The Future of Football: NYTimes Links Big Tobacco with NFL Concussion Study

Apisith

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He got hit. Left the game. Was on the sidelines, felt woozy then fell down. Carted off. Then passes away.

How many years before the government bans football for all kids under 16?
 

riboflav

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Apisith said:
He got hit. Left the game. Was on the sidelines, felt woozy then fell down. Carted off. Then passes away.

How many years before the government bans football for all kids under 16?
 
over/under - 37.5
 

Devizier

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Apisith said:
He got hit. Left the game. Was on the sidelines, felt woozy then fell down. Carted off. Then passes away.

How many years before the government bans football for all kids under 16?
 
I don't think it will be legislated. Municipalities will just stop subsidizing (i.e. no high school football).
 

soxfan121

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First, condolences to the family & friends of the NJ senior who died, Evan Murray.
 
Apisith said:
How many years before the government bans football for all kids under 16?
 
I can imagine a few scenarios in which there is a second American Civil War. The "government bans football" is one of them.  
 
Devizier said:
I don't think it will be legislated. Municipalities will just stop subsidizing (i.e. no high school football).
 
Several weeks ago in the ITP Weekly Links piece, there was a thing on the money school districts (in Texas, but it's not limited there) spend on football. Yes, some districts will stop subsidizing it. But most will not, and some will adopt the "cold, dead hand" standard. Because this is a baseball fan board, I don't think it's generally recognized (or acknowledged) that football is America's #1 TV show in lots of demographics important to the survival of the republic: beer sales, car sales and life insurance are the lifeblood of this country. I think it's more likely baseball is banned if a kid gets Ray Chapman'ed on live TV during the Little League World Series. 
 
Evan Murray is neither the first, nor the last, player to die during or after playing football. 
 

nattysez

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You'll be shocked to discover that Ron Borges is outraged by the NFL's rule changes meant to protect players.
 
The one-sided nature of the rules have turned football into a mockery. This has been going on for about a half decade now but when it gets to the point where an inadvertent TAP ON THE HELMET results in “roughing the passer,” then we no longer know what the word “roughing” means.
For the record, according to the dictionary at least, the word roughing is defined as “characterized by or done with violence or forcefulness.” If essentially high-fiving Tom Brady’s face mask, which is the sum of what Jacksonville’s Dan Skuta did, constitutes “roughing the passer” then we are no longer even playing touch football. We are playing touchy-feely football, which is to say not football at all.
Again this is not Brady’s fault. It’s the fault of the men who run the game, most of whom are trained in marketing not mayhem, the latter being the foundation upon which the game was built. What those suits believe is that fans want points and aren’t smart enough to realize that many of the points today are a result of defense having been outlawed.
 
 
What the game has turned into is basketball without hand checking. You can’t touch a receiver so they run freely all over the field. Joe Montana knows a thing or two about football, so I asked him last week what he thought of all those wide-open shallow crosses Julian Edelman makes a living from. His response was telling.
“If we’d tried that, the receiver wouldn’t have played another game for a month,” Montana said.
In other words, he would have been decapitated. That’s what football was. What it’s become is a game where the McCown brothers, career backups, went 59-for-87 for 651 passing yards yesterday. The McCown brothers?
Maybe that entertains some people, but so does the tattooed lady and they both belong in the circus.
If you believe what the NFL is selling you today is football, then you have no idea what football is supposed to be or what it was for most of its 90-year history.
When the rules are so severely altered as to make the game unbalanced and leaning unfairly in one direction farther than the Leaning Tower of Pisa, it makes a mockery of the numbers.
If one wants to debate it, consider this: Twenty-three of the top 35 single-season passing years have occurred since 2010. That’s 66 percent of the top single-season performances.
You really believe this is the same game as the one that made pro football a national phenomenon?
What football has become is what baseball became after they juiced both the balls and the players: a phony show of offense. The rules are juiced and so are the numbers.
 
 

nighthob

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Devizier said:
 
I don't think it will be legislated. Municipalities will just stop subsidizing (i.e. no high school football).
 
I don't think it will be legislated either, I expect it to be government regulation banning full contact football for kids under 16.
 

djbayko

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nighthob said:
 
I don't think it will be legislated either, I expect it to be government regulation banning full contact football for kids under 16.
Where do you think these government regulations are going to come from if they aren't legislated?
 

