Ravens OL John Urschel, 26, retires abruptly, two days after CTE study
espn.com
espn.com
1) 3 years of service vests into NFL pension plan, he just hit qualification - value pegged at $21,360 a year for life (3)
2) He has not publicly commented on his retirement or reasons for it.
3) He has a hugely awesome secondary option - doctorate of math at MIT
4) He was at end of his rookie contract, next year would be the "in the money" year for him so he is clearly leaving a lot of cash on the table.
5) Over three years he "only" earned ~$1.8m http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/baltimore-ravens/john-urschel-145... - which after tax is 7 figures but still not a lot.
6) He has been notoriously thrifty, living on $25k a year and driving a used car (2). So would imagine at some level he has been planning this outcome, or leaving option wide open.
(1) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/07/27...
(2) http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/bs-sp-ravens-john-urschel...
(3) http://firstquarterfinance.com/nfl-pension-plan-retirement-p...
What exactly is "a lot of money" (and how much do you think MIT professors are paid)?
I think point #6 is more relevant than point #5.
0: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-sim...
This is the one thing that has always struck me as odd abut the FIRE community. FIRE is a good goal but it's highly abnormal for people to retire early with these very low annual salaries for themselves. Sure, it works if you're a single childless 30 year old. But you also generally have to be comfortable staying single and childless if you're going to "retire" to $25k/year.
Also, even if people budget a $25K/year retirement there is always the possibility of needing long term nursing home care in the last years of life. (Say, if you're a football player that suffers dementia later in life.) Depending on the quality of care, that can wipe out even a $1M nest egg. It's a big financial concern at that age. It's not covered by insurance the way that, say, a heart attack or stroke is.
I would sort of expect that the NFL Players Association had something to do with establishing it.
Doesn't the average NFL player have a life expectancy of 53-59, and you can only collect the pension after 55? They can move it foward starting at age 35.
Cynical me says it's a political nothing burger.
$1M is not even close to that, especially not for a young guy who has to pay for the next 60 years of his and his family's existence.
Don't get me wrong, it's a good starting point, and you can definitely be reasonably secure on it if you invest wisely and continue to work (e.g., buying a reasonably-priced house in a stable neighborhood and staying in it long term; this will take about 1/3 of that $1M, btw), but it's not enough to be truly independent. A single serious lawsuit will easily drain $1M, for example.
I imagine this guy can, given his uncomplicated expectations of life.
We live in an interconnected world and there isn't enough money in the world to make your actions consequence proof.
An independent person does not need the goodwill or approval of any other person or small group for their well-being or prosperity. If you are ever going to need a paycheck again, this is by definition not you.
Independence ("fuck you money") is about being able to be honest with anyone, even if it means giving a measured, well-deserved "fuck you", without having to worry that your ability to feed and clothe your kids will be jeopardized. It's not about being above the law or anything like that.
Also, how much professors make varies quite a bit. An engineering professor might make $100k from the university. If they are particularly motivated, you have professors who write books, play key roles at companies, consult, or give expert testimony. They can make quite a bit off those secondary activities but it isn't automatic.
Depends a lot on department and situation. Course 18 (math) doesn't pay that great while course 6 does. If you have a chair you can pay yourself more; if you take a non-academic role (dean, provost, department head etc) you can get more. Even when you have tenure you get reviews and raises just like any other job.
Point of reference: my gf's ex is a tenured prof in a non-engineering field. B/c child support etc I know what he earns. Adjusted for inflation, my summer consulting gigs (before the 1980s AI winter) earned me over 50% of what he makes all annually including his own summer consulting. I'm sure if he were in computer science he'd make more in a month than I would have made all year.
[1] http://tech.mit.edu/V134/N18/salary.html
[2] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/MIT-Assistant-Professor-Sal...
Regarding mathematics as a career and his outlook on the financial issue -
"I have a bright career ahead of me in mathematics. Beyond that, I have the means to make a good living and provide for my family, without playing football. I have no desire to try to accumulate $10 million in the bank; I already have more money in my bank account than I know what to do with. I drive a used hatchback Nissan Versa and live on less than $25k a year. It’s not because I’m frugal or trying to save for some big purchase, it’s because the things I love the most in this world (reading math, doing research, playing chess) are very, very inexpensive."
Interesting to know about the retirement 'vest' of 3 years. If he lives another 60 years that is a bit more than $1.25M.
Yet the vast majority of the time, this sentiment comes from people who are well-off, e.g. someone with an MIT PhD and an almost impossible-to-screw-up future.
There are at least two possibilities. Either people who aren't well-off are just sour grapes, or they deal with a lot more than a lack of proper mindset.
The secret to happiness is no secret: if you have more money than you know what to do with, you can cover the vast majority of cases that will make you unhappy. If you, your children, or your pets get ill, you can get them proper medical care. For someone who lives on $25k/yr, that will almost always end in disaster.
