http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2016/01/19/randle-el-regrets-playing-football-says-game-may-disappear/
It depends. If he went in the 14th round because he was a 14th-round talent, he probably never makes the majors. If he was highly regarded but fell in the draft because his parents said he wasn't going to sign, then possibly.
My mom forbid me from playing football because of that injury issue. She did let me play hockey and lacrosse though.
It's not like he's making a bold prediction. Just saying it wouldn't surprise him, and he's saying this with the experience of playing the game at the highest level and what it has done to his health and quality of life.
I get your point but there's an awful lot of shitty stuff that can happen playing football between nothing at all and death.
It's not the deaths.
Maybe. But lots of people still ride bicycles without helmets. People ski without helmets. Kids do all this extreme sport shit these days, some with decent head protection, some with none, and they wipe out all the time. Hockey helmets do a shitty job protecting against concussions, as do lacrosse helmets. Heading in soccer leads to all sorts of brain problems.
The common comparison is boxing, and it's a good one -- in terms of the risks involved. But football has a huge advantage over boxing in one area: institutionalization. You'd be hard-pressed to find a high school in the country that has a boxing team, and it would be just about as a difficult to find a large high school that lacks a football team.
I've actually never felt that it was a very good comparison. In boxing, the goal of the sport is cranial damage. Purists may disagree, but the sport is basically hitting the other guy in the head until you knock him out, literally or technically. In football, hockey, soccer, etc, head injuries aren't the goal, but more like collateral damage in achieving the goal of the sport. A boxer wins on a TKO. The Pats win 27-20.
The thing is, you're implying there's a difference in the camaraderie, cooperation, and bonds between a rough contact sport like rugby and football versus a less violent sport, like baseball, basketball, or even something like doubles tennis, and I'm not sure I buy that. Teamwork's teamwork, with or without the violence. I only briefly played football, but I did have quite a past with baseball and competitive running, and I know well the feeling of being willing to bash through a wall for my teammates...I just didn't actually have to do it.
How many kids make their high school basketball team? I played football in high school in the north east, I'm not a terribly athletic person. I was big and fat and slow. But with football so many guys see the field and at least in New England the talent level is such that the unathletic big kid can play guard or defensive tackle and be just fine.
Most schools have enough offerings where a kid can play something that's not football if they so desire. They may not make the basketball team, but they could join track and field, swim, play golf, tennis, lacrosse, etc.
Ahhhh....good old SoSH. Where every opinion leads to an insult....because yes, I absolutely consider being compared to Gerry Callahan an insult.
I'm pretty similar to you, but my Dad grew up in the generation when everyone did play football and he had a contrary take. He used to coach the freshman team and enjoyed teaching kids the physical aspect of the game. This was in the south in the 1970's and they didn't even have a soccer team. Probably 80% of the freshman boys played football. He'd see the incoming freshmen start out scared but over the course of that first season they'd grow in confidence and become less and less intimidated by contact.
I see no reason to think this just won't lead to rashes of deaths on the field. The argument that players will play a much safer style without hard helmets just seems really similar to "teenage girls won't be so promiscuous if we don't vaccinate them for HPV" - its a fantasy. There's a reason they stopped using these sort of helmets - prevalence of skull injuries, spinal injuries and deaths on the field. The NFL has had one player die on the field during its history - College football had 6 die with concussion/brain injury symptoms in 1906 alone. Leather helmets make the game more dangerous, not safer.
Watched the first episode of this and Agree with....and was frankly shocked.
I disagree. First of all, forget spinal injuries. A plastic helmet will not do anything to prevent a spinal injury. In fact, it will probably make them worse because it is bigger and heavier and the facemask would make it easier to get your helmet pinned back against a body part and put pressure on your neck.
