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Brain Disease Found In NFL Players
SternisheFan sends this excerpt from ABC:
"On the heels of the latest NFL suicide, researchers announced today that 34 NFL players whose brains were studied suffered from CTE, a degenerative brain disease brought on by repeated hits to the head that results in confusion, depression and, eventually, dementia. The study was released just days after the murder-suicide of Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher. It's not yet known what triggered Belcher's action, but they mirror other NFL players who have committed suicide. Researchers at Boston University's Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy published the largest case series study of CTE to date (abstract), according to the center. Of the 85 brains donated by the families of deceased veterans and athletes with histories of repeated head trauma, they found CTE in 68 of them. Of those, 34 were professional football players, nine others played college football and six played only high school football. Of the 35 professional football players' brains donated, only one had no evidence of the disease, according to the study."
It's a good thing we protect our youth from conditions like this.
Do we really need a study to show that repeated hits to the head result in confusion, depression and dementia? If so, I'd like to sign up to be the guy on the research team that whacks this researcher on the head repeatedly so he can discover the effects.
I just want to help. Really I do.
Sent from my ENIAC
Going to be interesting to see if Belcher's brain had this disease, seeing as it was spread all over the parking lot.
I would have thought that the 1-line heading would be the start & end to this article, with anything else being redundant...? :-/
This has been studied time and time again.
Any sport that involves any repeated impact to the head - whether football, boxing or soccer will result in brain injury.
I plraled futbawl sence I wurz 5. It made my dad happy, and me happer. I never get suicidal, and I got hit in ther head hunnreds of times in those years. Preas don't look at my record and see my addiction to oxys and wife beating as any evidence to suppurt ur stupid claims either.
Silence is a state of mime.
Sorry to say this, but, it's actually a whole lot easier than you think...
Not when you look like me. It was my life goal for decades until I finally gave up. It was just too difficult. I had to go back to electrical engineering and plasma physics. Much easier. If you're a pretty boy it's easy. If you're not it actually is a major achievement.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
I KNEW IT, I KNEW IT, I KNEW IT!
Sucks that so many folks are dying, though.
"a degenerative brain disease brought on by repeated hits to the head that results in confusion, depression and, eventually, dementia." Windows Vista users suffered from a similar condition.
To satisfy our social self destructive desires.
There's always been some sacrificial element in society, whether it be celebrity, sport or literal sacrifices in less 'civilized' days. The way I see it we're lying to ourselves if we don't accept the pornography of sport, the search for new talent to seduce with fame and throw away as soon as their purpose starts to fade. How is this any different from celebrity or young women in fashion? This research is important and should bring to light an important issue in society we can't seem to live without, but how will 'making the game safer' truly improve the lives of the players while satisfying our desires as spectators? These are the questions we have to ask when we finally take a look and realize just how damaging our practice of sacrificing youth is, be it football, olympic athletes, eenage fashion models, hollywood etc. How do we replace the desire to watch others suffer? Don't dare ever question most sports fans, their only happiness is derived from obscuring the illusion of material filth around them with the constant consumption of sport.
Tom Payne wrote a decent book "Fame: What the Classics Tell us About Our Cult of Celebrity", that touches on the sacrifice aspect of celebrity.
Hmm. Fair enough to some extent, but I know a lot of single women who are equally pessimistic about their hopes due to appearance. The ratio of men:women is pretty close, and polygyny is rare, so statistically speaking the situation shouldn't be hopeless.
The term "football" is in reference to playing the game "on foot" as opposed to mounted on a horse like polo. Many early versions of games called football in the middle ages involved practically no kicking of a ball at all. The direct precursors to Association Football, or Soccer, allowed one to not only touch the ball with your hands, but catch it, too (i.e. the fair catch, which still survives with Soccer's cousins Rugby and American Football).