I think it's not productive to pretend like money doesn't equate to happiness. The lust for money can do a lot of damage, but simply realizing that money is incredibly important to happiness is a realization that most people don't make. They spend extravagantly when Christmas comes around; they eat out because they want to "feel like a normal person," i.e. someone who can afford to eat out; they get expensive birthday gifts for family members. And why? Then when a financial disaster comes around, like someone getting ill with no insurance in the US, there are no resources left to deal with it.
I don't know. It's just far too easy to feel like there's a key to happiness waiting to be discovered. It's a multi-faceted and complex issue.
Unless he kept playing football.
The rest I agree with - not having to worry about money is a quantifiable bonus in the happiness department.
Maybe there's some causation here going the other way?
Yet people still like to complain about how everything is too expensive and how they have no money. People here are miserable and we have one of the highest alcohol consumption and suicide rates in Europe.
I'm not really sure what point I'm trying to make, but as you say happiness is complicated. Giving everyone $X/year more isn't suddenly going to make them happier.
Why is that ?
Starting in the middle:
> I think it's not productive to pretend like
> money doesn't equate to happiness.
> Yet the vast majority of the time, this sentiment
> comes from people who are well-off
It would be great if it were that simple, but it isn't. All of the studies show that once your basic needs are met The correlation between money and happiness essentially goes away. And part of the problem is being imprecise in our language, because their is 'money' which is to say "gee you're pulling in $10,000 a month!" and there is 'wealth' "gee it only takes 10% of your take home pay to cover your rent!"
Many people who work in the STEM sector of the market, will have their basic needs met. They will all have individually varying levels of happiness that are not well correlated with their individually varying levels of wealth. You'll meet them, people who are "rich" and miserable, people who consider themselves "middle class" and are totally happy.
And I assert there is a key to happiness in this uncorrelated range of wealth.[1] That key is to define your happiness in something you have complete control over, rather than something that is externally influenced. Everyone I've ever met who does that is happier, more consistently, than people who don't do that. It doesn't have to be learning like it is for me, I know people who are very happy and measure their days by how many people they have helped.
It is my thesis that everyone has some internal notion of their "score" in life, and once their survival needs are well met (food & shelter) their happiness is entirely a function of how much they are 'scoring' versus an arbitrary benchmark of what a good 'score' should be.
[1] For the literally minded we'll define this uncorrelated region as that level of wealth that starts just above 'I have enough incoming capital to keep from struggling to meet financial obligations' and below 'I have so much capital I don't have to work to meet my financial obligations.'
Old rich people can't spend money to cure all their ailments and be young again. Maybe someday, but not today. And it's not a gamble if there's no chance of success.
Beyond that level of income, whatever it is, people don't necessarily get happier, but they at least have more resources to work with. Depending on the person, and depending on whatever tradeoffs are made to get that higher income, they might figure out how to turn more money into more happiness, or they might not. That's more dependent on what makes an individual happy.
That is a beautiful quote.
Over $7 million if he can get 5% annually.
there's no way i can believe that. my rent alone is $24,000.
Whether they should depends a lot on context.
I can definitely believe that as a football player he can get by on less than $25k of his own money.
[1]: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/01/16/exposed-the-mmm-fa...
So ok say he owns his house. You still have property taxes (in some places can run from 1 to 4% of property value) upkeep family costs and so on.
> and you can live well on $25,000 per year
Not with a family. Not in a safe area or what most would consider a 'nice' area.
Not fun, but doable.
Also, this is Baltimore we're talking about. The only places you can reasonably spend that much in rent in Baltimore is luxury developments on the waterfront and around Patterson Park.
FYI I live in a fairly major US city and my rent is a quarter of yours. Your life experience is not normal.
even in my previous city (a major US city), my rent was only 50% less than it is now. and in that market it would be equally as hard to find one at 50% of that price.
if you live for a quarter of what i currently rent, then you must undoubtedly live with roommates or live in a not so great place (which is fine) or both, all of which i consider being frugal, which he stated he wasn't. or you simply live in a completely different market.
> my rent alone is $24,000.
Speaking from another side of the ocean, it's really true.
According to the statistics about energy used per capita, it's some oil producing lands and the US. And that even doesn't count all the stuff that ends on the US landfills.
That's a massively expensive and large house for the stereotypical American family in the majority of the country.
(They're also not going to be paying 2K to rent a house in the suburb, they're much more likely to be paying off a 200K mortgage, looking at the median US home price as well as the median in areas like Dallas, Atlanta, Charlotte...)
If you're paying a lot more than that you're either abnormal in terms of "spending way more than most / you have to" way or abnormal in the "you live in a super expensive area" way.
Sure as long as your needs remain stable, prices don't rise and most importantly someone else is paying for your healthcare.
For a lot of us this would be FU money if you don't have the desire to live big. Plus he gets the pension.
Good scenario modeling tool: cFIREsim: http://www.cfiresim.com/#
You can login as HNHN : HNHNHN and look at the scenario I modeled using the information in this thread. That has a 100% success rate from now until 2080, assuming a 3.5% annual spend ($35K to start) AND ignoring any new money being added (from his mathematics or other work).
It's not Maserati money perhaps, but it's absolutely a secure retirement for someone currently living on $25K/yr.
