81–90 of 211 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why blame the NFL? It's not like the players are doing it for free.
Because the NFL could "easily" change the rules to minimize the effects of CTE. Easily is in quotes because it's easy except for a fear of losing money.
If anyone is curious, this is the doctor played by will smith in the movie concusion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io6hPdC41RM
> Now the San Joaquin medical examiner, Omalu was featured in the movie, “Concussion.”
I’ve never been a huge football fan but never avoided it either. Until, that is, when we started hearing about CTE and how the NFL tried (still tries) to cover it up and downplay it. Today I find football unwatchable. Every time I see players slamming into each other at full speed I feel queasy. I’m also ethically against watching it because I don’t want to support the football industry. There are many other sports i…
The rules of football make for a really interesting game, but the fact that the NFL/NCAA are such awful organizations + the growing concerns about its safety make it impossible for me to actually enjoy it. Hopefully we'll have robots playing it for us one day.
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…
This is often cited as the cause for the discrepancy, but it doesn't consider the actual rules of each game. Like you said, games like rugby union, league, and AFL are more about fluidity and flexibility than American football. American football is about getting set, lining up, and going at your opponent as fast as you can. The end result is that the number of full speed collisions in American football is much higher since the players are often charging directly at each other. In the other sports the two opposing teams are often moving in the same direction so high impact head on collisions are rarer.
A lot of the head trauma in American football is really just from the brain rattling around in the skull as people collide at full speed. The helmets basically act as air bags in a car crash. They are there to prevent fractured skulls, but they do very little to prevent concussions and other head trauma.
"I can't believe people were so dumb about smoking in the 1950s.. how were they so dumb? did they not know it caused cancer?" this is a kinda modern equivalent, imo..
Smoking tobacco is inhaling an acrid a mix of chemicals that makes you cough, kind of feel sick and lightheaded, smells awful and leaves a tan stain - it’s not hard to guess that it’s not healthy. Remember that half of people who die from tobacco die from heart disease, too, not cancer.
Same with football. I was never attracted to sports where participants beat each other in the head repeatedly, whether it’s boxing or football. I don’t think it’s surprising to find out that people who experience concussions every week as part of their jobs and hobbies end up damaging their brains.
Edit to add, It’s a bit frustrating, because surely if one was to stand up 30 years ago and say “hey, I don’t think this high school football program is a good idea because I’m worried about all these young people knocking their heads together with full force”... The response would have been to mock you and dispute it, if they paid any attention at all.
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I don't understand these arguments. Are they forcing players to do it? If the players are well aware of health risks and still make decision to play the game, how is the sports organization to blame?
Your premise is wrong. It sounds as if it should be right, but the framing is awry The players are not really aware of the health risks, furthermore they are young and foolish and impressionable and are following the path of glamour which has been sold to them as youngsters. The sports organization is aware of the risks and are using the players to make vast sums for themselves, they are pushing the glamourous path a…
But because we're destroying the brains and bodies of males with illusions of fame and fortunem and brainwashing them into thinking they're "heroes" and "warriors", it's all the young adult boys fault--even though they're still trying to find their place in the world and the brain clearly still develops until at least 25-years old.
And if a major college was teaching students that global warming is false and the Earth was 3,000 years old, and that coal and lead were good for the lungs, the public would be outraged. Don't brainwash out kids! But again... brainwashing football players... they must be jocks... so to hell with them. They "chose" their lives and their eventual crippling diseases. ... But did they?
"Disposable male" culture, indeed.
There's a lot of hate towards the NFL but the NCAA is an even worse actor on CTE. 70,000 college players every year, and they aren't paid professionals like the NFL. But NCAA programs make billions of dollars off of the players (and their coaches millions). Destroying brains for profit, in the context of the education system, is truly evil.
I don't understand these arguments. Are they forcing players to do it? If the players are well aware of health risks and still make decision to play the game, how is the sports organization to blame?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well over 1 million American boys and young men play football every year. The game is a rite of passage. Further these studies have implications for head contact that occurs in other sports and in general.
I'm not trying to diminish the suffering/risks/etc of a million people, but that is about one-third of one percent of the US population so I think woolvalley's comment is pretty on point.
I looked it up, and apparently the stats for tackle football are about 4.5% of kids 6-12 and 9% in the 13-17 range.
1) Years of rule changes, and stricter enforcement. Now a top level player who tackles someone above the shoulder, or tackles without attempting to hold on (so no clothes-linse or body checks) will be sent off (which in Rugby is catastrophic to your teams chances). If you lift a player off the ground you are responsible for putting them down again. Drop them on their head and expect a lengthy ban. This hasn't changed the spectacle of Rugby much, if anything the skill levels have improved.
2) Protection. Around your head Rugby only allows you to wear a small soft 'scrum cap' which protects from bruising and wounds from head clashes, like the things boxers suffer with around their eyes. Their is a light collar bone protector which seems to be about 1/5th of the thickness of the equivalent Gridiron gear. That is all. The impacts are still impressive to see, indeed are perhaps more impressive on an un-armoured body, but with lower G-force to the head
3) The size of the people. In both sports their has been an increase in the mass of the players. However US football players seems disproportionately massive. In Rugby their are not rolling substitutions, so you have to carry that mass around for 80 minutes, and therefore a compromise is necessary, perhaps gridiron could restrict the number of subs, or the squad size so the bruisers actually had to run. The miracle of sports nutrition, with the characteristic protruding jaw bones, seem to be producing bigger players than they may if they had effective controls against doping. Yes I said it, from across the pond, it looks like steroid abuse is rife in several US sports.
4) The concussion protocol. Any player that appears to have been knocked out in Rugby gets sent from the pitch to be examined by a doctor for a minimum of 10 minutes. If concussion is detected there is a mandatory period off playing. If concussion recurs this can be months! Welsh International George North suffered repeated concussions and missed most of the following year.
During this same period Rugby has become a tougher sport than ever, but without killing the brains of our young men
CTE - Chronic traumatic encephalopathy[0] for anyone else who was confused. The author uses it countless times without explaining what it is. More details - Currently, CTE can only be definitively diagnosed by direct tissue examination after death, including full and immunohistochemical brain analyses.[15] The lack of in vivo techniques to show distinct biomarkers for CTE is the reason CTE cannot currently be diagnos…
The very first line of the story says what it is: Researchers have identified the degenerative brain disease known as CTE... It's a newspaper rather than a scientific journal so I think they can be forgiven for not expanding the acronym, just as newspapers commonly report heart attacks rather than myocardial infarctions.
... to identify chronic traumatic encephalopathy in the living.