Concussion doctor says he found CTE in living NFL player
mercurynews.com
mercurynews.com
1) Years of rule changes, and stricter enforcement. Now a top level player who tackles someone above the shoulder, or tackles without attempting to hold on (so no clothes-linse or body checks) will be sent off (which in Rugby is catastrophic to your teams chances). If you lift a player off the ground you are responsible for putting them down again. Drop them on their head and expect a lengthy ban. This hasn't changed the spectacle of Rugby much, if anything the skill levels have improved.
2) Protection. Around your head Rugby only allows you to wear a small soft 'scrum cap' which protects from bruising and wounds from head clashes, like the things boxers suffer with around their eyes. Their is a light collar bone protector which seems to be about 1/5th of the thickness of the equivalent Gridiron gear. That is all. The impacts are still impressive to see, indeed are perhaps more impressive on an un-armoured body, but with lower G-force to the head
3) The size of the people. In both sports their has been an increase in the mass of the players. However US football players seems disproportionately massive. In Rugby their are not rolling substitutions, so you have to carry that mass around for 80 minutes, and therefore a compromise is necessary, perhaps gridiron could restrict the number of subs, or the squad size so the bruisers actually had to run. The miracle of sports nutrition, with the characteristic protruding jaw bones, seem to be producing bigger players than they may if they had effective controls against doping. Yes I said it, from across the pond, it looks like steroid abuse is rife in several US sports.
4) The concussion protocol. Any player that appears to have been knocked out in Rugby gets sent from the pitch to be examined by a doctor for a minimum of 10 minutes. If concussion is detected there is a mandatory period off playing. If concussion recurs this can be months! Welsh International George North suffered repeated concussions and missed most of the following year.
During this same period Rugby has become a tougher sport than ever, but without killing the brains of our young men
In rugby I myself had experienced concussions from collisions at least once a season. Anyone I know who has played have experienced similar.
Less protection to the head means lower g-force hits sure, but still I've seen players knocked unconscious by pure body collision hits or an accidental knee to the head (this happens a lot more than you think) ... in fact in my 4 years of high school football I rarely, if ever, saw anyone knocked unconscious... where in rugby I can recall a handful of incidents.
Rugby has no room to outshine football in this manner. Such a foolish arguement.
Why one sport may differ (less or more) is a difficult thing to discuss, as we likely don't have clear numbers. But isn't debating something like the number of concussions for each sport silly?
The thing about concussion is that it's not the first impact that does the most damage - it's your brain sloshing and shearing/splitting itself, near the rear, against the inside of your skull as the recoil causes neuronal connections to essentially splinter..
like if you were to grab a dish-washing sponge with both hands, and tear it apart by pulling it apart by stretching it (a downwards-rolling wrist motion) you would notice the unfurling and disintegration of the middle section. essentially that's what happens during concussion; a 3 dimensional shearing tensor that is kind of like plunging your thumb into a ball of playdoh..
that's why even the mildest concussions are a seriously underrated danger
Concussions are bad in any case, so it’s great that we are trying to prevent them, but I’d be very careful assuming any contact sport has a handle on the issue yet. Especially not one with a scrum.
Interesting as the scrum is not a concern to me for head injuries (just spinal compression!). It is on the whole a pushing movement, not an impact.
However there are a couple of things to say
1) If the game rules changed you would stop training for hits you were not expecting to take and concentrate on other factors.
2) I wonder how much of this training is necessary, vs hitting a heavy bag for instance. Perhaps it is just bad practice (no pun intended)
You are correct that NFL players are much, much larger than comparable rugby players. NFL linemen are enormous.
And they can run. It is not uncommon in 2017 to see 300+ pound linemen that can run quite fast. Michael Oher, the subject of the Michael Lewis book _The Blind Side_[2] is 6'4", has an actual weight of 320+ pounds, and is described to move very quickly on the basketball court.
However it is not these large players that are involved in the concussion hits. It is the "smaller" 200+ pound players who, while wearing full pads, can run as fast as olympic sprinters and launch themselves into opponents at full speed.
I'm afraid the "bruisers" can already run and the "small guys" are the size of normal rugby players. And are faster.
This is why I find the NFL so enormously compelling: In the 21st century, what happens in an NFL game is otherworldly.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Oher
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blind_Side:_Evolution_of_a...
I guess the obvious comeback is that they don't also have to pace themselves for 80 minutes. There are some very fast men in Rugby but they have to trade on stamina, and strength too as everyone has to defend.