StupendousMan

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Pierce writes:
 
 
Alone among our sports spectacles, American football kills our children.
 
He quotes statistics from The National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research.   In their report covering high school and college sports injuries from 1982/83 to 2012/13, they find that the rate of direct, fatal injuries in male high-school sports are
 
0.28 in football (fatalities per 100,000 participants)
0.44 in ice hockey
0.11 for baseball
0.15 for lacrosse
0.13 for track
 
During this period, 118 male high school students died as a result of direct injuries while playing football, 4 in ice hockey, 14 in baseball, 22 in track. 
 
To use Pierce's words, football kills children in the US --- but it is NOT the only sport which does.
 

Devizier

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If we're talking deaths during participation, I'd have to imagine ski racing, extreme sports, and things like that have a considerably higher mortality rate.
 

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Alone among our sports spectacles, American football kills our children

I have a real problem with this quote from the pierce article. Based on his own source, it is a lie and an easily disproven one at that, as stupendous man points out above. These deaths are tragic, but the government would be much better off focusing on other area like reducing under aged drinking and hard drug use to save teen lives. But no one would click on Charles Pierces' article about teenage drunk driving deaths.
 

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The Pierce article is awful. I'm surprised it's getting so much praise on a site that normally prides itself on objective analysis. I wonder if Pierce thinks we should keep kids from getting driver's licenses and playing video games until they turn 21 too.
 

GeorgeCostanza

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maufman said:
The Pierce article is awful. I'm surprised it's getting so much praise on a site that normally prides itself on objective analysis. I wonder if Pierce thinks we should keep kids from getting driver's licenses and playing video games until they turn 21 too.
I read it through my dad eyes so I went in about as unobjective (or is it nonobjective?) as possible. But what's the equivalence of playing football with either getting a drivers license or playing video games?
 

johnmd20

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maufman said:
The Pierce article is awful. I'm surprised it's getting so much praise on a site that normally prides itself on objective analysis. I wonder if Pierce thinks we should keep kids from getting driver's licenses and playing video games until they turn 21 too.
 
I couldn't agree more. That was an overwrought column without much to say.
 

mauf

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GeorgeCostanza said:
I read it through my dad eyes so I went in about as unobjective (or is it nonobjective?) as possible. But what's the equivalence of playing football with either getting a drivers license or playing video games?
In terms of short-term risk, letting your teenage boy drive a car is a far greater risk than letting him play football, but Pierce isn't suggesting that we raise the age to get a driver's license to 21. It's nonsense.

In terms of long-term risk, there's a lot we don't know. I certainly understand why parents steer their kids toward other sports. But there's no way the long-term risks of football compare to the risks of a sedentary lifestyle; I was using video games as a glib proxy for that. But in any event, Pierce's article wasn't about those long-term risk.

Pierce knows nothing about the subject, and aside from googling a few statistics (which he failed to place in any sort of context), he didn't bother to educate himself. And it shows in his work. We like to make fun of old-time journalists who tut-tut about the lack of journalistic standards on the Internet, but your average local newspaper would have seen these flaws and declined to print the piece, even as "commentary" or "analysis." Grantland should've done the same.

And don't apologize for reading the article through your "Dad eyes." I did the same. The suggestion that those of us who let our kids play football are knowingly letting them partake in some kind of blood sport comparable to something in ancient Rome is ridiculous, even if you think that analogy has some merit with respect to the NFL.
 

fairlee76

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StupendousMan said:
Pierce writes:
 
 
He quotes statistics from The National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research.   In their report covering high school and college sports injuries from 1982/83 to 2012/13, they find that the rate of direct, fatal injuries in male high-school sports are
 
0.28 in football (fatalities per 100,000 participants)
0.44 in ice hockey
0.11 for baseball
0.15 for lacrosse
0.13 for track
 
During this period, 118 male high school students died as a result of direct injuries while playing football, 4 in ice hockey, 14 in baseball, 22 in track. 
 
To use Pierce's words, football kills children in the US --- but it is NOT the only sport which does.
Nice find.  I think the article misses the point entirely.  If anything kills American football, it is going to be the increasing evidence that playing football leads to CTE.
 
RFDA2000 said:
I feel like he deaths are a bit like airplane crashes. Horrible and easy to publicize, but not why I wouldn't let my kid play football.

http://www.sportsafetyinternational.org/what-are-the-deadliest-high-school-sports/

It's the CTE stuff that scares me, and not knowing how many kids might be affected by it whether they make it past high school or college.
Yes to CTE being the scary shit.  And double yes to the deaths being horrible and easy to publicize.
not deaths.
 

