Hacker News Reader

My home state and city (at the time) spent half a billion dollars on a blood sport stadium. I could vote but i didn’t really have the option to not pay for it.

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.

>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.

My biggest problem is that it is being facilitated by the state and, on top of that, associated with education.

As a high school teacher, this is my issue too. Often, athletics takes priority over academics, with our high school basketball and football teams being required to take a class during school with their coach that basically amounts to extra practice. And this instead of being free to pursue whatever elective they want; it's frustrating as hell. Not to mention that according to the HSAA of my state, they can literally be failing three classes and still play. Which is just utter bullshit! And that's on top of the fact that sometimes the players don't get home until after 10 on a weeknight, and then still have homework, or have to wake up early the next morning and such on top of all that.

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.

My issue is that high schools and universities serve a purpose to move society forward, and I don't see how an activity that causes brain damage for entertainment qualifies.

>an activity that causes brain damage for entertainment qualifies.

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.

> My issue is that high schools and universities serve a purpose to move society forward, and I don't see how an activity that causes brain damage for entertainment qualifies.

Well hasn't society moved forward while college football and the NFL have existed? Your argument is provably incorrect.

>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.

> No one at this point - parents, players, fans - should have any illusions about the consequences of playing these games.

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...

> 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.

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).

The question is whether our institutions of higher learning (high school and college) should be sponsoring a sport where the vast majority of players are getting brain damage. They've shown CTE in people that never played past high school football, and they didn't get a dime for playing the sport. We don't let kids in that age group buy cigarettes or alcohol, why do we let them play a sport that has a pretty high possibility of causing long term health effects?

Live and let live for most things, but the talent pipeline hardly starts with adults. You get parents pushing kids through peewee league and the pressure just ramps up from there. High school and college football is basically a religion in some parts of the country.

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...

That's true that it's everyone's right to make their own decisions, but it's a little grayer when that decision-making process is as exploitative as it can be.

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.

You must be referring to professional sports and not college sports. If not, college kids make their own decisions when they are recruited at under the age of 18?

At least in California, they can't make the choice to purchase alcohol or cigarettes until 21. The more the science links football to permanent health effect, the harder it is to sustain the logic to let them play as "consenting adults". Say nothing of the lengths to cover up some of these effects by the NFL and probably the NCAA.

In the case of kids getting recruited at <=18 years, I think the question isn't necessarily about letting them make their own decisions, but whether this is a decision they should be presented with at that age. It sucks that physical maturity comes well before mental maturity.

So maybe public universities shouldn't be "selling teenagers cigarettes"?

Do you oppose tests for performance (perhaps) enhancing drugs as well? Seems like they should also fall under the "So let everyone make their own decisions."

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.

The rules against PEDs in sports are arbitrary, but that's fine. Most other sports rules are also arbitrary. The intent is to ensure some level of equality and keep the competition interesting. We don't allow cyclists to show up for a race riding motorcycles.

The 15-year-old student I saw crippled for life by one HS football game probably didn't make his own 'decision' to take that risk.