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Ravens OL John Urschel, 26, retires abruptly, two days after CTE study

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Re: Ravens OL John Urschel, 26, retires abruptly, two days after CTE study

#81

Has "whether you let your kids play football" joined the long, long list of boolean values that separate members of the Red Tribe from the Blue Tribe? If not, I think it's inevitable that it will. Someone will try to get their school to close its football program, someone else will complain that the health dangers are exaggerated by the liberal media because football is a red-state passtime, and pretty soon it'll be…

I do hear complaints about ESPN being too political (but left leaning) and there was something about one playing not standing for the national anthem.

So it seems that right now it is weakly associated with blue tribe.

Of course as Grey Tribe I can't do anything but slowly shake my head at these college teams.

Re: Ravens OL John Urschel, 26, retires abruptly, two days after CTE study

#82

Something that wasn't pointed out in the article is that the vast majority of cases where a NFL player's family donates the brain to CTE study is where they already were showing some degenerative symptoms. They can't test for CTE on living people and if someone has it but say dies from a heart attack before ever showing symptoms, they likely aren't donating to the CTE study.

It was also close to 10% of all NFL players that died since the study started.

Re: Ravens OL John Urschel, 26, retires abruptly, two days after CTE study

#83
post #41

Has "whether you let your kids play football" joined the long, long list of boolean values that separate members of the Red Tribe from the Blue Tribe? If not, I think it's inevitable that it will. Someone will try to get their school to close its football program, someone else will complain that the health dangers are exaggerated by the liberal media because football is a red-state passtime, and pretty soon it'll be…

I feel that this comment is unnecessarily divisive and condescending. In general, I think people care about their kids, and will have different levels of risk sensitivity. http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/page/popwarner/pop-warn...

I am deriding the sort of discourse that topics like this usually produce, not the people making the arguments. It's certainly possible that the public debate over kids' football will largely be apolitical and civil and productive, such things do happen, but I'm predicting that it won't be.

Re: Ravens OL John Urschel, 26, retires abruptly, two days after CTE study

#84

Trying to watch NFL reminds me of the moment in "Django Unchained" when we meet diCaprio's character sitting in a chair watching to slaves beat each other to death. That moment of that movie comes to me every time the TV producers cut to the team owner sitting in their fancy box in their fancy chair paying lots of African American men to beat each other up for our entertainment and profit.

The NFL started out as almost exclusively white, and is now very mixed-race and the demographics are pretty purely skills-based. So I'm not sure any slave fighting analogies apply.

What were black people allowed to do in 1921 in the USA ?

Re: Ravens OL John Urschel, 26, retires abruptly, two days after CTE study

#85
post #37
post #28

So what's the big picture here? We've suspected for years that football leads to brain trauma. Does that mean the NFL should shut down? Should they continue to operate as normal? There have been efforts recently to make the game safer for players, but the amount of concussions and injuries seen every season don't seem to be decreasing. Can you make the game "more safe" without drastically changing the game? Any game…

By this definition football is basically modern Gladiatorial combat.

>> By this definition football is basically modern Gladiatorial combat.

Why would you have ever thought otherwise? Didn't you notice the coliseum looks like an ancient stadium? Football is very much a man-v-man battle and that's exactly why a lot of people like it.

Re: Ravens OL John Urschel, 26, retires abruptly, two days after CTE study

#86

Has "whether you let your kids play football" joined the long, long list of boolean values that separate members of the Red Tribe from the Blue Tribe? If not, I think it's inevitable that it will. Someone will try to get their school to close its football program, someone else will complain that the health dangers are exaggerated by the liberal media because football is a red-state passtime, and pretty soon it'll be…

Do kids face the same risk factors as professional NFL players? Someone who plays in high school isn't necessarily going to play football for their entire life; do four years of football from ages 14-18 significantly increase risk?

The NYTimes article said that they tested over 200 brains, half were college or high school players only. 87% came back with CTE. One would hope that it is untenable for institutions of higher learning to profit off of giving their students long term brain damage.

Re: Ravens OL John Urschel, 26, retires abruptly, two days after CTE study

#87

There is a significant bias here in that its 99% of NFL players brains * which have been donated to the NFL *. But honestly even if you could peek into every NFL players brain, I'm sure the likely incidence after 4-5 years of playing would be orders of magnitude greater than whats found in the general population.

That is a bias.

But it's also almost 10% of all NFL players that died during the study period.

Re: Ravens OL John Urschel, 26, retires abruptly, two days after CTE study

#88
post #50
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting to study Rugby comparatively re: concussion.

Here's an interesting article on how Rugby is ignoring CTE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rugbyunion/11857548/Rugby-u...

There is a decent interview with Jamie Cudmore on the rugby dungeon where he talks pretty candidly about concussion issues:

https://www.acast.com/therugbydungeon/ep-22jamiecudmore

Re: Ravens OL John Urschel, 26, retires abruptly, two days after CTE study

#89

Has "whether you let your kids play football" joined the long, long list of boolean values that separate members of the Red Tribe from the Blue Tribe? If not, I think it's inevitable that it will. Someone will try to get their school to close its football program, someone else will complain that the health dangers are exaggerated by the liberal media because football is a red-state passtime, and pretty soon it'll be…

Do kids face the same risk factors as professional NFL players? Someone who plays in high school isn't necessarily going to play football for their entire life; do four years of football from ages 14-18 significantly increase risk?

Until they do studies, it may be possible that head injuries may be worse in the long run at that age. It'd be an important question to answer.

Re: Ravens OL John Urschel, 26, retires abruptly, two days after CTE study

#90
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's already plenty of red state soccer moms that refuse to let their kids play football.

Which has worse concussion problems.

Soccer has worse concussion problems? I've not heard that. What's the source?
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