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110 N.F.L. Brains

nytimes.com

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Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains

#191

Post by kendallpark »

treehau5 wrote: post #41
FanaHOVA wrote: post #36

Earlier 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…

Precisely. In rugby, it is much more stressed and emphasized to make secure tackles. In football, at any given point and time there is one person with virtually a huge bullseye on them and it is sometimes a valid tactic to lay down a more punishing hit (cause a fumble, make a statement, scare your opponent to make a mistake or drop the ball next time, etc) at the expensive of not making a "secure, form tackle" Ironic…

I've played both sports, can verify this is 100% correct. Couple other notes.

Football is a game of inches. There is huge incentive to slam someone as hard as you can to stop their forward progress and ultimately deny the first down. There's incentive for the ball carrier fight for the inches and "fall forward" (which makes your head more vulnerable). In rugby you don't care about fighting for the inches and hell, your teammates will shove you down once they're set up to ruck over you. Fighting for inches in rugby is a quick way to start a maul and nobody wants a maul.

Furthermore, football is played with greater momentum (mass * velocity). Those breaks between plays equates to six seconds of full blown sprinting followed by forty seconds of rest. In rugby you're running about constantly so you simply don't have the energy most of the time for those massive hits. As for the mass side of the equation, football players are on average bigger than ruggers.

People think rugby is so hardcore for playing without pads (and it still is) but the hardest hits I ever took were in football (and I played defense, for goodness sakes). This is the consensus between everyone I've met that's played both. You can play multiple rugby games in a weekend (happens all the time at fests) but more than one football game a week is unsustainable.

Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains

#192

Post by kendallpark »

grillvogel wrote: post #184
alistproducer2 wrote: post #87

Historians 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…

why do people take issue with highly paid nfl players getting injured doing something they enjoy, but have no problem with military members getting killed and maimed for 20k/year? some people are just more violent/aggressive than others, football provides a relatively peaceful outlet for that.

There is a lot of money going into TBI research for the military. I think DOD is one of the biggest funders. No trying to mask the issue like the NFL (that I'm aware of).

Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains

#193

Post by kendallpark »

jonbarker wrote: post #33

I'm more interested in what happens to the brain with youth soccer. Bigger problem than a couple hundred pro athletes.

Honestly I think the most important thing is to help a kid find a sport they love that will motivate them to stay active. My concern about TBI in kids heading soccer balls is far less than childhood obesity and inactivity. We can push kids toward "safe" sports with minimal risks, but that doesn't guarantee they will enjoy it. A kid that grows up playing contact sports is still going to have better health on average than the sedentary kid.

Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains

#194

Post by tankerdude »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #135
aezell wrote: post #131

(N of 1 anecdote warning) I started playing football at 6 years old. Tackle football came about two years later. In my junior year of high school, my back problems and knee problems were so bad, I had to quit. It was the best day of my life. In recent years, I've become an ultrarunner and am generally very healthy. I'm 41 now and about 5 years ago, I passed out after cutting my hand (vagal response to the sight of my…

Has helmet technology improved in the last 25 years? It will be a few years before my son could play tackle football (and I would probably try to gently steer him towards real football), but the helmets I see at sporting goods stores today look pretty much indiscernible from that which I wore for one fall season in the early 2000s.

Perhaps to reduce injury of the head, force all players to wear no padding except for a helmet.

It will change the dynamics but if you do something crazy to tackle someone, you too will get badly hurt.

Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains

#195

Post by somecontext »

vacri wrote: post #174
Retric wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For some context, it appears that the minimum salary in 2007 was $275k/year nominally ($325k/year inflation-adjusted) for rookies, increasing by $75k/year each year until the fifth.

My research suggests that the minimum salary first hit $50k/year nominally in 1988 (which is $100k/year inflation-adjusted). The minimum salary has always been at least $60k/year inflation-adjusted since the first collective bargaining agreement in 1968.

Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains

#196

Post by BayesStreet »

warcher wrote: post #189
ggreer wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said before, that's in the 10th paragraph of the article. The first line people read is: > A neuropathologist has examined the brains of 111 N.F.L. players — and 110 were found to have C.T.E. It's incredibly disingenuous to lead with that. It makes readers think that the rate of CTE is almost 100%. Readers have to get through nine more paragraphs (including profiles of two NFL players) before the truth shows up.…

110/111 testing positive for CTE is insanely high , even with selection bias. This is a big, big deal, and should be treated like a big, big deal. This is not hyperbolic in the slightest. If a chemical plant was suspected of causing cancer, and you got those test results, same experimental bias and all, it would be shut down instantly . Boyoga!

If I picked a sample of 5 cherries and I made sure they were all rotten, it sort of reduces the amount of statistical inference you can do about the true distribution of the cherries to zero. Your use of "even with selection bias" doesn't really make sense here.

Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains

#197

Post by vacri »

somecontext wrote: post #195
vacri wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minimum salary increased relatively recently. About a decade ago you could find NFL benchwarmers on not much more than 50k.

For some context, it appears that the minimum salary in 2007 was $275k/year nominally ($325k/year inflation-adjusted) for rookies, increasing by $75k/year each year until the fifth. My research suggests that the minimum salary first hit $50k/year nominally in 1988 (which is $100k/year inflation-adjusted). The minimum salary has always been at least $60k/year inflation-adjusted since the first collective bargaining ag…

Hrm. I remember looking up the minimum salaries about a decade or so ago and was surprised to see that they were so low. Maybe my source was out of date.

Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains

#198

Post by mynewtb »

bhouston wrote: post #45
jonbarker wrote: post #33

I'm more interested in what happens to the brain with youth soccer. Bigger problem than a couple hundred pro athletes.

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...

Kids playing casual soccer almost never use their heads. Let them have fun.

Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains

#199

Post by kilotaras »

BayesStreet wrote: post #196
warcher wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

110/111 testing positive for CTE is insanely high , even with selection bias. This is a big, big deal, and should be treated like a big, big deal. This is not hyperbolic in the slightest. If a chemical plant was suspected of causing cancer, and you got those test results, same experimental bias and all, it would be shut down instantly . Boyoga!

If I picked a sample of 5 cherries and I made sure they were all rotten, it sort of reduces the amount of statistical inference you can do about the true distribution of the cherries to zero. Your use of "even with selection bias" doesn't really make sense here.

If you picked 9% of all cherries in whatever way you like, and found 98% of them rotten it still means that at least 8.8% of cherries are rotten. While not even close to 98% it's still a huge number in regard to CTE.

Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains

#200

Post by scott_s »

Nelson69 wrote: post #55
scott_s wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today's youth and amateur level competitors are tomorrow's professionals. I think there's a decent chance that in 50 years, American football will no longer be America's dominant sport simply because the player base may dry up. And I'm okay with that. I think it's telling when former NFL players discourage their own kids from playing football.

It will? As long as there are poor people with some athletic ability and fans willing to watch them, there will be grid iron football players.

I did not say it will; I said it might. And the existence of people willing to play does not guarantee the surrounding market and culture necessary to make a sport the dominant sport in the US. I think that depends a lot on that sport's pervasiveness in our culture, and in particular in high schools and colleges which are effectively our professional feeder system. If less players start going into youth football, and then less players are going into high school and college football, I think less people in our culture will pay attention, decreasing its market size and culture significance. Again, I'm not saying this will happen. I'm saying it might.
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