This is what bothers me. We all know football is terrible for your brain. But the NFL thinks if they acknowledge it we won't be fans anymore. Which isn't the case at all. I would have more respect for the Shield if they said we know its terrible and we're doing everything in our power to make it safer. With new tackling techniques at lower levels to better equipment.
110 N.F.L. Brains
51–60 of 206 posts
Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains
#52I want to push back on the "every sport is dangerous" argument I'm seeing in here. There's a difference between "you might die right in the middle of this very fun activity" and "you might die slowly and horribly years from now when you're retired and in the midst of raising a family." I ski pretty aggressively, and of course I might die doing that. But every day I go home and know, "well it wasn't today! Today was j…
> "well it wasn't today! Today was just great clean fun."
Good clean fun that has erased quite a bit of usable life from your knees. Better than a brain injury, but not great.
Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains
#53Playing football is almost certainly bad for your brain, but this article does a terrible job of making that case. The doctor in charge of the study says as much: > The set of players posthumously tested by Dr. McKee is far from a random sample of N.F.L. retirees. “There’s a tremendous selection bias,” she has cautioned, noting that many families have donated brains specifically because the former player showed sympt…
9% chance, the best possible case given the current data, of a horrible, slow, lingering death 20 years later is still unacceptable . What's the rate for getting mesothelioma after working with asbestos?
Football pays better than mesothelioma settlements.
Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains
#54the 110/111 stat is incredibly misleading. The article even says that "many families have donated brains specifically because the former player showed symptoms of C.T.E.". Its unfortunate that the NYTimes sentimentalizes like this. I think it's pretty clear that football causes C.T.E but the title and lead 110/111 statistic is dangerously disingenuous.
Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains
#55Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in American football has been getting lots of media attention over the past few years, and the counterpoints to whether or not this is a serious issue will rely mostly on emphasizing the survivorship bias of those who enjoyed a high quality of life despite possibly (or assuredly) suffering such injuries, but in many ways almost all athletic sports represent feats of corporeal risk to…
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.
Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains
#56I'm more interested in what happens to the brain with youth soccer. Bigger problem than a couple hundred pro athletes.
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Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains
#57I'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...
So what are the safer competitive team sports for kids to participate in?
Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can tell there are many devs and designers on their team that take pride in their work! Have you seen those articles that say, "guess what the rate is for X over the years", and you fill out the graph with your mouse, and once you are done you can see what the actual data looks like? It's refreshing
IIRC, they are some the main contributors to D3.js
bostock worked there, so that would make sense.
Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains
#59Playing football is almost certainly bad for your brain, but this article does a terrible job of making that case. The doctor in charge of the study says as much: > The set of players posthumously tested by Dr. McKee is far from a random sample of N.F.L. retirees. “There’s a tremendous selection bias,” she has cautioned, noting that many families have donated brains specifically because the former player showed sympt…
9% chance, the best possible case given the current data, of a horrible, slow, lingering death 20 years later is still unacceptable . What's the rate for getting mesothelioma after working with asbestos?
Unacceptable to whom? Is the US a free country or not?
Re: 110 N.F.L. Brains
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that really best-case scenario? So you're saying that among the retired football players who do TV today, Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, Michael Strahan, Cris Collinsworth, etc. 90% of these players have CTE and will have decades-long dementia? So for the older players we should start seeing that very soon, no?
How do you know we aren't seeing the slow onset of dementia for some of these guys? Isn't the whole schtick with Bradshaw that he's a "little off in the head"? I don't think that it's fair to look at these former players that go into broadcasting and "diagnose" them in anyway. We don't see inside the private lives of these guys and we don't know what struggles they may or may not live with everyday.
I think you are misinterpreting my posts. I'm just trying to make sense of all of this, myself. This report is eye opening to me and I just don't understand it. I understand and accept that the CTE rate for football players is quite high.
What I don't understand is what that means exactly. Are there degrees of CTE? Might some of these players have CTE but hardly ever show much of a symptom in their lives? Or is everyone, as the people who I was responding to suggested, doomed to some sort of dementia where they forget who they are their families are? And if that's the case, shouldn't we see this more often among ex-players who are still in the public? Or are the former players who take these jobs all in the 10% that don't get CTE? Just trying to make sense of the conflicting data here.