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Concussion doctor says he found CTE in living NFL player

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Re: Concussion doctor says he found CTE in living NFL player

#31
> Researchers are working to develop a test for people still alive so they can begin to study the disease more comprehensively.

What more is there to study? Getting knocked in the head for years is bad for you. Do we really need scientists to tell us this? Who in their right mind thinks getting hit in the head on a regular basis will have no negative affects on their well-being? The solution is not some new treatment - it's to... uhm, stop getting your head knocked on a regular basis.

Re: Concussion doctor says he found CTE in living NFL player

#32
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a highly cultural-specific viewpoint. For example Rugby union, league, AFL etc are all contact sports with huge followings - I can’t understand let alone (and probably because of my lack of understanding) stand NFL which I personally think culturally encapsulates an American approach to the world - this is the offence team, this is defence, let’s pad up and beat the shit out of the opposing side. Compared to t…

>>That’s a highly cultural-specific viewpoint. What is? That the NFL has the best athletes in the world? If the NFL athletes trained for a year to do anything else, or you put all the athletes in the world into a decathalon of power/speed/strength specific events, it would be an insane blowout. NFL players would crush every other group of athletes individually and probably combined, and I say this as someone who has…

How about a literal decathlon?

But come on, there are tremendous differences difference between the body types and skills involved in swimming, gymnastics, bobsled, trick snowboarding, 100 meter dash, marathon, boxing, sumo, table tennis, basketball, archery, rock climbing, ballet, ... https://imgur.com/a/cOTTF

You can’t just say “these particular athletes matching a particular archetype are ‘the best’, and could be retrained to beat anyone at anything”.

Re: Concussion doctor says he found CTE in living NFL player

#33
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a highly cultural-specific viewpoint. For example Rugby union, league, AFL etc are all contact sports with huge followings - I can’t understand let alone (and probably because of my lack of understanding) stand NFL which I personally think culturally encapsulates an American approach to the world - this is the offence team, this is defence, let’s pad up and beat the shit out of the opposing side. Compared to t…

>>That’s a highly cultural-specific viewpoint. What is? That the NFL has the best athletes in the world? If the NFL athletes trained for a year to do anything else, or you put all the athletes in the world into a decathalon of power/speed/strength specific events, it would be an insane blowout. NFL players would crush every other group of athletes individually and probably combined, and I say this as someone who has…

Their horsemanship is, by and large, terrible.

Re: Concussion doctor says he found CTE in living NFL player

#34
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The most impressive athletes in any sport in the world are in the NFL If you're going make such outrageous claims at least give some explanation? How do you measure how impressive an athlete is?

Context-neutral speed, strength, power metrics would all go to NFL players if you had a worldwide combine of running/jumping/lifting/etc. It would be laughable. See my bio if you think this opinion is subjective.

Your bio has no data to prove what you claim.

Re: Concussion doctor says he found CTE in living NFL player

#35
post #6

I didn't grow up playing or really understanding sports. I was one of those guys who joked about "sportsball" and stuff like that. When I started really taking weight training seriously I started having a frame of reference for understanding sports and started really appreciating them. Football is a sport that is designed to really allow people to showcase the limits of the human body. The most impressive athletes in…

> OBJ's "The Catch" is one of the most impressive things in the history of sports period. As someone not familiar with football (not from the US), can someone explain to me what makes this catch particularly impressive? Is it the speed (difficult to assess from a video)?

I'm not very familiar with football either, but I can say that OP is heavily exaggerating and probably not familiar with sports history at all.

Heck, I'm not huge sports fan, I can come up with half a dozen more impressive feats in sport off the top of my head.

* Beamon's long jump record in 1968 Olympics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEt_Xgg8dzc

* Maradona's goal of the century: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wVho3I0NtU

* Zidane CL final, won Real Madrid its 9th CL title: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFfomw-Z4uE

* O'Sullivan, fastest 147[1] in history (snooker = 4D chess in my opinion): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3C7I5lRZII

* Sotomayor's high jump world record in 1988 Olympics (his lowest time and still 0.01 m higher than anyone else since then!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n6NhV4CaiU

* Usain Bolt

[1] 147 is the maximum number of points you can get in a game of snooker. The only way to do this is to alternate pocketing a red ball then a black ball until all red balls are off the table; this nets you 120 points. Once this is done, you need to pocket the remaining colored balls, ending with the black ball, for an additional 27 points. All this must be done without conceding a single point to your opponent (i.e., no mistakes). Start watching from 1:10 for the action.