TheRooster

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Between this article and the Borges piece I actually do think there is a bloodsport aspect of football.  Pierce arguably puts too much emphasis on the deaths but I think he'd say that baseball deaths come from accidents (most kids aren't trying to hit a batter in the head with an 85mph fastball) whereas football deaths often come from the expected collisions.  And even the stats Stubpendus pulled show that kids are 2.5x more likely to die playing football versus baseball.
 
To its credit, hockey mostly bans checking for kids.  I think flag football for pre-HS kids is the future for many parts of the US.  Could that someday make it all the way to HS?
 

mauf

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TheRooster said:
Between this article and the Borges piece I actually do think there is a bloodsport aspect of football.  Pierce arguably puts too much emphasis on the deaths but I think he'd say that baseball deaths come from accidents (most kids aren't trying to hit a batter in the head with an 85mph fastball) whereas football deaths often come from the expected collisions.  And even the stats Stubpendus pulled show that kids are 2.5x more likely to die playing football versus baseball.
 
To its credit, hockey mostly bans checking for kids.  I think flag football for pre-HS kids is the future for many parts of the US.  Could that someday make it all the way to HS?
 
If you dig into the data StupendousMan provided above, there wasn't a single reported death due to youth football below the high-school level last year. Granted, I'm sure there's gaps in reporting at that level, but in terms of acute injury, I'm not aware of any evidence that letting your kids play football is more dangerous than, say, letting them ski.
 
Full disclosure: my 10-year old son does both. I have mixed feelings about him playing football in high school (because of the long-term unknowns, not the risk of catastrophic injury). I know that he's more likely to play then because I'm letting him play now. But from a standpoint of suffering an immediate, serious injury, I have little doubt that skiing is the more dangerous activity of the two -- but my wife and I never seriously considered not letting him do it.
 

Marciano490

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I think the difference - for me - is that you can do everything right in football and still be hurt/killed.  You can be the best guy on the field and still be hurt/killed.  If you're skiing, or playing baseball and suffer a brain injury - even a nonfatal one - something has gone wrong, or in the case of skiing, you were probably trying to do something beyond your talent or experience level.
 
When I fought, my mother would send me articles about people getting killed or losing their wits.  I was around a lot of punchy guys.  It never really bothered me, because I knew I'd only suffer any of those outcomes if I wasn't quick enough, good enough, if I let my hands down, etc.  With football, there's almost an inevitability to the damage that transcends ability or level of care or size.  The violence and injury are built in.  You can sense it on every play.  It used to be exciting, now it just makes me feel a bit of dread on every play.
 

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Marciano490 said:
I think the difference - for me - is that you can do everything right in football and still be hurt/killed.  You can be the best guy on the field and still be hurt/killed.  If you're skiing, or playing baseball and suffer a brain injury - even a nonfatal one - something has gone wrong, or in the case of skiing, you were probably trying to do something beyond your talent or experience level.
 
When I fought, my mother would send me articles about people getting killed or losing their wits.  I was around a lot of punchy guys.  It never really bothered me, because I knew I'd only suffer any of those outcomes if I wasn't quick enough, good enough, if I let my hands down, etc.  With football, there's almost an inevitability to the damage that transcends ability or level of care or size.  The violence and injury are built in.  You can sense it on every play.  It used to be exciting, now it just makes me feel a bit of dread on every play.
That sounds like a distinction without a difference to me. I would guess that everyone who ever was killed or seriously injured in boxing or football or any sport felt the same way you did - until it happened to them.
 

Marciano490

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Super Nomario said:
That sounds like a distinction without a difference to me. I would guess that everyone who ever was killed or seriously injured in boxing or football or any sport felt the same way you did - until it happened to them.
 
Entirely possible, but it's not just about me.  If you're watching Floyd of Wlad or Roy Jones or Ward fight on a Saturday night and they get knocked out or concussed or killed in the ring are you going to be more or less shocked than if you watch Brown or Watt or Kuechly on Sunday afternoon and see the same happen to them?
 

mauf

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I know more than my share of serious skiers (not one myself, but married to one). They would definitely take issue with your description of the risk inherent in that sport.
 