As for the brain damage with the North American version of the game, I'm not sure if there is much of a solution. There is a common belief that all the hard shell padding and hard helmets are to blame, and going "naked" like rugby would solve the problem. Players wouldn't feel as invincible and their instinct for self-preservation would kick in, reducing the force of their blocks and tackles. The data doesn't support this theory. There have been positive brain trauma studies of this sort going back 80 years ago during the age of leather helmets and soft padding, so reducing protection is probably not the answer. The nature of the game is simply predisposed to hard hits both in blocking and tackling players. The goal is to always get extra yardage or jar the ball loose. That's not an issue in rugby where there is no line to gain, the ball is loose after every play, and there is no blocking allowed. I'm not sure you could make the game safer without so radically changing its nature that it would essentially become something completely different from football as we know it.
Get my real time strategic sports viewing kicks from watching professional Starcraft now, knowing that the worst injuries being inflicted on the players is maybe a case of CTS, and only if they aren't careful about posture.
I mean look at the size of these guys today. Even the wide receivers are huge. Bigger, stronger, faster...all to feed our insatiable appetite for violence disguised as sport. In hockey it's the fights. In nascar it's the crashes. In football it's the big hit. Add to that the enormous sums of money available to the stars of these sports and it's no wonder they will do whatever is necessary to win. All to the delight of the fat, shirtless drunk spewing profanities on every play.
The athletes are simply too big and strong. Could you imagine Fran Tarkenton playing in today's NFL? He would get killed. The equipment cannot protect them adequately. The NFL is stuck between giving the fans what they want on the one hand and getting sued on the other hand by crippled ex players. Cutting back on the head shots is a good start but how much can you really do to prevent permanent injury?
'Nuff said.
Wrong. Completely wrong. Absolutely brimming over with wrongability. The dementia in question can strike many years after they have finished playing and breeding. You need to go and read up on how evolution works. I'll give you a hint though - if your kids are old enough to look after themselves when the effects of your stupid (or just plain unfortunate) actions are realised, it doesn't count.
Sorry to say this, but, it's actually a whole lot easier than you think...
Not when you look like me. It was my life goal for decades until I finally gave up. It was just too difficult. I had to go back to electrical engineering and plasma physics. Much easier. If you're a pretty boy it's easy. If you're not it actually is a major achievement.
Have a look around at all the unattractive guys, and then take a look at their wives. Some of them do okay, so don't write yourself off so fast. If you're a pretty boy then getting laid is (probably) easier but statistically speaking finding a life partner when you aren't the prettiest guy on the block isn't impossible or even that difficult. What makes it hard is having the low self-esteem of feeling like you are too ugly to exist - that does make you unattractive (but so does the opposite situation). Thick skin helps too (metaphorically - actually having a disease causing a thickening of the skin probably just makes the situation worse).
Three types of people commit suicide. The confused, the desperate, and the cowardly. None of the situations that lead to suicide were healthy to begin with.
Life is not for the lazy.
Belcher killed his girlfriend, that was the motivation for his suicide, either from the grief over what he'd done or the realization he'd be going to prison for a long, long time. Also, he'd been in the league a much shorter time than many of the other notable suicides, who often killed themselves after retirement. Belcher was just in his third season.
If he was suffering from a brain disorder from too many hits, it had clearly affected him in a much different manner than any of the others. Has there ever been another murder/suicide or some other violent act attributed to a football player suffering from this disorder?
I do not know a single intelligent person who likes watching football.
I know plenty, but I believe that our "Aussie Rules" football is a little more elegant than the version played in the states. Even so I don't have any real interest in it, apart from winning the footing tipping competition but that's more about the money than the game.
It is if you're an AC hanging out in his parents' basement writing flamebait posts about /.ers jacking off with Cheetoh-encrusted fingers. I mean, is there anything more pathetic than the grandparent poster, a complete fucking worthless loser whose life is filled with trolling Internet web sites.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's a good thing we protect our youth from conditions like this.