The original poster calculated the value off the $1.8MM (not the tax-deductible number), and simultaneously made a place value error ($12k/year is 0.7%, not 7%, of $1.8MM).
https://twitter.com/JohnCUrschel/status/887703140652523520
This guys is not going to be struggling financially.
http://blog.futureadvisor.com/nfl-players-must-go-long-on-re...
The lifetime pension really helps, but if I were him, I would have stuck it out to see what I could get for my new contract. The rookie contract is low because of the changes made in the last CBA. His post-rookie contract could have netted him tens of millions.
But I'm greedy and would gladly sacrifice my health for a $40 million contract.
This guy has a back-up plan. Good man.
Most players have lived very football-focused lives from a very young age, and have been the star on the team all of their life. Their future has always been more football, and they haven't given any thought to what comes after that.
- or -
retire now to pursue a PhD and be healthy, earn a living that could possibly meet his football earnings but more likely, keep him comfortable, and be able to use his mind for the rest of his life. Plus, he has a much reduced chance of losing a $150,000 earring jet skiing.
I think he made the correct choice.
Regarding the broader debate that seems to be swirling along the lines of 'should we ban Football or not', I strongly believe we should not.
If parents want to prevent their kids from playing football, great, that's their choice to make. But if they allow them to play, we have to keep in mind that only a very small percentage of players will continue on to play in college, and then only another fraction of those players will continue on to play in the NFL. I'm sure that people who play youth and high school football but stop playing after HS graduation have a much lower incidence rate of CTE than players who continue on to play at the collegiate and professional levels. So for the vast majority of football players CTE isn't much a risk.
Because those who do reach the highest levels of the sport make tremendous amounts of money, as long as they are aware of the risks, they should be able to make the decision for themselves.
That remains a normative claim, not a positive one. Some parents will be dissuaded from allowing their children to play football competitively, but you'll have great difficulty enforcing something like a ban.
Not all sports have so grim an outlook - and I bet football too could be fixed with some rules changes (e.g. I don't recall any stories of rugby having such effects, and that's at least somewhat related).
Further research can probably help, but it's unwise to wait for that if the results are already sufficiently clear as is.
A 13 year old jr. high schooler who wants to play for their school's football team isn't able to fully assess and weigh the risks of long term brain injuries from an activity. Maybe parental education and consent is enough for some people, but at the same time, we flat out don't allow parental consent to buy cigarettes at age 13 either even if there are parents that would allow it.
Marriage and tattoos are allowed with parent/guardian consent at quite young ages depending on where you live. And not allowed other places, of course. Laws on this vary widely, even just inside the US.
> Maybe parental education and consent is enough for some people
Right, that is the question. Is playing football more like smoking? Or is it more like marriage or tattoos? Or like downhill skiing or any of a host of other dangerous activities minors can engage in with parental consent pretty much anywhere?
And for the highest levels where CTE is a risk, players are compensated for the risks they take in playing. No one compensates you for smoking or drinking.
The key part of that law is that athletes must be taken out if they are suspected of a concussion, and they can't play until they are cleared by a qualified professional. Unless and until we find scientific evidence that it is the absolute number of concussions in someone's lifetime, and not back to back concussions without recovery, that cause CTE this seems appropriate.
I thought the conclusion from that study was at least 9% of NFL players would gone on to develop CTE. This estimate was made by making a conservative (but very unrealistic estimate) that EVERY player that did not donate their brains did not have CTE.
Edit: updates. Will point out that any summary is going to miss some facts as it's a summary. But I think people might be more likely to read the article if they could decipher the title. I like the Ravens and I assumed this was a cto of a game company yc startup who quit from the title.
This is not exactly true. The study required volunteers, and from what I understand, the families who volunteered already suspected brain damage, so it's not really a representative study. It's still very alarming, though.
"But 110 positives remain significant scientific evidence of an N.F.L. player’s risk of developing C.T.E., which can be diagnosed only after death. About 1,300 former players have died since the B.U. group began examining brains. So even if every one of the other 1,200 players had tested negative — which even the heartiest skeptics would agree could not possibly be the case — the minimum C.T.E. prevalence would be close to 9 percent, vastly higher than in the general population."
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/25/sports/footba...
Just to quibble but I understood that the study revealed that 99% of the group inspected had CTE. The group was not intended to be cross-section of the general population of NFL players. Not to trivialize the results but I think you extended them beyond what they said.
That said, according to my mom I was a complete ahole until I started playing football in 8th grade when I completely mellowed out and started focusing on somthing. Most other sports didn't click with me; I think I needed organized competitive team based wall punching to take out random teenage anger. It's just that maybe I would have taken up golf earlier :)
So if the contact or a certain form of contact is the issue, lets either change football to not really have these risks or invent another sport. I mean they're all invented anyway.
The researcher never claimed it was a sample that one would expect with a scientific study (e.g. control group, test group, variance by age, race, etc.) From the original NYT article:
> The set of players posthumously tested by Dr. McKee is far from a random sample of N.F.L. retirees. “There’s a tremendous selection bias,” she has cautioned, noting that many families have donated brains specifically because the former player showed symptoms of C.T.E.