> the size of normal rugby players. And are faster
There is a huge variation in size and builds in Rugby too. 200lbs is about the minimum now (was less) for backs. 266lbs is probably the max now. Height wise 5'7" to 6'8" is the normal range. George North[0] for instance is 238lbs 6ft 4 and runs the hundred metres in around 11 seconds with his compromise physique. They tend to aim for a very fast 40m time as it is all about breaking the defensive line in Rugby. Other smaller players clock in mid 10's for 100m, again the physique is too compromised to run at full olympic pace. They are expected to tackle the big guys for a full 80 minutes. There have been genuine sprinters in Rugby, I think of Carlin Isles in particular who was a novelty in the cut down game of Rugby 7's (7 rather than 15 players, shorter in duration and designed to encourage a running game). He didn't make any headway in the full game however for the reasons above.
> And are faster > It is not uncommon in 2017 to see 300+ pound linemen that can run quite fast
Apart from my comments about the compromise in physique required to run and tackle for 80 minutes, this just makes me believe more an more that their performances are otherwordly or at least enhanced.
> launch themselves into opponents at full speed
Which if they were not both wearing padding would result in two broken players. If you watch how a Rugby player tackles one of the fast guys, it is a much more dynamic move without sudden deceleration. You have to deflect and unbalance, not body check. It still looks cool, you shouldn't be concerned that it will hurt the spectacle of the NFL.
[0]https://genuinepace.com/category/rugby-union-2/ [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA5bwqVN5LM
So, I don't think it's fair to say that you're not "killing the brains of your young men". Based on the best research available, Rugby players, who may be at less risk for concussions due to the safety protocols you have outlined, are still at a high risk for CTE.
This is a very good point. I am concerned as the Rugby players have become bigger and faster (which I put down to not so much sports science as sports chemistry) in the last 10 years and the impacts are harder. Rugby is a contact sport and is dangerous for your brain.
My argument has developed during the day due to some excellent responses. What I want to say now, is there are some lessons American Football can take from Rugby to make a dangerous game safer without risking the spectacle. Making it totally safe is going to be much harder
Personally I find it difficult to understand how parents can let their kids play rugby when there is such overwhelming evidence that it’s risky at best.
Yes, it's a high impact sport, and that's exactly why there are a lot of rules to prevent anyone from getting seriously injured.
Also, the objective of Rugby is to get the "ball" at the other side of the camp while avoiding the most friction possible, not to hurt each other. In fact, we were often encouraged to avoid contact whenever possible and to pass the ball whenever we could.
There is also a lot of training on how to to fall and how to not hurt your opponents too, I wouldn't say it's "risky at best", quite the contrary, I'd recommend the sport to anyone young enough.
Respectfully, self-assessment is exactly the wrong approach here.
Play soccer, break a leg. Obvious - leg is broken. Play rugby, lose 5% mental ability - less obvious especially in a self(!)-assessment of one's mental ability.
>Also, the objective of Rugby
I've been on the receiving side of some nasty rugby tackles...including the type where I don't remember a lot about them. So yes I do understand the objective of Rugby and all that great stuff.
>In fact, we were often encouraged to avoid contact whenever possible and to pass the ball whenever we could.
If everyone plays a clean textbook version then that works out well. In my experience putting a bunch of determined testosterone fuelled guys on a field does not result in textbook clean though. Not even close.
Rugby/Boxing/NFL/whatever...consider this. 99% of NFL post mortems show CTE. Not just a few - 99%. Lets suppose Rugby is way better like literally halves the risk despite both similar contact sports but lets pretend Rugby is way better. Can you really "recommend the sport to anyone young enough" at 49% CTE risk? Telling me about training how to fall is just not going to cut it.
So yes "risky at best" is my assessment of the situation.
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/25/health/cte-nfl-players-bra...
The spinal damage was from playing against people in my college year group who were clearly much older than me, and should not have been playing against 16 year olds. The head injury was caused by my running towards a ruck which broke up in front of me, leaving someones head poking through to hit my face. It didn't happen in a tackle where the normal hits happen. It was a freak, but yes it would have been less likely in a tiddleywinks competition.
The other injuries I saw were a horrible broken leg from someone training in non-studded foot wear, and muscle strains typical of all athletic activities. I saw one more person knocked out in training who was simply holding a tackle pad and had their head in a very dubious position...
My point was really that the risks in American football could be reduced without ruining the game. No Rugby is not safe, neither is not taking exercise. You have to weigh up your own risks.