I see your sarcasm and raise you an unfortunate reality. I grew up on the NFL, like many kids did in the 70s and 80s, as our parents and their friends gathered, drank and were merry. I never made a mental connection to football like I did with, say, Star Trek. I didn't ever seek it out, but rather it became background noise and part-reason to gather with friends... and drink. Perhaps a fortunate side-effect of the USA becoming more aware of brain injury could be the replacement of humans with robotic players. Yeah, I know we're nowhere close to stuff like Real Steel, but wouldn't it be kind of cool to see bots being beat to crap and the pieces swept off after? By little robots, nonetheless.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
It's a prolate spheroid you divegrass-loving clod.
Sports builds character. How could it be so bad? These brain damaged players are just slackers. Next your gonna say that vaccinations don't cause autism and Jesus didn't ride dinosaurs.
Please respond using a car analogy so I can understand WTF you are saying.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
"Handegg" (I refuse to call anything but Association Football "football") needs to be banned and removed from play at school level. Anything less is irresponsible.
Only idiot fans of that violent, harmful sports would dare say anything else.
"Its funny when people get hurt." -Homer Simpson
I don't want to make it look like I'm only bashing American football because this could easily apply to the NASCAR fans that only watch it for the crashes.. and hockey for the fans that only watch it for the fights... or boxing for people who only watch it for the KOs.. or MMA for the totallyfuckingawesome KOs. OK, I'm just making this worse.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
Then no one will be able to get it.
Three types of people commit suicide. The confused, the desperate, and the cowardly.
Imagine that you are 80 years old and have $1 million in the bank. One day your doctor tells you that you are incurably ill and will start suffering unbearable pain tomorrow. The doctors can give you additional 100 days of life for the low cost of $10K per day. Then you will die anyway, and your family - or needy charities - will have nothing. You decide to commit suicide instead. Will you be confused, desperate or cowardly as you jump from the roof?
If you don't like my example then feel free to imagine a war hero who accepts a mission that will save thousands of men but will have him killed. Who will be that hero, using the short list of options that you provided?
My point here is simple. Suicide can be also a rational choice.
I do not know a single intelligent person who likes
watching football.
It is idiotic barbaric violent crap.
And you have to be a sick fuck to even think it is cool
to watch people beat the hell out of each other during the game.
Of course it fits right in with the old Roman scheme of "bread and circuses"
which was meant to keep the populace in a satisfied and compliant state.
Of course if you are not an idiot that alone will offend you.
I wonder whether nerds' general disinterest in sports is a function of their general ASD nature.
ISTM that sports fandom is primarily a social phenomenon.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Suicide is not evidence that someone has brain damage or is insane or anything like that. It is often a brave and highly rational act. When I hear of a suicide I look for what it was in their environment that caused it. Not for what was wrong in their head. It is blaming the victim that is the real problem. Japanese society has a healthy view of suicide.
Unfortunately sometimes something "wrong in their head" *does* cause suicide, and a lot of other behavior that society doesn't approve of.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Belcher was no victim. He murdered his girlfriend in cold blood and then took the easy way out by killing himself before he could be brought to justice. I suppose his act could be described as rational (having just destroyed his entire life, what reason was there to go on?) But it wasn't brave, or honorable.
It's possible that repeated hits to the head fucked him up, but we don't allow "I was fucked up your honor" as an excuse for other people, such as drunk drivers.
What's crazy is that women still chase after alpha male guys - and in fact - guys exactly like these - instead of intelligent geeks...
Go figure?
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
The term "football" is in reference to playing the game "on foot" as opposed to mounted on a horse like polo.
[citation needed]
Baby Orcas have a way better survival rate when they have living grandparents. Seems that growing old and helping your children raise your grandchildren enhances the chances of survival of your genes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
It's possible that repeated hits to the head fucked him up, but we don't allow "I was fucked up your honor" as an excuse for other people, such as drunk drivers.
Are you an idiot by genetics, or did you play too much football? Never heard of: "Not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect"?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Well, by most generally accepted criteria I am an intelligent person, and I enjoy watching football. Of course, you don't know me so your statement may still be correct (though I doubt it). At a visceral level, there is a significant level of tension release watching people "beat the hell out of each other". (Actually, most of the guys on the field are pretty friendly to each other - guys on different teams talking and laughing between plays. Just don't go up for a reception over the middle on third and 5).
