At Stanford’s Rose Bowl win on New Year’s Day, the players were wearing high-tech mouth guards.  The mouth guards registered motion and impact of the player -- a pioneering step toward solving the mystery of concussions.

“I hope it’s a game changer, I’ve said to myself I won’t allow my kids to play the sport of football until there’s an answer” said Stanford’s head athletic trainer Scott Anderson.

Stanford researchers compared two years of mouth guard data to super high-speed discovering exactly the direction and energy of hits on helmets. Yet, brain injuries remain unpredictable.

“We don’t really understand precisely when the injury happens and what really the threshold is,” explained Stanford’s Professor David Camarillo.

At one game the researchers measured one game hit at an astonishing  184 Gs, like going straight into a wall at 130 miles an hour. They believe that head rotation, which they also measure may be just as important.

“Your brain essentially starts sloshing around in your skull and leads to shear, shearing motion and we think that may be part of the injury,” said Professor Camarillo.

Many think that it’s the helmet to helmet hit that causes the injury but that isn’t necessarily true. A brutal hit to the chest in the 49ers-Seahawk game caused Vernon Davis' concussion.

Sources close to the developers said that the mouthpiece technology was offered to the NFL, but the league turned it down.

This week doctors revealed Junior Seau committed suicide after he suffered irreversible brain damage from repeated head blows which probably started with Pop Warner as a little boy, receiving tens of thousands of hits to the head over the years.

“These low level, sub-threshold impacts that occur over a period of time that we can measure that can be something that put you at risk for developing concussion like symptoms” said Anderson. “Their interactions with people are affected , they can become more angry and emotional at times.”

Once symptoms develop there’s little treatment. Even more troubling, researchers found that same hit that’s no problem for one player may cause a concussion on another.

“We’re used to seeing injuries as black and white, but this is not black or white or grey, it’s something totally different.” Lamented Anderson.

Players at all levels are getting bigger and faster. Hits are getting harder and harder. Stanford’s punter Daniel Zychlinski said “all my friends and colleagues put their lives on the line literally every Saturday.”

Researchers said they hope to be able to predict risks of any given hit to the head. And not only in football but soccer, lacrosse and other sports . With the help of changes to the equipment or a change in the rules.

 Other researchers say there’s an individual component. About one-in 20 children has a specific gene that may increase risk of brain damage.  So before they head off to the field, children should have a genetic test, which was expected to be available later in January.

The test would give them and their families information about which sport to play and when to return to play after a head injury.