USC's Dying Linebackers
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I played football for 9 years (1 in college). I made my best friends playing football, gained confidence, learned countless life lessons...but I still wouldn't let my future children play the game because of the risk of brain injury. A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a former teammate where we wondered if there have been long-term effects on our brains. And we played at nowhere near the level of the athletes here.
I'm convinced we're going to see football go the way of boxing. Boxing still exists, but it doesn't have nearly the appeal that it did 40-50 years ago, when a quarter of the planet watched The Rumble in the Jungle. [0] Boxing (competitive boxing, not workout classes) isn't a sport that upper-middle class kids get involved in. Youth football is headed in the same direction; participation rates are down as parents don't let their kids play (and other sports increase in popularity).
Every activity we choose to engage in comes with some degree of risk. The ethical issue here is twofold:
1) Do we adequately understand the risks, and are the people playing the game (children) equipped to make the decision of whether or not to play?
2) As a society, what degree of risk are we willing to tolerate? How many suicides is too many? [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rumble_in_the_Jungle
[1] I have mixed feelings about Malcolm Gladwell, but his podcast on the ethics of football (especially as it relates to higher education institutions, whose missions run counter to the idea of bashing one's brain in) was thought-provoking: http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/22-burden-of-proof
Source on this?
But on the other hand, MMA is immensely popular and replacing boxing and/or attracting new fans that boxing no longer was appealing to.
This brings up a really interesting point I haven't seen addressed before - sports can be seen in some communities as a way to "get out". As more science gets out about the long-term effects about these sports, upper-middle class families whose children have more certain white-collar futures ahead of them won't do it, leaving the poorer kids to take on the risk.
America's always been happy to throw the poorest of us in the meat grinder, why not football?
Exceptions abound, of course.
I don't think football is going to go away soon, but I can easily see it becoming an entertainment primarily for the red part of America.
When I was younger I used to feel the risk was worth it- yeah you risk your body but you make a million dollars a year- you are set! Now I realize that little of that money is guaranteed, 1.6% of college players get drafted, and most of those wash out in a year or two after making the league minimum or practice squad minimum. After taxes, agents and the like, it's a horrible expected return for even the best of the best.
Unfortunately it’s an ugly idea. But it may work.
Seems like you can't do anything medically for your friend, but if he brought his condition to light, it would help the statistics and research, which could then help politically in preventing it from happening to other people.
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/search/index
The care you receive during a clinical trial is, of course, top notch.
Speaking more anecdotally, I have a few close friends that also received a lot of brain injuries in their youth due to sports. Their progress, as you say, is spotty and individual. Personally, the ones that have made an effort to improve themselves mentally have been the most successful to any degree. When it comes to memory, saying that you just have a bad one will likely let it remain as such. Working on memory will help, if slowly or at all. Things like notepads, journaling, meeting notes, and a 'no excuses' attitude were key methods to friends that made progress.
But, as you say, the brain is awfully murky and nature kinda has to take her course. Nothing is likely to stitch back together the neurons that were lost. However, the brain is awfully murky, and there seems to be nothing stopping it from rewiring the neurons that are left.
Best of luck!
A think a big part of the ethical issue is whether organizations like the NFL/NCAA 1) knowingly covered up information, shrouding the risk (presumably to protect their profit) and 2) whether they have a responsibility to the players whose health is sacrificed for those profits
* I realize both organizations are technically not-for-profit. IMO, it's a bit of an absurd classification and a big can-of-worms to open in the discussion
I'm always curious why foreigners are so invested in anything american related, especially when they really don't even understand it.
> especially for children
Children really don't play football in a way that would cause these health issues. It's mostly two hand touch or flag. Even tackle football ( with or without equipment ) is mostly just grabbing and dragging down the qb, rb, wr, etc.
> but also at colleges.
College football ain't going anywhere. It's so entrenched in the culture.
> Which means a huge cash cow for the NCAA disappearing.
That has nothing to do with the "ethical issues" via health. It's another issue altogether and it affects NCAA basketball more than football.
High school football is far more than just "dragging down" the opposition. There are tons of hits, big and small. For linemen, the smaller hits appear to be cumulative in damage, so the concern about concussions isn't the only major effect.
"american football".
> On a multinational message board like HN, I think referring to it as American Football is entirely appropriate.
HN is not a multinational forum. It's an american forum where anyone can participate. Also, the article is about USC linebackers.
> High school football is far more than just "dragging down" the opposition.
I don't really consider varsity/jv football players to be "children".
You obviously have no idea what youth competitive football looks like these days. Check out Snoop Dogg's West Coast Steelers getting crushed by Fort Lauderdale's Hurricanes.[0]. BTW, these are elite level kids in middle school.
That said, good on Snoop for sponsoring these activities.
The type of "non-profit" status the NFL has is as a pass-through organization. It takes money in, then redistributes it to its for-profit stakeholders, which then pay taxes. The "non-profit" status is merely to avoid double-taxation of the very much for-profit teams.
They don't get any of the benefits you would expect of a real "non-profit", like tax-deductible charitable contributions.
It wasn't named yet, and wasn't described using all the diagnostic tools we have at our disposal today, but it was very well-known.
They were calling it "punch drunk". The phrase appears in the article. It's been widely known for a long time that repeated head traumas are really really bad for you and can come back to haunt you later in life.
Just because they weren't calling it CTE doesn't absolve them of knowingly sending these kids into repeated harm.
“Punch drunk” (and associated pugilistic dementia) was well known but I suspect most people did not think the long term effects extended beyond boxing (hence the names), where it’s literally one of the aims to cause head trauma (outside of Olympic point-style)
That said, from an ethical perspective, any lawsuits for CTE in football players should also include the universities would benefitted immensely from the program, particularly in the case of mega-programs like USC.