I don't particularly enjoy the fandom of football, and couldn't tell you what place in the standings my hometown team is (actually, for my hometown, that's pretty easy; even I know it). I can sit and enjoy a game, and walk away afterwards and not be able to tell you the score. I just don't care who wins or loses, but I do enjoy watching the strategy, the speed, the mistakes, and the raw athleticism on display. /frank
And the worms ate into his brain.
"The term "football" is in reference to playing the game "on foot" as opposed to mounted on a horse like polo. Many early versions of games called football in the middle ages involved practically no kicking of a ball at all. The direct precursors to Association Football, or Soccer, allowed one to not only touch the ball with your hands, but catch it, too (i.e. the fair catch, which still survives with Soccer's cousins Rugby and American Football)."
You can put it even more simply than that: the North American football codes derive directly from the sport of rugby football, as it is formally known. You know, the sport whose UK governing body is the Rugby Football Union.
The UK spawned two football codes, rugby football and association football. Through various quirks of fate, the rugby code was the one mostly adopted in North America, and it gradually mutated into the sport played today. (Various CFL teams still had 'rugby' in their formal club names well into the 20th century, FWIW). Simple enough.
I always like to point this out to smirking Brits who say football should be called 'handegg', and invite them to go down to their local rugby club and politely explain to the nice friendly boys there why their game should be called 'handegg'...
Darwin would have you losing to these guys since by the time their disease develops they have already slept with plenty of desirable women. If jumping off a cliff would make you more attractive to the opposite sex, Darwinism would make us all cliff jumpers.
Athletic Darwinism has its supporters.
Is that like cow tipping but with linebackers?
Rugby tackling is much more head friendly. The ball carrier drops the ball almost immediately upon being touched by the defender. There is no incentive for the tackler to hit hard. Yes, there is the scrum, yet most of the contact in a scrum is endured by the players' shoulders. Most importantly, there is no blocking. The most frequent incidence of head contact in American football is on the line of scrimmage. Every running play involves the offensive line (and other associated players) running forward headfirst into a group of other players. There has even been talk about eliminating the three point stance to minimize helmet to helmet contact at the point of contact at the line of scrimmage.
If members of the opposite sex are turned off by the idea they will have to put up with a person with a damaged brain later in life, or seeing their significant suffer dementia and higher chances of suicide, then it could impact their breeding years. It wouldn't even have to be a real effect, just a perceived effect could influence their potential to produce offspring. Although considering how sports stars are treated in many places, it would just be a teaspoon's worth of water taken out of an ocean...
The Canadians brought Rugby to the States. Up until that point, the various schools played a bastardized version of Association Rules--typically without the offsides rule (Americans like their scoring). Harvard had their own unique game that was kind of like Gaelic football. No one else would play it, though, so they invited some folks from McGill University in Quebec to show them the game. They said, that's nice, but here's a better one.. and they showed them Rugby. Well, Harvard was wowed with the game and evangelized it to the other schools that would become the Ivy League. A student at Yale named Walter Camp thought that the game could be improved in several ways. He reduced the team size to 11 (after seeing a true Soccer match), allowed blocking, and implemented the system of "downs" and yards to go to prevent loose balls after every play so as to allow the possessing team to develop plays and a strategy. Thus, American Football was born!
Maybe we should all just start playing sarcastaball. That will be much safer.
The thing is that brain trauma is down to movement of the head. You may get more cuts and bruises playing without a helmet (and may even get more broken bones etc as well) because the force of impact is dissapated by the helmet across the whole head; but the brain doesn't know that, all that matters for it is that it is being violently thrown about.
I'm not sure you could make the game safer without so radically changing its nature that it would essentially become something completely different from football as we know it.
So what, it already *is* completely different from football as *we* know it. ;)
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
This guy was the definition of team player.
This is insightful. And a very sad insight as well.
He intentionally sacrificed his life so maybe other current and future players would not have to suffer from the same things he has suffered from.