School rugby in NZ had a great solution to this that I wish was implemented elsewhere. The teams were categorised by weight rather than age, which makes a lot more sense for school / college Rugby.
Frankly every time a child gets in a car they are much more likely to get injured than in a game of rugby. I guess it's time to start wrapping our children in bubblewrap every time they go out, just in case...
2) Rugby is recreation. Riding in a car is a necessary part of daily life. Regardless of risk, one can be given up much more easily.
That's a very America-centric point of view, and completely not true if you live in a city designed to accommodate high-density living (or at the very least one without terrible public transport).
If you're putting a child in a car, it's safe to assume it's not usually for recreational purposes. It's usually because it's the easiest (or only) way to move them a certain distance.
Exercise is a necessary part of a healthy life. If Rugby motivates you to stay fit, then maybe it improves your chances of a healthy life
Yes, exercise is necessary, but rugby isn't the only way to exercise, nor is it nearly the safest.
Cars aren't the only way to travel in general, but, for many people in many situations, the other options aren't viable.
http://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances/
Clemson, where I went to school and the current defending champs had a budget of $104,000,000. Of that, they spent $103,000,000. If you'd be so kind as to identify the shareholder who's rolling in that $1 million profit I'd appreciate it.
When I was in school around 2000 it was a $30,000,000 budget. All of that extra money happened because of Tivo and Netflix making it so much easier to skip commercials on anything that you didn't need to watch live...which make live sports (that people watch) the most viable advertising channel for traditional broadcasters. Couple that with college sports having the added benefit of mostly aiming advertising at the eyeballs of alumni and you have the most valuable advertising resource in TV.
In the mean time, have a look at the new facility that the team gets to enjoy.
http://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/18614393/tak...
In regard to not being paid professionals, if you'll explain walk-ons...the people without scholarships who work to join the team on their own dime and have to meet the exact same requirements to be on the team yet might not ever see the field. The ones who clearly seem to think that there's enough value that they'll pay for the chance to participate.
Or then this: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/americas-growing-student-l...
I'm sorry, but this whole "everybody get the NCAA" thing is just getting tired.
http://www.businessinsider.com/football-revenue-alabama-clem...
As earlier stated, they supporting multiple programs with multiple facilities, scholarships, Title IX, coaches, strength programs, trainers/medical support, practice facilities, etc.
Of all of those programs, at most schools only 1 or 2 actually MAKE money. At Clemson, the football program supports EVERY other scholarship sport that competes at the D1A level.
IMO that stuff should be heavily policed to the point that doing so jeopardizes accreditation.
Fans of the school will turn out to watch walkons playing as long as the field is level with all of the other teams.
One of the reasons Dabo was hired is because he understood that Clemson’s administration didn’t want to go back to the win-at-all-cost mentality of the 80s and he was actually the staff member under Tommy Bowden who attended all of those AARC reviews.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Stadium_(Clemson)#Con...
How does one account for the potential of Hollywood accounting when looking as just a few top numbers? If you look at the cost verses income of movies using the same standards, most box office hits were financial disasters, no?
The players are not really aware of the health risks, furthermore they are young and foolish and impressionable and are following the path of glamour which has been sold to them as youngsters.
The sports organization is aware of the risks and are using the players to make vast sums for themselves, they are pushing the glamourous path and they are not supporting the discarded players. They are ignoring the debt to society incurred generating their profit and that is not good unless you think that their tax payments should cover it (do they? I don't know..)
I think a great deal of them would still choose to play despite knowing the risks. There are likely neighborhoods where people raise families that are less safe than playing in the NFL.
And I'm sorry, but 25 year olds are not "young and impressionable" any more, so I don't buy that defense. These are adults making adult decisions: http://www.footballperspective.com/2016-av-adjusted-team-age...
What I would buy as a defense is that NFL has a serious amount of propaganda and actively works to suppress medical knowledge which can fool anyone, child or adult.
It is a very similar kind of propaganda for selling military careers by associating it with video games to high schoolers except that you can actually join the US military at 17 with parental consent.
Yes, some of these athletes are choosing between sports and poverty. That's another reason why it's messed up, not why it's okay.
I might agree that 25 is an adult but lets be realistic here.. if you can find somebody who at that age made the decision to join the sport and actually got into a pro team, well I'll be amazed!
Nice guess, but that's not your decision to make. I'm not sure what movie you watched that gave you such a deep understanding of the trade offs, but is it possible you don't fully understand them?
> 25 year olds are not "young and impressionable" any more
They're not? News to me. Maybe I'm just getting old.