OCST

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maufman said:
I know more than my share of serious skiers (not one myself, but married to one). They would definitely take issue with your description of the risk inherent in that sport.
 
Sonny Bono, Natasha Richardson, lots of people we never heard of. . . . .  I don 't think the idea that "skiing is dangerous, possibly deadly" could be controversial.  
 
Not a skier, FWIW.
 
But back to football: there is a distinction between cataclysmic hits causing instant death through trauma to major organs, and the drip-drip-drip of low-speed hits that seems to end up causing CTE.  The latter is far more of a concern to me long-term; the former are black swans (to an extent - just how far of an extent is debatable).  But I don't think even a flood of CTE cases is going to endanger football as we know it.  Someday, in a high-profile NFL game, someone is going to get killed, and that will do it.
 

Marciano490

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OilCanShotTupac said:
 
Sonny Bono, Natasha Richardson, lots of people we never heard of. . . . .
 
Richardson fell while taking a beginner's ski lesson.  Bono may or may not have been on prescription drugs at the time.  Kennedy was playing football on skis after being warned to stop (not sure what sport that goes under).  I've never skiied, so I won't comment further, but there seems to be a huge difference in the risk profile of the two sports to me.
 

edmunddantes

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OilCanShotTupac said:
 
Sonny Bono, Natasha Richardson, lots of people we never heard of. . . . .  I don 't think the idea that "skiing is dangerous, possibly deadly" could be controversial.  
 
Not a skier, FWIW.
 
But back to football: there is a distinction between cataclysmic hits causing instant death through trauma to major organs, and the drip-drip-drip of low-speed hits that seems to end up causing CTE.  The latter is far more of a concern to me long-term; the former are black swans (to an extent - just how far of an extent is debatable).  But I don't think even a flood of CTE cases is going to endanger football as we know it.  Someday, in a high-profile NFL game, someone is going to get killed, and that will do it.
And Drew Bledsoe was almost that guy 14 years ago.
 
Imagine if he got hit again after that Mo Lewis hit? It was certainly possible considering he was back in that game for the next bunch of snaps.. 
 
It's sheer luck it hasn't happened yet. Just a matter of time. 
 

Super Nomario

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Marciano490 said:
 
Entirely possible, but it's not just about me.  If you're watching Floyd of Wlad or Roy Jones or Ward fight on a Saturday night and they get knocked out or concussed or killed in the ring are you going to be more or less shocked than if you watch Brown or Watt or Kuechly on Sunday afternoon and see the same happen to them?
OK, I think I see what you're saying. There's an element of violence and an element of randomness. You're saying boxing is violent but not random, and skill in boxing helps prevent injury in boxing. On the other hand, basketball is random but not violent, so you see great players like Derrick Rose suffer injuries that their skill couldn't prevent, but they're not going to get hit in the head and killed because that kind of injury doesn't exist in hoops. Football is perhaps not as violent as boxing but is more random, because Gronk isn't ultimately any more or less likely to get hurt than Hoomanawanui. Baseball is arguably neither violent nor random. I suppose hockey would be the closest analogue to football, where there's violence that can cause serious injury and a player's skill is not necessarily sufficient to avoid it, but I'm not really a hockey fan so I don't know.
 
The randomness argument strikes me as relevant on a personal basis - boxing might be fairly safe for you if you're good at it - but I'm not sure how much it matters in the global sense. If the sport relies on some idiot who's not as good being willing to get a concussion or other injury fighting you, that doesn't seem like a very sustainable model. The randomness in football isn't likely to be a solvable problem - you can tear an ACL just planting with no contact - but maybe we can reduce the violence.
 

OCST

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maufman said:
NASCAR grew for several years after its biggest star died in the most high-profile way imaginable.

Edit: Responding to OCST.
This is true, and it's a good point.

OTOH, I think the death of Duk Koo Kim did more than any single thing to reduce boxing from a major focus of American public life to a fringe sport (relatively speaking).
 

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OilCanShotTupac said:
This is true, and it's a good point.

OTOH, I think the death of Duk Koo Kim did more than any single thing to reduce boxing from a major focus of American public life to a fringe sport (relatively speaking).
I don't know if it was Kim's death or the evolving PPV business model... but Kim's death was a major blow to the sport.
 

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maufman said:
NASCAR grew for several years after its biggest star died in the most high-profile way imaginable.