Jackie Slater for comparison was a lineman for 20 seasons (1976-1995). And George Blanda had 26 seasons as a kicker and quarterback.
For a second there, I thought you were talking about the average height of NFL running backs, and I was very confused...
If not, I think it's inevitable that it will. Someone will try to get their school to close its football program, someone else will complain that the health dangers are exaggerated by the liberal media because football is a red-state passtime, and pretty soon it'll be "Why do you hate America and apple pie" vs "Why do you want children to suffer and die".
In general, I think people care about their kids, and will have different levels of risk sensitivity.
http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/page/popwarner/pop-warn...
Examples:
- People with red hats on are my friends
- People that like chocolate ice cream are idiots
- People who let their children play football are Trump voters
It's true that a HackerNews thread has a lower global-political impact than, say, a presidential tweet or a Supreme Court ruling. But that shouldn't prevent anyone from thinking through their HN comments. Words matter.
The comment we're both responding to [1] was unnecessarily divisive -- which partially obscured the commenter's otherwise good points (that team-thinking can obscure rational thinking). And that's particularly important on a website like HackerNews.
Original divisive comment: "[Has football joined the list of] values that separate members of the Red Tribe from the Blue Tribe? Football is a red-state pastime." [1]
The comment you responded to: "You're creating [divisive] discourse [by posing divisive questions]." [2]
I think your response, pointing out that a comment on HN usually won't "create" a nationally divisive discourse [3], is missing the point. If you look at the rest of the thread you can see that it created a divisive debate within HackerNews. I think the point you're missing is that divisive language creates divisions wherever it is used and it's worthwhile to point that out -- even if you think you're only talking to yourself.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14867048
(It's extra-funny because all right-thinking people know that it's obviously better to have it hang over the front of the roll. Sheesh!)
But maybe you're making the subtle point that "it matters if HN comments abuse quotation marks."
You have become what you hate - you are the one who introduced the subject. Its like "Has anyone compared $TOPIC to Nazis yet? This subject has a tendency to be Godwinned".
People are quite a bit more complex than that, and these kinds of arbitrary binary divisions get in the way of finding common ground.
FWIW, though, I've not heard that point either.
Tennis, golf, swimming, weightlifting, etc - probably have a pretty low incidence of concussion. Stuff with teams and fast movement are probably most suspect; hockey and football would intuitively seem like the worst offenders.
"Eliminating heading for children 10 and under
Limiting the amount of heading in practice for children between the ages of 11 and 13"
Other sports, like football, present a much harder challenge. Even if you remove direct head contact as a variable, most aspects of tackling can result in concussions. The reason football is uniquely controversial is that minor concussions are mostly inevitable and severe concussions are commonplace.
By contrast, the most likely way to get a concussion in soccer is to head the ball, which isn't fundamental to gameplay. In any sport, you might run into another player at high speed but that's not typically a core part of the gameplay. Football is controversial because it's hard to fix.
"Based on the national estimate, the majority of concussions resulted from participation in football (40.5%, n = 55 007), followed by girls' soccer (21.5%, n = 29 167), boys' soccer (15.4%, n = 20 929),..."
So 40.5% of concussions in football and 36.9% in combined boys/girls soccer.
source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2140075/
In addition to concussions, football players are also believed to receive repeated microtrauma from running into each other repeatedly, which contributes to CTE.
Football is a full contact sport. It is inherently more dangerous. Collisions in soccer happen accidentally. They happen intentionally in football.
In addition there are new restrictions on heading the ball in soccer for younger kids, which will likely make the game a bit safer.
I don't have stats available for middle school, but earlier than that the players don't hit nearly as hard, as they have considerable lower mass and speed.
Not sure where your 3x number comes from, but I don't think we need to include YMCA recreational league soccer any more than we need to include flag football.
I didn't see that your study was high school and college only.
It seems that girls suffer much higher rates of concussions in all sports likely do to less developed neck muscles according to this [1].
So you'd have to compare concussion rate in football vs boys soccer to get a real comparison.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/recruiting-insider/wp/20...
>So 40.5% of concussions in football and 36.9% in combined boys/girls soccer.
If 21.5% of girls (~6270) and 15.4% of boys (~3223) get concussions then 9493 (6270 + 3223) received concussions out of 50096 (20929 + 29167) total participants. 18.9% (9493 / 50096) for soccer vs 40.5% for football.
Or, if you can figure out the relative difference between the number of boys and girls who play soccer, you can do a weighted average of the percentages.
Either way, adding the percentages is completely incorrect.
EDIT: http://www.usyouthsoccer.org/media_kit/keystatistics/ suggests that the split is roughly equal -- in 2008 it was 52% boys and 48% girls.
With that said, the correct weighted value is more like 21.5x.48 + 15.4x.52 = 18.3%, which is significantly less than the 40.5% you quoted for football.
55007 for football - 40.5% of 135901
20929 for boys soccer - 15.4% of 135901
29167 for girls soccer - 21.5% of 135901
50096 combined soccer
50096/135901 = 36.9% of all concussions were from soccer.