Re: Concussion doctor says he found CTE in living NFL player

#36
post #11
post #6

I didn't grow up playing or really understanding sports. I was one of those guys who joked about "sportsball" and stuff like that. When I started really taking weight training seriously I started having a frame of reference for understanding sports and started really appreciating them. Football is a sport that is designed to really allow people to showcase the limits of the human body. The most impressive athletes in…

That’s a highly cultural-specific viewpoint. For example Rugby union, league, AFL etc are all contact sports with huge followings - I can’t understand let alone (and probably because of my lack of understanding) stand NFL which I personally think culturally encapsulates an American approach to the world - this is the offence team, this is defence, let’s pad up and beat the shit out of the opposing side. Compared to t…

> The most impressive athletes in any sport in the world are in the NFL

When I read this I immediately thought this person has never heard of Nadia Comãneci.

Nadia Elena Comăneci (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈnadi.a koməˈnet͡ʃʲ] (About this sound listen); born November 12, 1961) is a Romanian gymnast. An Olympic gold medalist, Comăneci is the first athlete in the history of the sport to be awarded a perfect score of 10.0[1]

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadia_Comăneci

Edited to add: Here is the link to Nadia's 1976 Olympic Games perfect 10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yl9QpC8_LiE

Re: Concussion doctor says he found CTE in living NFL player

#37
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a highly cultural-specific viewpoint. For example Rugby union, league, AFL etc are all contact sports with huge followings - I can’t understand let alone (and probably because of my lack of understanding) stand NFL which I personally think culturally encapsulates an American approach to the world - this is the offence team, this is defence, let’s pad up and beat the shit out of the opposing side. Compared to t…

Someone once explained to me that rugby is a contact sport, and American football is an impact sport. The padding allows players to hit each other harder without bruising or direct impact, while the brain still bangs around in the skull.

Yeah my uncle played rugby for over 30 years with no major injuries when you don't have pads it definitely changes the nature of the game and ironically for the better.

Re: Concussion doctor says he found CTE in living NFL player

#38
post #30

"The most impressive athletes in any sport in the world are in the NFL" What a ridiculous statement to make! Even probabilistically this makes no sense, since the players are selected out of 3e8 out of 7e9 humans. Check out socker players, marathon runners, climbers etc and you will see that every sport has their very own geniuses.

Marathon runners, climbers, etc you mentioned have a pretty narrow field of physical competence. No way in hell a climber can compare athletically to LeBron James.

[deleted]

Re: Concussion doctor says he found CTE in living NFL player

#39
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone once explained to me that rugby is a contact sport, and American football is an impact sport. The padding allows players to hit each other harder without bruising or direct impact, while the brain still bangs around in the skull.

We have an intuitive understanding of impacts that don't reflect the reality of the risks... Boxers wear gloves to protect hands, not heads, and those big pillows mean harder hits mean more brain damage. Bareknuckle boxing is better for the brain. No rugby player is lining up his skull and charging other players skulls like a ram or a goat, that would hurt, so they don't do it. Football players really need less prote…

In the old days they had soft helmets, probably should go back.

Re: Concussion doctor says he found CTE in living NFL player

#40
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a highly cultural-specific viewpoint. For example Rugby union, league, AFL etc are all contact sports with huge followings - I can’t understand let alone (and probably because of my lack of understanding) stand NFL which I personally think culturally encapsulates an American approach to the world - this is the offence team, this is defence, let’s pad up and beat the shit out of the opposing side. Compared to t…

>>That’s a highly cultural-specific viewpoint. What is? That the NFL has the best athletes in the world? If the NFL athletes trained for a year to do anything else, or you put all the athletes in the world into a decathalon of power/speed/strength specific events, it would be an insane blowout. NFL players would crush every other group of athletes individually and probably combined, and I say this as someone who has…

"Best athlete" is a function of the event, where physical strength, speed, and agility alone do not guarantee success. Doesn't matter how much time you give to NFL players, they wouldn't outplay Giannis Antetokounmpo or LeBron James, or out-race Eliud Kipchoge, or out-dribble Messi, or out-swim Olympic swimmers, or out-climb Alex Honnold, etc. Those are all fair measures of athletic ability.

Your argument might be more reasonable if you were trying to compare top NFL athletes to somebody like Ashton Eaton (world decathlon record holder).

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