My first reaction: "Yeah, that makes sense. Gotta take some kind of brain disease to make you wanna play American Football".
There are also animals where the survival chances of offspring is enhanced by the sacrifice of their parents.
Maybe the financial benefits of playing the NFL, which can be passed to offspring, outweigh the potential downside of having a shorter life.
Also, brain disease.
That's not exactly an easy verdict to get.
I work part-time at a state mental hospital, and through that job have met two people who actually qualified for the label and yet are normally well-behaved enough that they can be allowed out of the criminally-insane building. One killed his parents and a sibling while home on a break from college. If you don't treat his psychosis, he becomes withdrawn and violent. If you treat it too well, though, he comes out of the fog, remembers what he did, and goes into severe depression over it. Tough balancing act. The other is an ex cop who came home one day and tried a murder-suicide. The murder worked. The suicide didn't. Messy.
Rugby tackling is much more head friendly. The ball carrier drops the ball almost immediately upon being touched by the defender.
Only if he wants to lose possesion and give it to the other team (which he does not). The aim is actually hold on to the ball when you are tackled then give it to one of your team mates behind you so they can try and score. Ideally you storm though tackle and keep running if you can by not going to ground.
By the way though, many rugby players do wear head protection that consists of a bit of padding designed to limit head trauma. Also, this study seems to indicate that a good concussion is just as common in a game of rugby: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC155428/
I dont read
Actually we do allow "I was fucked up your honor" for drunk drivers, especially football players.
Back in 1998, Leonard Little of the St. Louis Rams killed a mother of two who was crossing a street in downtown St. Louis late at night (on her way to work). It was his birthday, and he was quite drunk (.19 BAC).
He got a 90 day sentence with work release so he could practice with the team. He also had some probation and public service time (which I bet was served through football sponsored stuff).
He didn't miss a game and, unfortunately, he continued to play for the Rams for several years. I hate to say it, but I wish mental problems upon him as that would represent some justice in a situation where there was none.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Little
BlameBillCosby.com
Some obvious solutions that won't be discussed to the "big guys hitting each others heads too hard"
1) Technology. Now only played above 5000 meters. No idea what Florida is going to do here. Too little O2 to smash each others heads.
2) Weight limits. 400 pounds to the head is probably worse than 175. Fine get all bulked up but no one plays over 175 pounds.
3) Socially inappropriate. The cheerleaders play too. In the 75 IQ backwoods "hittin a hot girl on the head" is even less cool than it is in the city. I suppose this is going to give a whole new meaning to "touch football". You could probably doctor the rules a bit such that all male and all female teams would be competitive.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Troll.
The assholes you meet are not assholes because they're football players. They're assholes because they're assholes. Perhaps you, sir, are actually the asshole, and they just respond in kind.
There are plenty of very kind and caring people out there who also happen to play football. Come to terms with this and overcome your irrational (but understandable) hate of people who are more talented than you.
Any geek in high school could tell you this.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
The major problem I have with your view is that you, supposedly, "know better". This attitude is what I detest. The know-it-better's essentially tell other people how to lead their lives, what to do with their bodies, etc. You basically presuppose that it's almost never rational to end a life. I'd like to have whatever you're having, since you're, apparently, delusional. The concept of free will includes and ends at the choice to end one's life. Who the fuck are you to tell anyone that they should be stripped of that freedom? In my personal opinion, suicide watches/prevention in jails are barbaric.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
...Costas that the gun, in fact, wasn't the murderer. And that it was actually football that lead to these two deaths. The gun was just the instrument.
I'm not so sure I agree that polygyny is rare.
http://www.polygamystop.org/history.html
"An estimated over three billion people around the world today still believe in polygamy."
