a layup and a dunk,” he said. “A layup is still worth two points. Making a fundamentally sound tackle keeps you from getting hurt.”

Jones still knows football is a testosterone-driven sport and he fears the data could create a competition of sort among players looking to make or absorb the biggest impact.

For that reason, the data made available to Skyline will only be shared with the coaching staff, trainers and school administrators.

“This can be a dangerous game if you don’t know how to play it," Jones said. "It’s important to me for my players to understand that.”

Rich Rezler is a sports producer at AnnArbor.com. Contact him at 734-623-2553 or richrezler@annarbor.com.