I was raised in Texas and was more the thin runner body than the football build, so I never played, though lots of people do play high school football there. It's interesting imagining that 1/4 of them could be walking around with CTE.
Of course, keep in mind the study is biased by the fact that these brains were specifically donated for evaluation for CTE. It seems probable that CTE findings would be lower in the general population.
> But 110 positives remain significant scientific evidence of an N.F.L. player’s risk of developing C.T.E., which can be diagnosed only after death. About 1,300 former players have died since the B.U. group began examining brains. So even if every one of the other 1,200 players had tested negative — which even the heartiest skeptics would agree could not possibly be the case — the minimum C.T.E. prevalence would be close to 9 percent, vastly higher than in the general population.
The real issue would arise if they can somehow test high school students and find similarly high percentages (90+ percent), but since you can't test right now until they are deceased (from what I understand), that would be extremely hard to do.
I think that's seriously downplaying the issue.
Let's say hypothetically HS football players are developing it at 10% vs 1% in the general population. That alone would be a massive discovery, and grounds for seriously reworking or even eliminating HS football. You don't need these rates to be in the 90% range for this to be game changing, so to speak.
[1] http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/schooled_in_sports/2012/12/lo...
[2] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/high-school-footba...
[3] http://www.tsn.ca/a-possible-breakthrough-on-testing-cte-1.2...
[4] http://www.traumaticbraininjury.net/why-concussions-are-so-h...
[5] http://www.gq.com/story/the-concussion-diaries-high-school-f...
[6] https://www.forbes.com/sites/tarahaelle/2017/07/26/is-footba...
I don't know about younger kids, but high school players die every year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_issues_in_American_foot...
So it seems that right now it is weakly associated with blue tribe.
Of course as Grey Tribe I can't do anything but slowly shake my head at these college teams.
Norway banned professional boxing over thirty five years ago for this reason, and it only returned very recently when a more conservative PM took power, and it happened amid plenty of controversy: https://www.thelocal.no/20161004/how-a-boxing-match-turned-i...
I like who I am today, even if I might have a higher risk for any symptoms, and I believe football played a key part in my development.
Because it's possible to experience the benefits of camaraderie without the risks of brain damage, it's sensible to question if football is too dangerous for children.
Basically, Football works you harder physically (strength), which makes the camaraderie that much stronger (you all overcame the same adversity).
Also, everyone from the marching band still remembers marching through Disney World in 100+ degree heat in full marching uniforms. It was tough and it was a memorable bond we all shared.
I'm happy you like football, but I don't think you can say it forms character in a unique way, it's just a team sport and there's tons of team sport where hitting people with your head aren't the bread and butter of it.
Try volleyball, if you have to fuck up something I would rather go with the knees and hips rather than the head.
No other sport works you as hard as Football does. Between three-a-days (practicing 8am to 8pm) for weeks, and each practice primarily consisting of basically playing football (running play after play, at 100%, for practice, with tackling), Football works you harder than any other sport.
I'll get told by some this is just my opinion, but the vast majority of other sports are not shear tests of strength the same way Football is. If you're a lineman in football, every play is practically you bench pressing another player your size over the field. And it's the same for every lineman, and anyone on offense has to do the same.
So yes, I believe Football works character differently due to the sheer difficulty of the sport physically.
This was while classes were in session.
During the winter training trip, we would do the same, but also swam sprints in the middle of the day.
Sometimes other teams, including the football team, would try to use the pool for off-sport workouts. We would crush them. But when we ran, they would not outrun us.
And that's just one sport I have personal experience with. Please do not discount what other athletes are doing--any sport is an intentionally competitive environment, everyone is looking to gain advantage: that push to go harder is present and is not exclusive to football.
Also, hitting each other repeatedly. Or, well, directly competing at all with someone else.
Not really worth arguing if you don't see it.
You might change your opinion after a week playing Water Polo. You've got the same level of energy required for sprints and man-handling your opponents as football, but then throw in the added bonus of getting repeatedly squeezed/kicked in the groin (on purpose!), scratched all to hell (no pads!), and the constant attempts at opponents trying to (almost) drown you. You don't just have to be physically strong to play, you've got to be mentally iron-willed to want to get in the pool with the other lunatics.
Different sports are different. I don't think that's hard to believe.
I ran track and cross country for 9 years. Those are team sports but there was no camaraderie. People were friendly, sure, but there was no team spirit. There was more camaraderie in the half a year I spent on a rowing team than I experienced in either of those sports.
It's a bit ridiculous to me to suggest that there is nothing like football when it comes to training, teamwork, and camaraderie. That's easily not true.
Minus the brain damage.
You should know the scientific method from the science club. ;)
Also anecdotally, I had a Lyft driver who was also a high school football coach who was well versed in how many concussions occur in soccer. He wanted to tell me that football is as safe/dangerous as any other sport. That type of denialism--believing that mounting evidence can be safely ignored--is found in other "red" issues such as climate change, coal jobs, and Russia-gate.
[1] High schools are closing football programs. https://www.si.com/mmqb/2015/11/23/high-schools-dropping-and...
[2] Soccer is possibly a blue state thing. http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/jul/10/...
