I love watching football and each year I look forward to the start of football season. It's amazing game to watch and when played by great players, exceedingly entertaining and exciting. I'm not blind to the research about what it does to the players brains but my reaction is the reverse of what I'm reading from most in this thread: I'm watching more football than ever . I think it's only a matter of time till the ga…
I think in general more people would be okay with it as "America's gladiator sport" if people were not starting to play it at the age of 12.
Football is America's gladiator sport. For all the fun, the money, the excitement, the money, the drama, the bombast, the cheerleaders, and even the money, we should remind ourselves that American football is a very violent sport rife with injury and long term disability, and our participation as passive spectators and consumers makes us just as responsible for the incentive structure that harms so many young men for…
The comparison to a Gladiator sport is a good one. I see no reason why ESPN/NFL/et al., can't provide comprehensive health insurance to every current & former player for life - as reducing the violence of the sport doesn't really seem to be on the table, broadly speaking.
Remember that the problem goes far deeper than professional sports leagues with infinite pocketbooks. Every high school, college, and amateur league in the country would have to be held to the same standard, and they don't have that much money.
This is how I feel about boxing vs MMA. Boxing gloves are huge and massively padded, meaning you take hit after hit after hit, bouncing your brain around like a ball. MMA gloves are only padded enough to maybe prevent you from breaking your knuckles, and maybe prevent your knuckles from breaking someone's jaw. If you threw the kind of punches people throw in boxing with MMA gloves on, you'd wreck your hands. That one…
There is no way that MMA is safer than boxing in terms of traumatic brain injury, aside from the ability to win a match by submission rather than knockout. After a boxing knockout (which almost always results in concussion), the boxers are immediately separated. After an MMA knockout, the winning fighter is invariably allowed to jump on the loser and continue pummeling him in the face a few times. This is, incidental…
I don't think MMA is safer than boxing (as I explained in a sibling comment), but this aspect is interesting. Yes, MMA fighters often get subsequent hits. Which is bad. But, in boxing, when you get knocked down but not out, you get a standing count. Then you take more punishment. But if that was an MMA fight, there's a good chance the downed fighter would be pounced on, and the fight quickly ended. Both are bad, but it's hard to say which is worse.
This is how I feel about boxing vs MMA. Boxing gloves are huge and massively padded, meaning you take hit after hit after hit, bouncing your brain around like a ball. MMA gloves are only padded enough to maybe prevent you from breaking your knuckles, and maybe prevent your knuckles from breaking someone's jaw. If you threw the kind of punches people throw in boxing with MMA gloves on, you'd wreck your hands. That one…
Of course, that's for classic boxing. I train muay thai and you're also liable to get a shin/knee/ankle/elbow from your opponent, and there's zero padding there. However, as someone else commented, there are some crucial differences with football: - there's no injury unless it's an actual fight. Sparring is intentionally toned down, because the sport is not about the power but agility and speed. Those can be practice…
Repeated sub-concussive hits cause brain damage. That's the important point from all of the recent studies: it's not just the concussions, but all of the hits people take to the head. You're still at significant risk when sparring.
>>Hockey can be a beautiful game of finesse, speed, and precision. It could absolutely be re-worked. Indeed. Olympic hockey is a perfect example of a step in that direction, and one of the greatest versions of the game in existence.
Watching the Canadian national hockey team is one of the highlights of the Winter Olympics. The US team would be better if it had access to all those kids wasting their athletic potential on the worst sport in the world--football--and the second-worst sport in the world--soccer. If it ditched the requirement that the game always be played on ice, the skill level of hockey in the US could be comparable to its basketba…
Lacrosse or field hockey is basically hockey on foot. Floor/Ball hockey played in an arena apparently breaks at very high skills and you need the changes added by the formerly named sports to make it work. Roller hockey never really caught on.
Sounds plausible. In rugby a goal is to always keep the ball in possession. When you are tackled, you try and feed the ball back to your own side, who are (ideally) close behind you in support. So yeah - yardage gain is somewhat meaningless for its own sake in rugby, as long as you maintain possession. If you maintain possession, the other team can never score, and you eventually will. So the player's thoughts as the…
>Maybe that means less impact in the tackle. In rugby if you run at someone they'll step sideways and you'll go past. In American football that I've seen they run right at each other, on purpose. You can't hammer straight at someone flat out and still be able to adjust your trajectory to account for a side-step. (Though Union is getting more like League now in the silly, endless, rucking which is TBH more like NFL).…
In the open field, American football players will attempt to sidestep or “juke” defenders.
Between the tackles and other close quarters situations, running “north and south” or “downhill” is the best strategy. From early ages, coaches will discourage running backs behind the line of scrimmage juking, stutter stepping, wiggling their heads, and otherwise not gaining yardage by shouting “Quit dancin’ and hit the hole!”
My main issues with the NFL and why I can't support them are 1) NFL knew about the risks and hid them and in some cases deliberately deceived the players about said risks. I seem to recall that only a couple years ago the NFL told the players that with adequate rest, there will be no long-lasting effects from a concussion -- something that has been shown to not be the case. 2) The NFL will go after anyone who release…
Can you provide a few examples of the NFL going after doctors and scientists, and clarify what that means?
I am some random person on the internet, so caveat emptor. That being said, my girlfriend has a family friend who works in health research. Since she was looking for a new job in roughly the same field, she reached out and exchanged a few emails, had coffee. Normal networking stuff. One of the projects that the family friend was involved with was doing concussion research for the NFL in the aftermath of the PBS's League Denial, and Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru's work more generally.
Fast forward a few months after the exchanges, she was included on an email from that family friend where the they complained that they should've known better to work on this research and that they were enraged that the conclusions were being suppressed / minimized.
> Would you be OK allowing two consenting adults to fight to the death for pay? Given that scenario as stated? Sure, I'm all for it. Take away the gloves in boxing and we're pretty close to that. I'd be concerned about the negative incentives that could potentially exploit lower income people, but on its own I don't have a problem with it. I personally wouldn't do it, and I don't think I'd enjoy watching it, but I'm…
You'd be OK allowing two people to fight to the death for pay? I'm stunned. You are the only person I know of that would be OK living in a society that allowed two people to fight until one of them dies for pay. I'm glad your view is not a popular one.
They need to get the college sports off of national TV and set up a farm team system. But that's a debate for another time probably.
College football is more popular than the NFL. Every game is critically important in college which adds to the excitement. Pro's you can lose a few and still make the SuperBowl. The RedSkins can't fill their stadium in a major market. Try to get Alabama tickets ... or NotreDame ... or Penn State all in minuscule markets.
The rules could get reworked, but I seriously doubt if they ever will. Maybe its possible to slowly change the game over time, but completely changing the rules overnight would be too dramatic and risky for any league to really get behind. The best chance is probably for the NFL to come up with a long term plan to fix things, but that'd require them to admit the problem, which I don't think will ever happen.
Go back to leather helmets and cotton pads and it's a different game. No reason we need to turn their heads into sledgehammers. We do that because then they feel more comfortable with the big unsafe hits and the flying around but we could get back to the real game with the ruck style running game and wideouts with hand fighting all the way down the sideline and half the commercials and I bet ratings would start going…
Ratings may go up, but with half as many commercials the profits would also go down. The league only cares about ratings insofar as it helps their bottom line.
I'm not saying these changes would be a bad thing, only that I have doubts it'll ever happen.