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Comment by johnvschmitt | Hacker News Reader

This is another example of how you should handle fear-based news.

This coming from a guy who played H.S. Football in Texas, & is still good at math:

Look at your odds:

1) You are VERY unlikely to ever play in the NFL. 7B people, ~10k people in NFL.

2) If you play team sports as a youth, you will learn how to: A) deal with adversity, & perserve. Even if you don't win, you learn that you can survive, learn, & live. It makes you resilient. Resiliency is better than raw strength. B) deal with team dynamics. If you can't fire the member, you quickly realize that you must improve the weakness of your teammates, & welcome similar offers from them on your own weaknesses. C) Learn that exercise is fun, is living, & is something you embrace.

Or, you can simply live in fear, & increase your odds tremendously to die by diabetes, & idleness. "Sitting is the new Smoking Cigarettes.."

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This kind of bs talk radio approach is exactly the thing scientists are trying to cut through. If the data says football is damaging most kids lives, we should go with the data. It's just a game and there are plenty of other games we can play. It has nothing to do with "fear-based news".

Go with the data, right. The data shows that NFL players have damage, not the average high school player.

That's like saying, "Studies show that the top 0.01% of hackers are suicidal, so don't do computer programming!"

I've played other team contact sports (Basketball & soccer), but really football was the best at making me resilient. There's no comparison. The benefits outweigh the risk for 99.9% of players, & for the elite who go on to the NFL (0.1%), then the risks may outweigh the benefits.

"The benefits outweigh the risk for 99.9% of players"

Does the data support that or did you make that up? This would be a more interesting discussion if it has some scientific substance.

It sounds like the data is unknown for the remaining 99.9%. In that case, no scientific conclusion should be drawn at all.

I still appreciate his johnvschmitt's initial comment because it's an anecdote about how football has benefited him.

1) But if you run full speed into other players and hit them head on doesn't matter the level or professionalism or type of sport, your brain is probably not going to fair well. This isn't about the NFL in a large picture, but about tolerance as a society of a brutal sport that induces cumulative damage of the brain.

2) I can see an even better alternative -- programming, being part of an open source project (hey I didn't have to think hard here I am a programmer so that came first to me) and well pretty much any physical activity that doesn't result hitting your head against things, gardening or even walking is probably good enough to escape the sedentarism effects.

There exist team sports that are not contact sports, though.

Technically, they're not sports

Technically (and subjectively for most people) they are. Golf, tennis, athletics, etc... plus the many limited-contact sports such as soccer, baseball, etc. etc.

soccer

There have been some studies investigating the effects of heading the ball on the brain[0].

[0] For example: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11347686

Last I checked volleyball and tennis are sports... And there's several very popular limited contact sports like baseball and basketball.

And that's sticking to the technical definition of contact sports, when I think we're really talking about collision sports, which is what NFL is classified in...

My co-workers daughter plays volleyball and was out of school for 3 weeks due to a ball being hit into her head.

I played multiple contact sports in Texas schools, decades ago and with research coming out, wonder if my mental potential or others was damaged by the some of the hits I took or delivered. The MMA training I did as an adult was much safer injury-wise.

You can be part of a team without being in a contact support. You can also workout with out increasing the chances of getting shredded by an outsider linebacker or a cut block or 90 mph fastball.

Baseball is a team sport, and your odds of getting a blow to the head are a lot lower. They also seem to take such contact a lot more seriously.

Incidentally, that was the only sport at school that I ever took any serious damage from; a baseball to the forehead.

I was never interested in any sport though. I was standing at the back waiting for lunch.

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