[3] NFL doctors downplayed the dangers. http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/03/18/nfl-doctor-s...
To the extent that such a list can be said to exist (some of them are Boolean values, but if it's a long list, it's only long because you are including lots of things that individually loosely correlate with tribal membership rather than separate it), attitudes towards kids playing football have been on it for decades.
(It also correlates with race, welath, and other socio-economic factors in a way which aren't what you'd expect if you thought it was simply a matter of left/right political tribal identity.)
But certain sports carry too high a risk for me to support my child getting into them before 16ish. They must have a glimmering of a perspective on what life means before choosing to engage in activities that are significantly likely to permanently damage themselves for life. Particularly for football, there are brain effects. Implication here: for boys, football is off the table. For girls, competitive gymnastics. There are likely other sports that could be found as way too high permanent risk.
For perspective on how I'm choosing: soccer is also risky and carries CTE risk, but less so than football. If boy wants to do skiing, running, or mountain biking, that is fine; crossfit, not so much (too aggressive). A certain amount of physical damage is far more acceptable than neurological damage. Things happen though; a friend of mine had his very young daughter fall into a pool and drown a few years after being preemie. That's this life on earth, sorrow and joy. I will give as much responsibility as I can, but the parent's responsibility to is to shape and limit around the ability of the child to react and foresee. Permitting choosing sports which have lifelong damage likelihood, when they are too young to understand the consequences, seems to be poor choice on my part.
Perhaps it's not a red or blue split, but those sports you listed are definitely on one side of a major class divide. Basketball and football are moving towards the other. And while I understand that a competition between some farm hicks and big-city boys can bring two groups together, access to sports like skiing is fairly exclusive.
I wouldn't be bothered if my kid did baseball or cricket. Bored, perhaps, but not bothered.
Let's see, espn.com. Hockey can be super violent, but I'm probably ok with it, gotta check the numbers. Golf, boring, whatever. Fighting games - wrestling, MMA, etc, I'm probably ok with after a reasonable age. Certainly I would have no issues taking kiddo to Krava Maga.
(Personally I will go to Sounders (MLS) and Reign (NWSL) games, and I'm curious to see men's gymnastics at U of Washington this fall. It might be just a little Seattle)
e: The "red state" crew are, I think, more comfortable with idea of casual violence (and thus football). It's not as much of a Big Deal to them, often life is more rough and tumble IMO. I grew up in Idaho, so I do have some Life Experience in what I'm saying.
Yes, submitting irrationally to power is bad, and so is purely tribal thinking. But as it turns out, human beings are a bit more complex, and many are fine maintaining critical thinking skills while simultaneously having a sports team they identify with.
There have been efforts recently to make the game safer for players, but the amount of concussions and injuries seen every season don't seem to be decreasing.
Can you make the game "more safe" without drastically changing the game? Any game played at this high of a speed, with this strong of players is going to have some inherent danger to it.
Do we just need to make the effects more widely known and understood by the players, maybe treat football like smoking with warnings printed on the outside of helmets? Anything less than that and you run the risk of not making your point.
Should I feel bad as a fan for watching football? Is it any worse than buying clothing made by child labor from a third world country?
Why would you have ever thought otherwise? Didn't you notice the coliseum looks like an ancient stadium? Football is very much a man-v-man battle and that's exactly why a lot of people like it.
Yes, it is worse than the 3rd world child labor scenario. The kid in the 3rd world probably has no other choices, and along with his peers, may actually be improving things for his society. Nicholas Kristof (of all people) pointed this out when it was found that someone documenting the horrible conditions at Foxconn fabricated melodramatic stories. (This was a big kerfuffle on This American Life a couple of years ago.) The football player, living in a 1st world country, has other options. It is criminal that the responsible adults (coaches, recruiters) don't point out that they are signing up for virtually guaranteed severe brain damage.
TV cord cutting is on the rise, TV usage is down, having to compete with online and mobile time, ESPN figures drag down the entire Disney empire, ESPN is going through layoffs almost each month, seems like. When the time finally comes for cable networks to re-negotiate the deals, NFL numbers won't look as pretty.
Which means lower expenses, higher consolidation, lower player salaries, etc. It won't disappear entirely, but will be just another sport like NASCAR or horse racing, reaching a rather narrow group of avid followers.
If the NFL has known about the risks for years and continued with its business model, it should absolutely face lawsuits and financial ruin.
I agree with everything you said except "The general public shouldn't ..." That is a very dangerous method of thought.
I agree that it shouldn't be banned, but the risks is the thing everyone needs to hear first, they should be plastered everywhere.
I have no problem bringing bloodsport back if it's entirely voluntary and the public has an interest in it. What if two guys want to voluntarily duel it out to death? Why not build a stadium and let them?
Boxing: Not banned, but a lot less popular in the USA than it used to be. Maybe this is due to better understanding of the physical toll (brain damage, the occasional death resulting from pummeling in the ring), although there were other factors too. People going in know, or should know, the risks.
Skiing: If you want to risk your knees, go ahead. You know about the risks.
