The NFL’s problems in one accidentally revealing ad

That said - those hard plastic helmets are weapons. They can hurt a player a lot more than a skull. Not sure what to do with that conclusion.

I love watching NFL football but its obviously a form of killing people slowly for our entertainment. I don't see how it can sustain unless we all look the other way on the brain injuries.

Factor into that all of the players who don't make it to the NFL, but played all through high school and college. People start playing football before they understand the accumulated risk. I don't think that the accumulated risk is even well understood by most people at this point.

There are studies that show that the incidences of depressions are significantly higher in former NFL athletes, with contributing factors likely being brain trauma and chronic pain. You can find sources here: http://www.google.com/search?q=incidence+of+depression+in+nf...

On the contrary: players, teams and the whole league have hidden the extent of injuries before. They used to just load the players up with painkillers and send them back out. They had no idea how injured they were. The NFL has been criticized for lack of disclosure regarding brain injuries for a long time. "As of December 2012, thirty-three former National Football League (NFL) players have been diagnosed post-mortem with CTE." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopat... These players had no idea how injured they were. "In 2012, some four thousand former NFL players have joined civil lawsuits against the League, seeking damages over the League’s failure to protect players from concussions".

When I eventually came to the crossroads of either turning pro or focusing on purely intellectual pursuits, I chose the latter for economic reasons -- my idols were decorated world champions who were also broken moneyless men in their 30s, so the decision was a no brainer (though a very difficult one because I loved the sport).

If there was a possibility of a comfortable retirement after a 10 year pro career, I would have gone pro for sure.

They're broke because they spend it anyway. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. Many of them come from the sorts of backgrounds where you spend the money when you've got it, so that's what they do. But they've all been advised differently.

throwing money at poor people to injure themselves for the entertainment of others is ethically problematic. writing it off as "conscious choice" ignores the fact that people can be pressured by economic incentives into doing things that are not in their overall best interest, but which they are incapable in their present circumstances of realising are a net loss.

Of course, the second point is more what this article is about and I believe American football will eventually been seen like we view Roman gladiators. But for now, padding is a major reason why it is the biggest sport in America.

A typical one- or two-year pro isn't getting set for life. Much less the average college football player, who donates his time and health for the benefit of people and organizations who are already wealthier than anyone else he'll ever know.

Leading with the helmet will get you a 15 yard penalty, ejected from the game, or both.

Good observation, bad conclusion. The solution is not mushier or poorer protection, but something very much along the lines of "you get one helmet per game and thats it". Made outta styrofoam or something.

Look, here's the big startup lesson. Say you've got a generic engineering challenge. Look at other industries. In the 50s they made car chassis that were so strong they could survive a 50 mph crash and look pretty much drivable afterward. Of course the passengers were dead jelly. Solution? Crumple zones, crush zones... Do the same with helmets. When that styrofoam cheesehead helmet is crushed or breaks off, you're done for the day. And everyone else has the same limitation, so hold back a little, else you get kicked out by everyone else, ok?

How athletic is Football, when compared to other sports? I'm not too clued into the game (grew up in Britain) so I'm genuinely curious. My instinct is that the frequent pauses and switches between offensive and defensive players mean that an individual player gets a much larger break than in other sports (I'm primarily thinking of soccer and rugby here), and runs a much shorter distance. But on the other hand, a football game goes on far longer than both of those.

In fact, an infographic:

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/55220000/gif/_55220300...

Football players run across a considerably smaller distance than rugby players, but tend to be larger and stronger. Hmm.

In the absence of padding and helmets this would be rare in American football as well. Oh sure players would run toward each other. But the results would be a rugby-style wrap-arms-and-pull-down tackle rather than an NFL-style airborne earhole clock-cleaning.

I agree with most of your other points; the NFL may well be safer now than at any time in the modern era. I doubt it will ever be safe, however.

I used to be a big fan of the game back in the 90s but I got bored because its not a very deep game. Oh, its got some interesting depth, just not much. Anyway most of the helmet smashing is pointless offensive / defensive line stuff, mutually assured destruction basically, and sacking the QB. Some simple rule changes wouldn't fundamentally change the overall game while eliminating 99% of the head smashing. For example, what if sacking the QB causes a penalty on the defense instead of (typically) a loss of offensive possession? Obviously you'll need to prevent hacks to the system like no forward progress is allowed by the QB. Also no forward progress is allowed by the center sneaking a yard or two. Ta da I think you've just eliminated probably around 90%+ of serious brain damage right there. Maybe more.

There are of course alternatives to my rule suggestions. Something like tag football can still be exciting if applied properly.

One interesting option is weight limits. Fine, smash into each other, but no 350 pound linemen anymore... we'll go with featherweights. Another interesting option is as any kid who played informally at a park knows, fewer players on the field makes it more of a running game than a brutal smashing game. What it you simply had no linemen at all and just had people running around like sprinters?

"To the Editor: Soccer is the most popular sport in the world, with more than 250 million active players.1 It is the only sport in which the unprotected head is a primary point of contact when heading the ball. In other contact sports, the deleterious long-term effects of repetitive traumatic brain injury (TBI), such as impaired white matter integrity,2 are well recognized.3 However, whether frequent subconcussive blows to the head lead to TBI remains controversial,4- 5 although evidence suggests impaired neuropsychological function in soccer players.5 We evaluated concussion-naive soccer players using high-resolution diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), which is highly sensitive for detecting alterations in white matter architecture."

Heads can also hit each other or goalposts, for example when a keeper dives for the ball.

There have been studies confirming this. One example:

http://www.newser.com/story/157592/soccer-heading-may-harm-b...