In general, if you know what kind of articles to look for, there are some good stories out there by the major players. I really enjoyed the relatively recent (in the grand scheme of things; "totally old" as far as news goes) articles about the rise of wine's popularity among NBA players ([1]) and a look into NHL dentists ([2]) on ESPN.
If you're interested in writers who happen to be writing about sports, this year I got sidetracked from my original to-read list exploring the oeuvre of the late great David Foster Wallace, who has a handful of tennis essays that I thought were fantastic. He's such a talented writer that I must recommend you seek out his essay collections individually (A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Consider the Lobster, and Both Flesh and Not) but if you're strictly interested in his tennis essays, they were taken from those three and reprinted in a collection called String Theory. As a taste, the title essay of Both Flesh and Not is readable online (as "Roger Federer as Religious Experience", [3]).
EDIT: this was more directed at the grandparent comment than the parent, but well, hey, all of HN is free to take my recommendations (or not!)
[1] https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/29517070/inside-nba-secr...
[2] https://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/27851359/the-ugly-gory-b...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20fed...
(It's a daily podcast, so don't feel bad about skipping episodes)
I still think it’s the most intricate and exciting team sport, but the long term impact on players (especially the ones who never even get a big payday) is too negative to ignore.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimelsesser/2019/11/07/the-conc...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3750422/
Although I bet it would be easier to outlaw headers in soccer (aka football :) than somehow avoid concussions in American/gridiron football.
I see a ton of high-risk tackles in football that just aren't done in rugby. But I'm not sure if that is enough of a difference.
This is just my opinion, I'm no expert. I just played some rugby in high school and briefly in an adult league. I don't keep up with any sports, really.
[0] http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/22-burden-of-proof
Many things in life can have severe, life-destroying consequences including smoking, drinking, and eating fast food, but none of those can pay you tens of millions of dollars and the praise of millions of people like sports can.
So let everyone make their own decisions. It's sad that some people's brains are scrambled while playing football. Not everyone dies of smoking cigarettes. Not everyone dies from brain injuries related to football. So all of these articles and hand wringing - so what? Don't watch. Don't pay money. Let those who like it continue to. It's everyone's right to make their own decisions.
Speaking of MMA, it's no secret the rules favor striking. From the fat gloves, the aggressive stand-ups, the lack of clothing which makes explosive escapes much easier...
Seems like even without them, the intense training for even non-contact sports can be destructive, and for some (e.g. bikes) differences in equipment can exceed differences in human performance, so excluding drugs seems arbitrary to me.
Go to texas where football is nearly a religion and ask yourself really how much those kids are opting in for brain damage well informed and without illusions.
You’re right though, I don’t care if MMA fighters beat each other to death, they’ve got the freedom to make those choices, but keep your blood sports out of high schools and universities.
Not necessarily disagreeing, but I'm curious if your issue is with the age or with being part of "high schools and universities". Most MMA athletes nowadays started as adolescents but not part of a sanctioned school program.
To be fair, I think it's more about character development than entertainment at the lower levels. But if you reframed your argument that there's no need for athletic activities with high levels of brain damage risk for the sake of character development, I'd be inclined to agree.
Well hasn't society moved forward while college football and the NFL have existed? Your argument is provably incorrect.
That argument is invalid because it would be true up and until football had a negative impact large enough to cancel out everything else an institution accomplished, which is ridiculous.
Not to mention that schools rushed kids back into classrooms this year partially to help justify them keeping their sports programs running, which just turns me off all the more from (school) sports.
I'm happy to watch pro football, because the players there (at this point) are grown adults who know the risks and are getting compensated for their part in my entertainment. I find that more difficult to justify for college football, where (in the most generous interpretation) many students are playing unpaid as their only route to getting a (in-name-only) college education.
I can't see a justification at all for high school or youth football, where it's not at all clear that the participants are in a position to consent to the damage they're risking on themselves.
This article is about USC linebackers, meaning NCAA sports athletes, which means no millions of dollars. They are unpaid student athletes.
> So all of these articles and hand wringing - so what? Don't watch. Don't pay money. Let those who like it continue to. It's everyone's right to make their own decisions.
Many students are encouraged to play football throughout the US. Critiquing social norms is important and shouldn't be minimized as "hand wringing." It's important to surface the dangers of sports like these to help folks make better decisions for their lives. Society can come together and be like "hey kids are losing their dads over these sports, either to death or horrible symptoms e.g CTE-induced violence" -- maybe the value of these sports doesn't exceed the damage they do to the folks involved, even if equitable compensation was possible.
Personally I don't think it's worth it. You can have sports that don't cause these problems (e.g basketball, baseball), and you can make sports safer if they do cause harm (e.g fouls in basketball in the 80s vs today).
I have a friend who is a high school football coach. In his words: "Only people playing at a really high level are at risk" even though we know for a fact this isn't true, and high school level players CAN and DO get CTE[0].
People do not take the risk seriously, and they DO NOT understand what they are getting into. Nobody is sending consultants to schools, or having school assemblies about "the dangers of CTE" like they do with drugs and alcohol. No, they are burying their heads in the sand and having pep rallies and dangling the glory of becoming a college football star to attract people.
> Many things in life can have severe, life-destroying consequences including smoking, drinking, and eating fast food, but none of those can pay you tens of millions of dollars and the praise of millions of people like sports can.
The percent of people who become professional athletes is absolutely tiny. So because a tiny fraction of athletes will make millions of dollars, the topic is unworthy of discussion?
I think you just trying to convince yourself there are no victims in your athletic meat grinder.
0: https://consumer.healthday.com/kids-health-information-23/ch...