Football: The risks are finally becoming known, but the NFL seems to have known the risks for years, and sought to suppress this information from spreading. The other physical risks are known, and participants make their choices, as in skiing. But the NFL has tried to fool participants about the extremely serious consequences, much like the tobacco companies did with the health risks of cigarettes. Coaches and recruiters -- even in high school -- know the risks and turn a blind eye. How an informed parent can let a child participate in football now is beyond me.
Only really for girls, even then almost everyone makes a complete recovery.
> bricolage
DIY as a contact sport is a new one for me.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rugbyunion/11857548/Rugby-u...
/s
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/421009/analyzing-hard-hit...
The rules need to be constantly adjusted to disincentivise dangerous behavior. If it hurts your team to injure others, injuries should happen less.
Probably not.
> Should they continue to operate as normal?
No.
> Can you make the game "more safe" without drastically changing the game?
Depends what you mean by drastic. Removing helmets from the game seems like one possibility, bringing it closer to rugby. I don't know if there have been CTE examinations of rugby players, but the intuition is that people won't collide heads at high acceleration on every single play if they're not wearing helmets.
> Should I feel bad as a fan for watching football?
Yes, I'd say so without changes. Malcolm Gladwell in 2009 wrote that watching football is starting to feel like watching dogfighting. It seemed ridiculous at the time and is not ridiculous now.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/10/19/offensive-play
> Is it any worse than buying clothing made by child labor from a third world country?
Depends on the factory, I guess? Some of those jobs probably pay well relative to other options for those workers, even accounting for danger etc. In comparison, watching humans give each other brain damage because it's fun is harder to find potentially redeeming qualities for.
But now the players know. It would be different if we kept the player locked underground with no contact to the outside world. The fact is that they're making the choice to play even though the risks have been outlined.
I don't watch football. I follow stats (which is like watching without watching) though. I don't feel bad, because now they're adults making an informed decision.
I'm only a casual watcher of football, but I think it would be possible to change the game. My non-expert impression is that the game has evolved over the years (and I could certainly be wrong) and incentivizing players to avoid causing head trauma by penalties seems like the way forward (above and beyond current helmet-helmet collision rules). Maybe adding shock sensors to the helmets to objectively measure impacts is another thing they can do.
It would be interesting to learn what they already do today wrt measuring the forces on the head's of players.
Personally I wouldn't mind at all if the game changes. I would be satisfied watching them play the equivalent of flag football - high level strategy and athletic clutch plays can still occur with a safer game.
Also, teams practice more than they play. Practice causes concussions too, and penalties won't help.
That is what will change football. In 10 years or so, high schools will have a hard time fielding a football team. Then a few years after that colleges won't have them, and so on.
Those are personal decisions and I don't think anybody should tell you how you should feel. It's your choice how to feel about it. You get to define your own morality and live with your choices in the context of your own beliefs.
I also think game play would improve with lighter, faster players.
1. http://www.foxsports.com/nfl/story/the-nfls-starting-offensi...
Imagine high-speed, large scale robo-soccer - for football.
I am not a sports fan in general, but I would watch the hell out of such a game if it could be created. Especially if everything was fully autonomous, and teams were made of machines created by smaller groups or individuals.
Basically, take today's "robot soccer" or "robot sumo" competitors, mix them up with the "robot combat" people, throw in a dash (a small dash) of SRL - and give them a way to organize and build the teams...
The robots wouldn't need to be anthropomorphic - specialized vehicle-style robots would work just as well. It'd have the spectacle of football wrapped up with robot combat and demolition derby. There'd likely be fire, explosions, smoke, massive noise - it could become an insane spectacle.
And - provided that the arena it is held in is constructed properly - no human injuries would occur.
Ultimately, easier said than done, and I am certain the first few games wouldn't be that much fun to watch until the building teams or whatnot got the hang of how to build such machines. But if that could be gotten past - it might be something grand to see.
Besides watching robots playing soccer being boring, you're ignoring the fact that people PLAY sports for fun. The millions of people in intramural sports aren't doing it so they can entertain family.
They should definitely remove kick off completely, since they almost have already. Any run back is almost a guaranteed full speed head to head collision. At least with most plays the tackle is made from a considerable angle (for running backs there is rarely time for each player to approach full speed, or to come off unblocked).
Otherwise, I think it is what it is, just like people don't get up in arms about Boxing.
Doctors have warned about the long term health implications of boxing since the 50s, but nobody seems bothered by it. Boxing also isn't as popular as it used to be, so out of sight, out of mind I guess.
Saying the NFL should shut down is debatable: at least there we have adults making decisions (which can, after more research is published, be informed decisions) about their health and life.
However, if the incidence really is that high, at the very least high school football should be banned, or modified in such a way that the risk of head injury is diminished, if that's possible.
> Should I feel bad as a fan for watching football? Is it any worse than buying clothing made by child labor from a third world country?
I wouldn't say you should feel bad. NFL players are consenting adults who are being compensated (to some degree, at least) for the risk. We can't say the same of third-world child labor.
He's actually a math Ph.D at MIT! Crazy.
