Head gets hit repeatedly. That's the most complex and delecate organ in your body. I don't know live appendages that can take hits repeatedly without any long term side effects. Money talks in the NFL, so as long as that gets passed around, they are not taming it down unless the govt steps in
110 N.F.L. Brains
171–180 of 206 posts
Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains
#172Historians will look back at American Football as our analog to the Roman's gladiatorial games. A lot of people don't realize that during the Imperial era of Rome fights to the death had become uncommon.[0] The games were watched in an arena and primarily sold hard-hitting violence between members of the lower castes of society and sometimes people got killed or horribly maimed....sound familiar? I stopped watching A…
Honestly (as a former football player) I find this opinion to reek of pseudo-academic snobbery. You know why football is such a popular sport? Because people love football. More importantly, people love playing football. I understand that not everyone sees the appeal of the sport and it's their right to have their own preferences. But to simply dismiss the passionate pursuits of hundreds of thousands of players across the globe as some engineered gladiator battle by the upper class is absurd. There was football before there was television. If the NFL shut down tomorrow and televised broadcasts were banned, there would still be football. You can condemn the exploitation of players' health in the NFL without creating these gross overgeneralizations of the sport.
Moreover I think it's offensive to imply football is this caste regime as if the rich people are watching the poor people play. Football pervades all income levels. Your rich prep high schools still have a football team. Ivy league schools still have football teams. If anything it is an equalizer because your rich suburban prep school guy lines up next to a dude that grew up in the inner city all the same. And their standing in the team, along with compensation, will be dependent on their performance as opposed to race or economic background. Where else in society is there this level of parity?
Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains
#173I think people take for granted now how good the Times is at these interactive, zine-like layouts for their feature articles. I just want to say another job well done on this one. Each one of these I see is a work of art that clearly took a lot of time across the team.
Yeah, at one point I stumbled upon the portfolio of a dev who does their interactive content and loved it.
I have so much appreciation for people who have a good sense for design that is intuitive/effortless for the user. Especially in this case, when it means cutting the learning curve that a user experiences when they are presented with a bunch of new data.
Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Playing football is almost certainly bad for your brain It's bad for you in general. I used to go a gym with some ex-NFL guys, and they literally could barely move most days. All of them told me they would never let their kids play football. Every single one had life long lasting ailments, and none of them were the guys who made millions.
Minimum salary is $450,000$ / year and average career is 2.66 years. So most people are making at least 1 million today. https://www.si.com/nfl/2016/03/01/nfl-careers-shortened-two-... The problem is not so much the NFL IMO, it's the 4 years of collage + 1-4 years of high school before that. Means most people get hurt without any real benefit.
Minimum salary increased relatively recently. About a decade ago you could find NFL benchwarmers on not much more than 50k.
Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now we have ceramic wool which doesn't have regulations like asbestos does but is still a known carcinogen and the handling of it is done without any PPE.
Right, but the comparison being made here is between football and asbestos removal, which is a profession people have today. The subtext was, "even asbestos removal has a lower risk of health problems than football". But I think that comparison may be confounded by the fact that the modern asbestos removal profession is organized around safety. In other words, that asbestos removal is not a good comparison point for…
I was specifically thinking about historical methods for asbestos installation. I don't know the numbers exactly. I know that modern methods for handling hazmats like asbestos are good enough that it's basically not a risk factor. However, I suspected, based on the lack of "My grandfather got X and died" stories, that even old-timey asbestos handling protocols did not have a particularly huge rate. A visible rate, yes, but not something like coal mining sans PPE, mercury, or tritium, where the occupation effectively guarantees your cause of death. I chose asbestos because it was the most visible example that came to mind of something that had a relatively low rate but that most people would agree needed to be shut down for the health and safety of the workers involved with it.
I'll note that the "lifetime risk" numbers in the first response are almost certainly historical. I'd expect the studies he's looking to have been published around the time modern handling standards were developed, and they may have even contributed to their implementation. The symptoms also take decades to manifest, so I'd expect modern rates to be good indicators of the safety of the industry circa 20-30 years ago and nearly useless for indicating modern standards. 50 years ago probably not, but 20 years is probably still good.
Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
A sub-concussion doesn't require that you hit your head. It simply requires a g-force event -- like skiing quickly over rough terrain -- that shakes the brain around, building up the scar tissue that we know as CTE. Offensive linesmen engage with the opponent via their body/arms, seldom hitting with their head, but that rapid g-force of the body stopping is enough. Again, someone studied football players because the…
Having played the game for years, I can assure you the impact being generated on the line is very real. These folks do interact with their body/arms, but head on head contact is a very real part of the game, and that is the part that really affects the brain. And the part of soccer that seems to cause concern is heading the ball, not the running around part. Comparing helmet to helmet impacts to skiing over rough ter…
And the part of soccer that seems to cause concern is heading the ball
But we don't know what the concern is in soccer. Heading is immediately looked at because it's an impact, but the actual cause may be something altogether different.
I mentioned the g forces measured in skiing elsewhere. They are absolutely in the range of subconcussion.
Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is humorous to me that the miscreants are always first to cite the HN Guidelines, as if it's their shield for their utter obnoxiousness.
Just stop, your abusive and negative comment was already flagged, and you continue to dig your hole deeper. Guidelines are exactly that, guidelines. If you can't follow them here on HN please avoid commenting. I will engage no further with a user like yourself who cannot comment in a civil matter.
Endorphone entered the discussion with an interesting and plausible perspective. I can understand his or her frustration that multiple responders completely misinterpreted that perspective. All of the Endophone's visible comments are measured and reasonable. (Edit: much less so the most recent comment, to be fair).
Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. Heading soccer balls is proven to at least temporarily reduce IQ. I've never let my kids play that sport. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/1... http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/01/health/soccer-headers-concussi...
So what are the safer competitive team sports for kids to participate in?
Volleyball is fun and challenging when played well. I'm not sure how easy it generally is to find good competition to learn from -- southern California where I grew up was a good place for it.
Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains
#179I'm more interested in what happens to the brain with youth soccer. Bigger problem than a couple hundred pro athletes.
I wonder, is there headgear that would fix that?
I gave up youth soccer after a season or two at least partly because heading hurts.
Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are right about the equipment (even though obviously only concussion vs concussion + skull fracture is a step forward!), but the difference between football and rugby goes way beyond the equipment. In the former there's no lateral passing, which means that the ball carrier will always be a target for the whole defense. In rugby you can pass the ball, which makes the defense spread wider and doesn't allow them to…
Football does have lateral passing, but yes, tactically it is much rarer.
It exists technically but it doesn't in practice, there's probably 15-20 lateral passes per season (I'd say 0 before the 4th unless it's garbage time and there's some trick plays happening on a punt return) vs hundreds of thousands of plays.