I'll say this because it fits the demographic here on HN, but have you ever met mid-20-something techies in the bay area? My experience has been that many of them are still very impressionable. Being technically an adult doesn't magically make you immune to being impressionable.
Remember the state of being impressionable is about a lack of critical thinking. Given what we've seen with the recent election, it seems very plausible that many adults lack critical thinking. No?
Looking at this more objectively - 1 out of 4 college football players drops out of school and doesn't finish their degree. Also, more objectively, at the age of 25, you're only a third of the way through your expected life (~78). So, yes these people are still considered "young".
Good, then this is easy: let's tell them, and make it their choice.
They would still play even if we took steps to minimize the risks.
Some think that society should protect vulnerable individuals (in this case, mostly poor people that see in football a way to get well-off/rich) from predatory organizations (in this case, a monopolistic organization that has proven to have no regard for the health of its workers).
Notice that most people aren't asking for a ban of the sport - just some rule changes to minimize the health risks.
It's literally the closest thing you can get to modern day gladiators.
this is a kinda modern equivalent, imo..
Smoking tobacco is inhaling an acrid a mix of chemicals that makes you cough, kind of feel sick and lightheaded, smells awful and leaves a tan stain - it’s not hard to guess that it’s not healthy. Remember that half of people who die from tobacco die from heart disease, too, not cancer.
Same with football. I was never attracted to sports where participants beat each other in the head repeatedly, whether it’s boxing or football. I don’t think it’s surprising to find out that people who experience concussions every week as part of their jobs and hobbies end up damaging their brains.
Edit to add, It’s a bit frustrating, because surely if one was to stand up 30 years ago and say “hey, I don’t think this high school football program is a good idea because I’m worried about all these young people knocking their heads together with full force”... The response would have been to mock you and dispute it, if they paid any attention at all.
With the benefit of 70 years of medical research this is an easy statement to make, but at the time this was far less clear - smoking was for a long time actively promoted as having health benefits [1][2]
It's easy from a modern perspective to look back and apply our accumulated wisdom, but it was not self-evident that smoking was necessarily bad. Otherwise millions would not have signed up for an early death.
[1]https://www.healthcare-administration-degree.net/wp-content/...
[2]https://i.pinimg.com/736x/40/50/4f/40504f0de983d78f3c0f0b22c...
Except for 'Varsity Blues' (1999) I guess, and I'm sure other examples, where the evil coach telling the kid to play when another head injury could kill him was a main plot line.
That said, I do think the destructiveness of football in knees and backs has long been known. I remember them being detailed when reading “where are they now?” articles in Sports Illustrated as a kid (I’m 30).
For example, lore is replete with stories of young people's initial experiences with smoking involving coughing, choking, turning green and feeling nauseous or vomiting. There's also the fact that nicotine has long been known to be a poison as strong as cyanide, and has been used for insect control by Europeans as far back as 1763.
Of course after the first few sessions you’ll start to get used to it, and actually feel better after exercising. Just like how you feel better after smoking once you’re addicted.
For one, if exercise makes you dizzy, nauseous, sweaty, and all your muscles ache, you are either severely out of shape are overdoing it.
I smoked for a fair portion of my life. The main motivation for addicts is to relieve the craving for tobacco. It’s pleasurable in some ways other than that, but cigarettes did not leave me feeling well most of the time.
> cigarettes did not leave me feeling well most of the time.
Sounds like an easy habit to kick!
Extremely vigorous sports is different than your average exercise. I’m still happy to assert that it’s a twisted analogy - If you compare the feeling from exercise to cigarettes, it’s obvious that they are not qualitatively similar, despite the fact that each involves some unpleasant sensations.
Another significant thing to note is that over time, exercise clearly has positive effects on your body – you feel healthier, more muscular, lose weight, breathe easier. Cigarettes do not have a healthy effect on your body over time, and it doesn’t take a doctor to tell or modern medical technology to tell they are staining your teeth, making your breath bad, making you cough, and so forth.
This was not lost on Europeans went tobacco was first introduced.
This is an odd view on the nature of physical addiction. I personally know more smokers that hate their smoking than smokers who are ambivalent or actually enjoy it.
> "[...] the wound itself is its own healing when seen from another standpoint." [0]
> "As for smoking tobacco, Shapiro argues that quitting is hard because smoking does not disrupt the smoker's life, not because of the mild effects of nicotine on the brain" [1]
etc. I expect up-in-arms responses to views like mine, but even neuropharmacologically, speaking there is really less of a danger to ~"the disease known as addiction"~ than there is to codifying addiction as a metonym for "sepulcher for all the lost people". I say this for all substances, even something as malicious and unforgiving as carfentanil..