[1] http://www.global-sci.org/jcm/openaccess/v33n2/pdf/332-209.p...
"I think it hurt my ability to think well mathematically," Urschel said. "It took me about three weeks before I was football-ready. It took me a little bit longer before my high-level visualizations ability came back."
Losing a high-level cognitive ability must be terrifying; the flood of relief upon regaining his ability (probably slowly?) after 4+ weeks must have made him deeply question his continuing commitment, and then the CTE study pushed him over the edge.
That moment of that movie comes to me every time the TV producers cut to the team owner sitting in their fancy box in their fancy chair paying lots of African American men to beat each other up for our entertainment and profit.
Especially when you factor in that they have been doing this to themselves from the age of 8 years old in most cases, all the way through high school and 4 years of college play for no compensation. All for the tiny slim opportunity of maybe one day having a 3 year career in the NFL and earning less total than an MLB rookie's first year signing bonus. The only reason the NFL has their pick of such top talent is because millions of kids in this country spend their lives putting schoolwork and health second to this dream of "making it". There's a massive externalized cost to society which the NFL has arbitrage on.
You are, however, more likely to become an NFL player than an MLB, NBA, or NHL player.
Is that before paying management/agency fees + taxes, or after?
But honestly even if you could peek into every NFL players brain, I'm sure the likely incidence after 4-5 years of playing would be orders of magnitude greater than whats found in the general population.
But it's also almost 10% of all NFL players that died during the study period.
But maybe he wanted more conclusive data before leaving a job which paid him millions. :)
I can only imagine how much more difficult it is when you're a pro, the stadiums are bigger, and you are on TV.
That's pretty amazing. He scored 43/50 on the Wonderlic (highest in 2014).
Ryan Fitzpatrick scored a 49/50, though it was in the older format.
The immediate reason was Bill Belichick staking his own reputation on Donald Trump's assaults on the media, in a close state in a close election. But CTE was making it hard to remain a football fan anyway.
I don't want to see someone die on the field, and I certainly don't want to contribute to it happening.
Belichick went further, however -- he supported a pack of lies meant to undermine the value of First Amendment rights anywhere. And we've seen subsequently just how destructive lying attacks on the press can be. Anybody who, while knowing better, spreads those lies is damaging our country. I do not want them to succeed; hence I do not want them to have the kind of success that strengthens their reputations.
But Basketball injuries can ruin you for life as well. I have a cousin who has severe amnesia after getting knocked out during a Basketball match. Its like years of his life were wiped away after his concussion. He was a straight-A student too, these sorts of things are severely damaging to your student career.
Brain injuries exist in a lot of sports. Football is particularly dangerous but the dangers in other sports (Boxing, MMA, Basketball, Soccer) are severe as well.
* Far, far, far more people participating at high levels (just based on team size).
* Impact is less obvious/direct, so youth and young adults have a harder time recognizing the danger: CTE tends to manifest long after players are out of the spotlight.
* The NFL has actively tried to cover up the danger of concussions; I'm not aware of any other governing body working so hard to harm those it should be protecting.
The biggest difference is that most parents don't sign their kids up for Boxing in kindergarten.
I was a big kid (I'm 6'5" now), and I live in the south, so of course my parents signed me up to play football at 6.
In other sports where kids start very young, like soccer, the contact injuries are usually a result of accidents. You aren't trying to slam into people at full speed.
I'm aware of the "Football towns" across USA. Basketball is bigger in my area though, which might be why I hear more about Basketball-related injuries.
In addition to concussions, football players are also believed to receive repeated microtrauma from running into each other repeatedly, which contributes to CTE.
Football is a full contact sport. In games and in training, you are repeatedly slamming into people at full speed. There is nothing comparable in soccer or basketball outside of accidents (which by nature of being accidents happen much less frequently).
Sure, the velocity of the ball is faster (average professional level is ~27 m/s [3]) and the relation with that variable is squared (E = ½mv²), but linebackers still run at 7.6 m/s [4]
Soccer ball kinetic energy: 164 Joules
Linebacker kinetic energy: 3176 Joules
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_(association_football)
2 https://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2014/2/22/5427038/nfl-combine-2...
3 https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-average-speed-of-a-soccer-...
4 https://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2015/2/22/8085379/2015-nfl-comb...
In my view, there is a very big line between head and spine injuries and any other physical issues long term. Today, people can have artificial hip and knee joints that are acceptable for every day life. If an athlete wants to destroy his legs in exchange for millions, I have no real issues with that. I start to struggle when these guys are doing lasting, unseen, and irreparable damage to their brains. It has become harder and harder for me to watch football over the last 5 years. I watch 85-90% less football than I used to. Most of this time has gone onto watching soccer (which does have some concussion issues of its own) and basketball. I don't think that LeBron James is comprising his future each play he runs. I did feel that way while watching each down in an NFL game.
They can't test for CTE on living people and if someone has it but say dies from a heart attack before ever showing symptoms, they likely aren't donating to the CTE study.
>"I think it hurt my ability to think well mathematically," Urschel said. "It took me about three weeks before I was football-ready. It took me a little bit longer before my high-level visualizations ability came back."