31–40 of 154 posts
Only thing safer helmets will do is encourage players to hit harder and harder, until someone really gets killed. I hope one day I will get to see the end of football. Why would any parent enroll their child in this sport?
Only thing safer helmets will do is encourage players to hit harder and harder, until someone really gets killed. I hope one day I will get to see the end of football. Why would any parent enroll their child in this sport?
The US has a violence fetish, the same way that the UK has a class fetish. The football quarterback is the highest status kid in the school because he is the leader of an organization demonstrated to deliver and endure violence.
Summarizing: "Because this activity is so dangerous, and results in many head injuries, we've spent $60 million developing a framework for manufacturers to make helmets that will mitigate the injuries from the this entirely voluntary activity." Umm, has anyone considered just not doing this activity? I don't mean to be trite, but that's what it looks like from the perspective of one who has little interest in footbal…
>no one is paying millions in broadcasting rights to that people can watch me ride a motorcycle I feel like you must be aware of the professional racing scene and have just momentarily forgotten? It's a massive industry and it's driven the majority of advancements in street-bike technology.
But it was more about the utility. Dangerous as it might be, I can at least get to work on a motorcycle. No one is dashing to work 10 yards at a time in pads.
You really need accurate material models for this to be any use. Without being able to validate the baseline condition using the same non-linear, anisotropic, material behaviour profiles, there's no way to develop new geometry and/or use novel materials, and actually prove it's better than before. They would ideally release their own, repeatable analysis files of their own benchmark condition. I suspect the best helm…
One possible answer is that, in order to truly solve this problem, the sport must do away with facemasks or helmets altogether.
Mike Ditka has long proposed removing the facemask, claiming that it has encouraged players to weaponize their heads for hits without fear of injury [0].
Researchers in the medical community have been echoing this as well, arguing that helmets do far more damage than they prevent [1].
More and more, the league, and the sport in general, look to treat the "symptoms" of this issue rather than addressing the root cause.
[0] http://bleacherreport.com/articles/495469-nfl-helmet-to-helm... [1] http://natajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.4085/1062-6050-51.1.06?co...
Only thing safer helmets will do is encourage players to hit harder and harder, until someone really gets killed. I hope one day I will get to see the end of football. Why would any parent enroll their child in this sport?
The US has a violence fetish, the same way that the UK has a class fetish. The football quarterback is the highest status kid in the school because he is the leader of an organization demonstrated to deliver and endure violence.
It comes across as though you've never actually played football or been on a football team. Players on one team largely go out of their way to avoid injuring players on the other team. The vast majority of the game is free motion, not the application of violence. Another large fraction of the game is what can best be described as aggressive shoving and using your body to push or block, not super violent at all.
The quarterback, further, doesn't lead the defense. The job of the offense, which the QB leads, is to score. Ideally that occurs with the minimum amount of violence necessary, not the maximum amount. Offensive players mostly want to avoid that whenever possible. The quarterback does not inherently lead the team and does not lead the defense at all (ie the primary appliers of violence).
The quarterback is popular because he's the center of the offense, which does the scoring, which is exciting. Not because he leads a violent machine. Basketball players in high school that are talented, are equally popular, because scoring points is exciting in every sport.
Hockey is occasionally a quite violent sport. Gretzky wasn't one of the most popular players in hockey history because he was violent - it was because he scored at a rate nobody else ever has. The same goes for Mario Lemieux and countless other scorers.
Baseball is particularly not violent. You know, America's pastime sport that tens of millions of people go to see every year and is wildly popular.
Basketball is no more violent than soccer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the ironies being that footballers can hit each other so hard _because_ of the padding and helmets. The better they make 'em the harder they'll hit and I suspect this is an arms race that will continue.
Nothing's gonna stop that snap-back that causes the brain to slosh around like jelly. I've yet to be shown evidence that rugby players are suffering the same kinds of injuries NFL players are. Seems to be the same case with bare-knuckle or UFC fighting vs boxing.
The trouble is size. In order to spread out the impulse in time, the helmet must spread out the impact in space. There's really no way to do that by an order of magnitude without making the helmet much larger.
Only thing safer helmets will do is encourage players to hit harder and harder, until someone really gets killed. I hope one day I will get to see the end of football. Why would any parent enroll their child in this sport?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US has a violence fetish, the same way that the UK has a class fetish. The football quarterback is the highest status kid in the school because he is the leader of an organization demonstrated to deliver and endure violence.
Your premise is very weak in relation to US sports being a supporting argument. It comes across as though you've never actually played football or been on a football team. Players on one team largely go out of their way to avoid injuring players on the other team. The vast majority of the game is free motion, not the application of violence. Another large fraction of the game is what can best be described as aggressi…
Only thing safer helmets will do is encourage players to hit harder and harder, until someone really gets killed. I hope one day I will get to see the end of football. Why would any parent enroll their child in this sport?
So your advocating for an abstinence only education, when it comes to football?