[0] https://socialecologies.wordpress.com/2014/11/19/slavoj-zize...
[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=dcK6-h1ngtcC&pg=PA281&lpg=...
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/09/teddy-roosev...
30 years ago? I bet you’d get this reaction today in large swaths of America. I’m positive you would have gotten it 5 years ago.
That disclaimer out of the way, nicotine's prevalence is mostly due to it's addictive qualities. However, the usage of nicotine in WW2 and the industrialization of it's manufacture shortly before the war cannot be missed when talking about nicotine's prevalence mid-century.
Nicotine, like any drug, has a multitude of effects. In certain situations, these effects can be beneficial. The only reason I can think of is: if you have a reasonable suspicion of major bodily trauma occurring before the side effects of nicotine wear off (you are about to die). Nicotine promotes alertness, calmness, and an adrenal response, lowering the flow of blood to the periphery and increasing blood pressure. At high concentrations, it also causes sedation.[0] Also, there is interesting research about those sedative properties in connection with schizophrenia.[1]
Smoking a cigarette while on/near a battlefield is not a terrible decision. You may be more alert, calm and less panicked, already primed with adrenaline, and may experience less blood loss to limb wounds. Back at camp when you can smoke to your heart's (mal)content, you can sedate yourself as well. I'm not certain on the effects with PTSD, but as a sedatory drug, I would imagine it would lessen PTSD (no evidence here, just speculation).
So, if you sling crack and have been sought after by your creditors, you may want to pick up a pack. If you are a SWAT team member about to go into a building, you may want to chew some gum. If you are in Aleppo currently, you may want to light up.
Other than that, stay away from the stuff like the life killing poison it is meant to be.
That said, when it comes to these types of sports, benefits may exist as well. For some people, those HS/Pop-Warner football years may be the best they have. The concept of 'hoop-dreams' is alive and well 30 years later [2] and is not just limited to basketball.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine#Psychoactive_effects
Nah, the modern equivalent is sugar.
Most people don't do enough sports to suffer from it (except for broken bones etc.)
Talking about sugar will make many enemies. For example, the dairy industry. Or worse, fruit-farming. How do we convince people their smoothie is actively bad for health?
Because at the end of the day, we don't know for sure. There are of course, some benefits to eating fruits. There are also likely downsides as well.
I don't want to poop on keto but I suspect a lot of people can't follow it through and even if they could, I don't know if it is good for them.
Football is clearly the worst offender, but at the high school level the rate of concussions really isn't that far behind for hockey, lacrosse, soccer, wrestling, and basketball. Even a complete non-contact sport like baseball has a concussion rate that is 10% of football's rate. So the question isn't really what percentage of American children play football, it is what percentage play any sport and how can these sports be changed to increase safety.
Imagine a person moving at full speed. That person collides with an identical person moving at the same speed in the opposite direction and they both hit each other at their center of mass. These two people now come to a complete stop. Newton's laws of motion say that every part of their body wanted to continue moving forward, but this collision causes a chain of events that stops the entire body. First their torso might stop. Their extremities might lurch forward until they are eventually stopped by the pull of the bodies muscles and ligaments from the stopped torso. But even as the head stops, the brain still has inertia of its own. The brain doesn't stop until it collides into the front of the skulls. This is the type of trauma that is common in football and will occur regardless of whether a player wears a helmet or not.
The reason other full contact sports like rugby aren't as dangerous is because football is unique in that it has regular stoppages that realign all the players in the direction of their objective. You therefore have offensive and defensive players colliding head-on regularly on each play. In rugby this doesn't happen because the game is mostly continuous so offensive and defensive players are often moving in the same direction so collisions are less intense.
For a little video evidence, this [1] is the first result for "rugby biggest hits" on Youtube and this is the first result for "football biggest hits" [2]. Notice how in a majority of the rugby hits either the offensive or defensive players is at a complete standstill before the hit while in the majority of the football hits the players are both moving towards each other. It is a physics and rules problem not a problem with protective gear.
I looked it up, and apparently the stats for tackle football are about 4.5% of kids 6-12 and 9% in the 13-17 range.
How many young people play tackle football in college?
How many parent allow this?
http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/09/health/aaron-hernandez-brain-c...