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
"with no chance of any reasonable quality of life "
absolutes are easy.
what if there is a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of a cure for a debilitating disease to be found in the individuals lifetime.
who decides what is/counts as a reasonable quality?
my personal? the ability or inability wipe your own ass.....
trust me, if I get to where I can't wipe my butt, and it's highly unlikely that that'll change back anytime soon?
please go ahead and push me off the roof....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I don't despise football or other sports which rely heavily on the physics of (human) bodies colliding, but I do think that we should have teams of robots out there instead. The real competition would then be in advancing technology instead of retarding bigger meat-sacks faster. Such competition sort of parallels the way in which car racing improves the science of automobiles, and leads to innovations like better fuel efficiency or more powerful engines, or low profile tires; Some of which wind up in common folks' vehicles... Though, it's moronic to use the low-profile tires on street cars: They're designed to be used on very smooth roads and make room for huge brake pads. Thus, street cars with tiny little brakes in their low profile wheels look ridiculous to me, esp. when your wheel (not just tire) is destroyed by a golf ball sized rock -- which those cheap wheels with more tire sidewall cope with just fine.
Where was I? Oh yes, you see, it's far too expensive to support our fragile bodies in long term space journeys. The answer is to create robotic bodies and climb another rung on the evolutionary ladder. Oh stop it, of course there'd still be romance, the bodies can look "sexy" if you like, and electronic orgasms on demand are already possible for humans. Stem cell research means we could produce egg and sperm from parent's tissue samples, then make embryos, and hook them into their robot bodies as they grow allowing not just more easy transition to sturdier bodies, but also new senses to be connected -- Thermal & x-ray vision for example, or telepathy (WIFI).
I'd much rather my city spend hundreds of millions of dollars to improve robotics, and eventually allow our minds to escape these vestigial bodies and colonize the stars (thus, ensuring some of our eggs are off planet when the next Asteroid strikes this basket) than to incentivize young people to destroy their brains with false hopes of becoming a brain-damaged millionaire sports star. I mean, screw their bodies, but we can't replace the brains.... yet.
For orcas, that is demonstrably not true. Unlike humans, orcas travel in pods and the entire pod takes care of the children, not just the parents and grandparents. The presence of a grandparent benefits the entire pod, not just the grandparent's direct genetic descendants, so the survival rate isn't due to the grandparent helping to raise the child. Having grandparents does suggest that the orca may have a better set of genes, however, which would translate to a better chance of survival.
In the U.S. having a medical condition presented in a mere 3% of a population is considered medically significant and mitigation factors are set in place if the condition exceeds 3%. We just read a study where 50% had a condition. That is an order of magnitude above what should be tolerated medically speaking. That's more than the number of health defects caused by smoking cigarettes! I hope a wider study lowers the number, but if it doesn't... if we don't put up with cigarettes being bad for health, how can we justify allowing for a game that is bad for our health?
Many problems solved.
Except that most NFL players have relatively short careers and are making the NFL minimum wage. (Still quite well paid for playing a game, no doubt, but they aren't all making millions per year). Couple that with the fact that the types that usually make the NFL aren't exactly known for their financial acumen, and you'll find that a lot of NFL players end up broke within a few years of retirement. I don't remember the exact numbers and can't be bothered to look it up right now, but it was a fairly significant percentage, IIRC.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
For the most successful NFL players that would be true. There are many football (and other sports) players who never do get rich though.
I mostly answered to counter the GP statement that breeding is all that is involved in passing on your genes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
But, that type of thing doesn't stand up to the new mentality of "social justice"....you can't just make a lot of $$ and give it to your kids, that's just not right, and not fair for the 99%....and....
Oh wait, if you're a rich sports star this doesn't apply to you...only all those other filthy wealthy folks that make over $250K/yr....gotcha.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Here's a good article on violence in the NFL by Bill Simmons.
It's possible that repeated hits to the head fucked him up, but we don't allow "I was fucked up your honor" as an excuse for other people, such as drunk drivers.
That's because the drunk driver should have known that he was in a self-induced condition where he was likely to injure or kill someone if he drove, but did it anyway.
Why don't you believe it was honorable for him to recognize that he had committed an unforgivable crime and to give himself the death penalty?
This was suicide after the player shot and killed his (current) girlfriend and mother of his child. In this case, suicide was just "doing the right thing" except that he chose to do it in a public place, rather than in his home. He also waited until the cops were approaching, presumably not wanting them to interfere.