Edit: Responding to OCST.
But only after that death (which followed a series of other deaths such as Adam Petty's and Kenny Irwin Jr.'s) galvanized changes in NASCAR including changes to car designs. If there were a live NFL football death I presume football could survive and even thrive, but I wouldn't be surprised if some aspects of the game were changed fundamentally.
 

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maufman said:
In terms of short-term risk, letting your teenage boy drive a car is a far greater risk than letting him play football, but Pierce isn't suggesting that we raise the age to get a driver's license to 21. It's nonsense...
 
I'm not evangelistic on this issue, but that analogy fails. It would be more appropriate if High Schools had competitive auto racing as a sport.
 
There are a million things more risky to kids than football, including being kids.
 

soxfan121

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Marciano490 said:
I think the difference - for me - is that you can do everything right in football and still be hurt/killed.  You can be the best guy on the field and still be hurt/killed.  If you're skiing, or playing baseball and suffer a brain injury - even a nonfatal one - something has gone wrong, or in the case of skiing, you were probably trying to do something beyond your talent or experience level.
Tell it to Ray Chapman, bro.

Every pitch in every baseball game is a potential fatal injury; that it hasn't happened recently doesn't change the odds that someone - batter, pitcher, first base coach, spectator - is in mortal danger. Nothing has to "go wrong" - Bryce Florie and Justin Morneau are but two examples of the risk inherent to every pitch, and swing of the bat, in baseball. 



 
 

Marciano490

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soxfan121 said:
Tell it to Ray Chapman, bro.

Every pitch in every baseball game is a potential fatal injury; that it hasn't happened recently doesn't change the odds that someone - batter, pitcher, first base coach, spectator - is in mortal danger. Nothing has to "go wrong" - Bryce Florie and Justin Morneau are but two examples of the risk inherent to every pitch, and swing of the bat, in baseball. 



 
 
I understand there's risk inherent in every sport, and maybe every activity.  But the point of baseball isn't to throw near the batter's head or hit the ball sharply back at the pitcher.  Football is dependent on physical freaks outgrown through PEDs hurtling their bodies toward one another. 
 

soxfan121

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Marciano490 said:
 
I understand there's risk inherent in every sport, and maybe every activity.  But the point of baseball isn't to throw near the batter's head or hit the ball sharply back at the pitcher.  Football is dependent on physical freaks outgrown through PEDs hurtling their bodies toward one another. 
 
No, it's not the point. But is frequent enough - and there have been enough on field tragedies, including Coolbaugh the first base coach being killed - to invalidate your point that "something went wrong". Nothing went wrong. The ball left the bat and hit the guy behind the ear and he died. That's a risk inherent on every pitch. Fenway lady who was watching the game gets her face destroyed - a possibility on every pitch. Justin Morneau having post-concussion symptoms for years after "one that got away" hit him in the head - a possibility on every pitch. Ray Chapman was killed in the batter's box by a pitch - and it could happen again, on any pitch thrown in any game.

As for invoking PEDs...well, I'll admit that I think no athletic competition is 100% free of chemistry. MMA fighters, boxers, baseball players, Olympic skiers. I could go on. 

The danger in football is cumulative. The risk of serious brain injury on "any given play" is lower than it is in baseball. The effects of thousands of minor collisions is the "problem" in football. The "difference" you're citing is factually incorrect.
 

bigq

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I agree that the danger in football is cumulative however minor collisions are not the cause of concussions.
 

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bigq said:
I agree that the danger in football is cumulative however minor collisions are not the cause of concussions.
Nobody is arguing that.

The new research suggests, though, that subconcussive collisions can contribute to CTE, however. That's the scuttlebutt.
 

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bigq said:
I agree that the danger in football is cumulative however minor collisions are not the cause of concussions.
That's a fairly bold statement.
Define "minor collision" here. We don't know the degree of trauma reqiured to cause mild traumatic brain injury in humans. Furthermore, the force required to cause one likely varies from person to person; I've seen one person get a concussion from a frisbee, while another takes a bat to the head and remains unaffected.
 
There is no Rev said:
Nobody is arguing that.

The new research suggests, though, that subconcussive collisions can contribute to CTE, however. That's the scuttlebutt.
Such a hypothesis is appropriate, but I think there's a semantics problem here. A concussion is a form of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI).  mTBI is definitely associated with the onset of the dementia. I have seen few studies (if any) that argue that subconcussive hits are associated with subsequent neurological problems; nearly all of the patients diagnosed with CTE had at least some form of mTBI.
 