More details - Currently, CTE can only be definitively diagnosed by direct tissue examination after death, including full and immunohistochemical brain analyses.[15] The lack of in vivo techniques to show distinct biomarkers for CTE is the reason CTE cannot currently be diagnosed while a person is alive...[1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopat...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopat...
It's a newspaper rather than a scientific journal so I think they can be forgiven for not expanding the acronym, just as newspapers commonly report heart attacks rather than myocardial infarctions.
... to identify chronic traumatic encephalopathy in the living.
> Now the San Joaquin medical examiner, Omalu was featured in the movie, “Concussion.”
Today I find football unwatchable. Every time I see players slamming into each other at full speed I feel queasy. I’m also ethically against watching it because I don’t want to support the football industry. There are many other sports in the world I’d rather watch.
The unspoken elephant whenever these studies come up is skiing and snowboarding. Lots more participants, and I bet the concussion rate is similarly high over X number of visits. Damn well better not make me wear helmet though, my worst injuries came when I had one on (overconfidence syndrome)
And I think it’s much too soon to say other sports with occasional head impacts are bad to do now that football is known to be unsafe. Football has head to head collisions as a matter of course, every play. Soccer, with the header, is much more likely to be next to come under scrutiny IMO.
without school programs as a pipeline the nfl probably can't continue to exist
> But the scan also identifies protein found in Alzheimer’s patients, making it difficult for a definitive conclusion. That’s one reason Omalu performed a postmortem exam of McNeill to confirm the results.
So it indicates you've either got CTE or early signs of Alzheimer’s -- bad news either way.
Also, just diagnosing (at present, and aside from the aims of the article) doesn’t help as we can’t really treat. We know that, for example, being knocked out more than twice in your life doubles your risk of ‘brain disease’, and having a second concussion within a week or so of the first also is a massive risk multiplier. So we need to have appropriate management and identification strategies in place to ensure we don’t allow that to happen, restrict play after concussive injuries etc
The fact that they found CTE in 110 out of 111 NFL players post-mortem should indicate that they had a pretty good idea about which players to pick for autopsy. Was those picks based on their history of psychological issues alone, or were there other indicators such as definite signs of Alzheimer's?
This is a rather different situation, and while I'm not myself a neurosurgeon or indeed anything at all in the medical field except possibly an occasional annoyance, I tend to think that "hey, let's see if we'll find anything this time!" is probably not considered a sufficient reason to perform brain surgery. I could totally be wrong about that, though!
If the game used flags, the quarterback would have almost certainly been down. Instead he runs for a first down and keeps his offense on the field.
The NFL in slow motion can be beautiful to watch in slow motion. These plays aren’t nearly as exciting without the risk of contact and Sanders’ opportunity and ability to break tackles.
That doesn’t mean the game as we know it shouldn’t go.
sohatever rule changes are suggested to the game it needs to adress the off season practice as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopat...
In a healthy society this sport would be forbidden by law.
Give me a break.
Are we going to ban football at home, too? Or just at school? What about community leagues?
In a healthy society, the dangers would be well-known, minors would always have a right to refuse and forcing a minor to play would be considered child abuse, and children would have to be old enough to form rational opinions before being eligible for leagues or scholastic play.
It is not the role of law to keep people from being able to do dangerous things. Law exists to keep people safe from others, and to keep people from being a danger themselves, but not from being a danger to themselves. Consciously choosing dangerous behavior in exchange for some reward is an inalienable human right.
Such a draconian law has no place in a healthy society.
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (degenerative disease)
But the NFL is finding itself in a really tough position. I love this sport, but I find it ethically difficult to watch now. It would be one thing if the NFL was doing everything it could to protect its athletes, but it's absolutely clear they are trying to bury their heads in the sand on this one:
> “We need a couple million of dollars. What is stopping us is the money. We’re ready to roll.”
Think about this: we currently have no way to diagnose CTE in living people, we think we may have a way, the "we" in that is pretty credible as its the person who discovered CTE, and it will cost roughly $2mm, and the NFL isn't tripping over themselves to write the check for some reason. It would cost 12 seconds of superbowl ad revenue to fund this, and in fact the NFL has pledged $100mm to investigate CTE, but basically they just aren't doing it: http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/20509977/nfl-takes-c...
This is kind of shameful, and as a fan of this sport I really hope they figure out how to have a better position on this issue, because what's going on right now is not sustainable.
What is interesting however is that neither rugby union, league or AFL have anywhere near the level of concussive damage, maybe because the lack of protection leads to a different approach to bodily harm. Full disclosure, one of the products my company makes and is commercialising in Australian Rugby Union is a concussion monitoring system so this is a deep interest of mine both from the tech/commercial side but also the medical side.