*Killing the girlfriend* is the evidence of brain damage, as it implies rather a problem handling his temper.
CONSTANT lurker, but rarely post. I guess I rarely feel like I can offer something that hasn't already been well articulated. But this is one of those discussions where two of my passions collide (nerdery and football), so I'll give it a stab...
As a new parent, football has been on my mind quite a bit lately thanks to news such as this study. I grew up in a household where football was pretty much the religion. It was a large bond between my dad and I from when I very young, so it's probably not surprising that at the age of ten I jumped at the first opportunity to put on the pads and see what I could do.
It was a pretty big shock! Even at ten years old, the violence of the game caught me off guard, and my schoolyard prowess just didn't translate well. I pretty much got the crap beaten out of me. My second year playing, though, something clicked in me. I finally got it. In order to enjoy playing football, you have to embrace the violence. And embrace it I did. As the smallest kid on just about every team I played on, I enjoyed nothing more than knocking down somebody twice my size.
I've never been into my skull with a microscope, but there's no outward evidence that any of this early playing took a physical toll on me. I started high school ball with body in perfect working order and grades at the top of my class. And off the football field I was still not only a total nerd, but a pretty nice guy!... Once up to high school, though, the physics of things change. I was still small, but now the bigger kids were starting to catch up in speed. It's at this age that REAL collisions start to occur. (It always confuses me when parents tell me that they're not going to let their kids play football until high school because it's too dangerous. I always respond with, "Are you kidding!? It doesn't get dangerous until high school!") I was still the smallest guy on the team, but loved nothing more than sticking my nose in it, so I ended up playing positions that nobody my size had any business playing. And my body suffered horribly.
I graduated from high school having torn or pulled pretty much every muscle in my body, with two badly dislocated shoulders, a hip pointer, torn wrist tendons (bother me to this day), and having suffered through four knee surgeries (three on one knee and one on the other). I took one hit to the head that left me seeing stars, several other hits where the split second between impact with the opponent and impact with the ground completely disappeared, and one hit that was so bad it demolished my helmet (facemask torn from the shell and cheek pads scattered on the ground). After all of those hits, while playing 90% of positions on the field over the course of eight seasons of play--linebacker and fullback my senior year in high school, no less--I cannot see ANY signs of mental deficiencies as a result. I tutored fellow students in calculus and physics while still in high school, graduated with a nearly perfect academic record, went off to college, am upbeat and happy (as far as having two babies in the house allows...), and have always been extremely non-violent outside of a football field (the picture of me abusing my wife would be laughable if you knew me).
Which brings me to my son. As a rational human being, how do I reconcile the situation described above with all of the recent reports by scientists studying the long term impacts of playing football? How do I tell my son he can't play football when I still regard it as the most rewarding hobby I've ever had? And so he can, what, sit on his ass all day playing video games instead? Take up an individual sport that lacks any aspect of teamwork, camaraderie, or strategy? (Because the same damage is being found in hockey players, soccer players, etc. Few team sports are in the clear.)
It's also hard for me to justify keeping my son out of football when I still don't regret my own time playing the game. Football gets a bad rap as a game for morons, but I haven't played
Unless it turns into touch football, or they discover a way to cure concussions, I can't see how it survives. If you have the head of professional athlete repeatedly coming to a sudden stop you're going to have concussions, you can't make a helmet that prevents that. Plus I think football has a serious risk of a sudden collapse, boxing only needs a couple boxers and a ref, a football game needs two full teams, once the idea of head injuries starts pervading the public high school teams could collapse in a handful of years, possibly faster than the sport can adapt. It will be a very tricky transition when people start playing touch people but still want to watch tackle, if the big leagues don't transition properly the whole system might collapse and some other sport like soccer might take up the slack.
Then again, if you could somehow buy stocks in touch football it might be a hell of an investment.
Hockey has a similar (though less severe problem), but I think the difference is that hitting is a lot less integral to hockey than football and a smooth transition from full contact to none is possible.
I stole this Sig