 

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Interesting thread.  While reading through and thinking about the risk of injury or death in sport, my mind drifted to the Isle of Man time trial course.  People die nearly every year on that course.  In the last 70 years, about 240 people (participants, spectators, officials, etc.) have died.  In only two of those years did no one die.  It's interesting how everyone involved apparently accepts death as just part of the deal on that course.
 
I can only imagine the uproar if people died virtually every year in football - things would undoubtedly change rather quickly.  Hell, if that happened in any sport here, I imagine things would change quickly.  But, at least with regards to football, CTE isn't immediate, and no individual player really knows the level of impact, if any, they might suffer in the future.  That must make it a lot easier to put such thoughts out of one's mind.
 

OCST

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EricFeczko said:
That's a fairly bold statement.
Define "minor collision" here. We don't know the degree of trauma reqiured to cause mild traumatic brain injury in humans. Furthermore, the force required to cause one likely varies from person to person; I've seen one person get a concussion from a frisbee, while another takes a bat to the head and remains unaffected.
 
Such a hypothesis is appropriate, but I think there's a semantics problem here. A concussion is a form of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI).  mTBI is definitely associated with the onset of the dementia. I have seen few studies (if any) that argue that subconcussive hits are associated with subsequent neurological problems; nearly all of the patients diagnosed with CTE had at least some form of mTBI.
 
One of the really big fucking heavy Wham-o frisbees, especially if it hit a guy who wasn't looking and didn't brace or move...sure, I could see it. Them things is fucking anvils.

They don't call em Wham-O for nothin.
 

bigq

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EricFeczko said:
That's a fairly bold statement.
Define "minor collision" here. We don't know the degree of trauma reqiured to cause mild traumatic brain injury in humans. Furthermore, the force required to cause one likely varies from person to person; I've seen one person get a concussion from a frisbee, while another takes a bat to the head and remains unaffected.

 
 
 
I was responding to a comment further up in the thread that indicated that the effect of thousands of minor collisions is the problem in football and I was taking exception to categorizing playing football as subjecting oneself to minor collisions.  Minor is the wrong term and it understates the violent nature of the game.  I have been a huge football fan since a very early age and I think I always will however I would never allow my kids to play because of the undeniably high risk of brain injury.
 
I do agree that some people are more susceptible to brain trauma than others and due to the cumulative effects of concussions, someone who has already been subject to concussion events is likely at higher risk for future concussion events even from minor collisions.
 
The comment I was responding to was:
 

"The danger in football is cumulative. The risk of serious brain injury on "any given play" is lower than it is in baseball. The effects of thousands of minor collisions is the "problem" in football."
soxfan121 Posted 02 October 2015 - 02:44 PM
 

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64,027
EricFeczko said:
Such a hypothesis is appropriate, but I think there's a semantics problem here. A concussion is a form of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI).  mTBI is definitely associated with the onset of the dementia. I have seen few studies (if any) that argue that subconcussive hits are associated with subsequent neurological problems; nearly all of the patients diagnosed with CTE had at least some form of mTBI.
 
Yeah, I don't have any cites. FWIW, I was going off of my memory of what the guys from BU said when they presented on it at SaberSeminar a couple years ago. I remember being struck by how all the "official" reports I had seen had said the jury is still out on whether or not subconcussive hits can lead to CTE and they were casually like, "Yeah they do."
 

soxfan121

JAG
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Dec 22, 2002
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bigq said:
 
 
 
I was responding to a comment further up in the thread that indicated that the effect of thousands of minor collisions is the problem in football and I was taking exception to categorizing playing football as subjecting oneself to minor collisions.  Minor is the wrong term and it understates the violent nature of the game.  I have been a huge football fan since a very early age and I think I always will however I would never allow my kids to play because of the undeniably high risk of brain injury.
 
I do agree that some people are more susceptible to brain trauma than others and due to the cumulative effects of concussions, someone who has already been subject to concussion events is likely at higher risk for future concussion events even from minor collisions.
 
The comment I was responding to was:
 

"The danger in football is cumulative. The risk of serious brain injury on "any given play" is lower than it is in baseball. The effects of thousands of minor collisions is the "problem" in football."
soxfan121 Posted 02 October 2015 - 02:44 PM

 
 
No, minor is the correct term. The precise terminology is sub-concussive collision. I'm not understating the violent nature of the game.