You are right though, greater awareness of the risks is going to endanger these sports. A parting word of hope - we still allow boxing, and CTE is medically known as ‘punch drunk syndrome’ from the first reported cases of the medical literature.
Concussion management is a rapidly evolving field and my sister (for whom I built the side project which we are now commercialising) thinks that being able to have a biochem test like we do for heart attacks would totally change the field - big head knock, troponin-like test, then follow up and treatment as appropriate. It’s super interesting and we need to put players first whatever we do
When I read this I immediately thought this person has never heard of Nadia Comãneci.
Nadia Elena Comăneci (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈnadi.a koməˈnet͡ʃʲ] (About this sound listen); born November 12, 1961) is a Romanian gymnast. An Olympic gold medalist, Comăneci is the first athlete in the history of the sport to be awarded a perfect score of 10.0[1]
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadia_Comăneci
Edited to add: Here is the link to Nadia's 1976 Olympic Games perfect 10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yl9QpC8_LiE
But then imagine that, in that same olympics, there was a 6'5" tall human, weighing 320 pounds, that scored a 7.
What Nadia did was amazing. What NFL players are doing in the 21st century is otherworldly.
Boxers wear gloves to protect hands, not heads, and those big pillows mean harder hits mean more brain damage. Bareknuckle boxing is better for the brain.
No rugby player is lining up his skull and charging other players skulls like a ram or a goat, that would hurt, so they don't do it. Football players really need less protection for their heads so they stop doing things that are dumb for their brain.
The challenge with football is that the obvious corrections to the game would seem to be quite fan unfriendly... Touch football is hard to imagine on FOX SPORTS.
Turn it into rugby leage?
This is often cited as the cause for the discrepancy, but it doesn't consider the actual rules of each game. Like you said, games like rugby union, league, and AFL are more about fluidity and flexibility than American football. American football is about getting set, lining up, and going at your opponent as fast as you can. The end result is that the number of full speed collisions in American football is much higher since the players are often charging directly at each other. In the other sports the two opposing teams are often moving in the same direction so high impact head on collisions are rarer.
A lot of the head trauma in American football is really just from the brain rattling around in the skull as people collide at full speed. The helmets basically act as air bags in a car crash. They are there to prevent fractured skulls, but they do very little to prevent concussions and other head trauma.
Team sports emulate warfare, and determining who wins or loses is based on achieving goals. Thus the strategy and goals adopted by these sports end up reflecting how each society believes how war should be fought and how wars are won. Thus europeans favour sports and strategies which are focused on achieving the goals without any emphasis on unnecessary manhandling or violence (not because of any pseudo superority or morality, but mainly because it needlessly wastes energy, degrades our side's athletic capabilities and performance, and also lowers the value of what is expected to be conquered) while the US favours a scorched-earth approach where winning is confounded with decimating the enemy in a humiliating manner, without any care preserving any value on which is about to be conquered.
This US-centric view of warfare is very well represented in Ender's game.
Out of curiosity have you ever watched the NFL? Like, given it a good chance for at least a few games? Because in pop culture that's how the NFL is portrayed and marketed, but it's not really like that and honestly I'd venture to say that's not why most people like watching it - because there's not really much literal "beating the shit" out of the opposing side anyway, and to give an example: if you listen to the live crowds, you rarely, if ever, hear them lose their shit when the occasional gruesome helmet-to-helmet play or injury occurs, as someone on the outside looking in might expect. On the flipside, any time contact is avoided by the home team to make a good play, the crowd collectively loses their shit, because really what football is about is using physical strength as well as skill - mental and physical - to outsmart and outmaneuver your opponent and "beat the shit out of them" that way.
I've been watching football for years and I still barely understand how, at its core, the game works. Nevermind how physically skilled they are, which is a given - there is so much that goes into the game mentally it's mindboggling. Don't even get me started on the quarterback position which is arguably the most mentally-intensive position in any of the major sports, not just because it requires intelligence but it requires intelligence, FAST, while a bunch of guys are clawing at your offensive line trying to run into you and bring you down for the sack.
What is? That the NFL has the best athletes in the world?
If the NFL athletes trained for a year to do anything else, or you put all the athletes in the world into a decathalon of power/speed/strength specific events, it would be an insane blowout.
NFL players would crush every other group of athletes individually and probably combined, and I say this as someone who has worked with Rugby Union and AFL players in Australia. There is no comparison, they are the best athletes in the world for any fair value of athletics you want to use.
Your argument might be more reasonable if you were trying to compare top NFL athletes to somebody like Ashton Eaton (world decathlon record holder).
But come on, there are tremendous differences difference between the body types and skills involved in swimming, gymnastics, bobsled, trick snowboarding, 100 meter dash, marathon, boxing, sumo, table tennis, basketball, archery, rock climbing, ballet, ... https://imgur.com/a/cOTTF
You can’t just say “these particular athletes matching a particular archetype are ‘the best’, and could be retrained to beat anyone at anything”.
That seems like a wildly opinionated statement in an otherwise good comment.
If you're going make such outrageous claims at least give some explanation? How do you measure how impressive an athlete is?
See my bio if you think this opinion is subjective.
But if you choose these traits then naturally it's going to benefit those athletes who compete in sports where it's more beneficial to get.. big..
That's like saying tennis/table tennis/badminton players are all mediocre athletes because they aren't able to lift as much weight even though it isn't as beneficial or is even potentially harmful to be very heavy in those sports but of course any serious athlete is going to optimize their training for their sport.
Second, OBJ's one handed catch has been one-up'd by himself and other many times.
Saying "the most impressive things in the history of sports period" is hyperbolic, and simply wrong. You're neglecting every other sport, olympic achievment, or otherwise. The NE England Patriot's comeback in last year's superbowl is more like something we could talk about as being the greatest sports achievement of all time.
As someone not familiar with football (not from the US), can someone explain to me what makes this catch particularly impressive? Is it the speed (difficult to assess from a video)?
Heck, I'm not huge sports fan, I can come up with half a dozen more impressive feats in sport off the top of my head.
* Beamon's long jump record in 1968 Olympics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEt_Xgg8dzc
* Maradona's goal of the century: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wVho3I0NtU
* Zidane CL final, won Real Madrid its 9th CL title: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFfomw-Z4uE
* O'Sullivan, fastest 147[1] in history (snooker = 4D chess in my opinion): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3C7I5lRZII
* Sotomayor's high jump world record in 1988 Olympics (his lowest time and still 0.01 m higher than anyone else since then!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n6NhV4CaiU
* Usain Bolt
[1] 147 is the maximum number of points you can get in a game of snooker. The only way to do this is to alternate pocketing a red ball then a black ball until all red balls are off the table; this nets you 120 points. Once this is done, you need to pocket the remaining colored balls, ending with the black ball, for an additional 27 points. All this must be done without conceding a single point to your opponent (i.e., no mistakes). Start watching from 1:10 for the action.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boHfs7nopHc
But they are all really different. Different sports required different skill calling one set of skills most athletic is really weird.
This is sad, because I really enjoy relaxing fall/winter Sundays watching NFL games, but as you said, I'm starting to really struggle with the morality of it.
I remember thinking I had just watched a player die on the field with the Ricardo Lockette injury a few years back - not a dirty hit, or anything, just the result of a violent game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BEx1BqTlhI
Absolutely. It's a ridiculous sport and the NFL specifically themselves are completely unethical scum for perpetuating the myth that they care about player safety. Yet I find more contempt in my heart for the NFLPA, whose union has got to be the least competent and least effective group of organized workers in the United States, if not the world.
Every sports record is hailed as the most impressive thing in sports ever. I think your enthusiasm for the sport might be leading you into a bit of hyperbole here.
While OBJ's was impressive, I have seen even more crazy catches in Cricket and Baseball!
Call me when one of them free-climbs El Capitan.
Not really; depending on dimension, gymnastics, ballet, marathon, short-distance sprinting, powerlifting, and any number of other sports and physical arts are far better at showcasing the extremes of what the body can do.
> The most impressive athletes in any sport in the world are in the NFL
Well, “impressive” is subjective, and all this really says is that you are particularly prone to being impressed by the kind of display that the NFL provides.
So I finally got around to watching the catch. Cool catch, but isn't the catching ability of a receiver augmented by tact gloves?[1]
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protective_equipment_in_gridir...
What a ridiculous statement to make! Even probabilistically this makes no sense, since the players are selected out of 3e8 out of 7e9 humans. Check out socker players, marathon runners, climbers etc and you will see that every sport has their very own geniuses.
What more is there to study? Getting knocked in the head for years is bad for you. Do we really need scientists to tell us this? Who in their right mind thinks getting hit in the head on a regular basis will have no negative affects on their well-being? The solution is not some new treatment - it's to... uhm, stop getting your head knocked on a regular basis.