CTE & Sport of Football

[Glass1/2fullguy]

I think the sport of football will be gone in 20-30 years. It's sad to see what's happening to these players. I love the sport of football but my heart goes out to the children out there who have lost their father due to this disease.

Late NFL WR Vincent Jackson diagnosed with Stage 2 CTE (espn.com)

 

[okeefe4prez]

I think the sport of football will be gone in 20-30 years. It's sad to see what's happening to these players. I love the sport of football but my heart goes out to the children out there who have lost their father due to this disease.

Late NFL WR Vincent Jackson diagnosed with Stage 2 CTE (espn.com)

Agreed. Thankfully the NFL is taking a hard line stance against COVID and breast cancer.

 

[trj]

Agreed. Thankfully the NFL is taking a hard line stance against COVID and breast cancer.

So are you expecting NFL owners, who are 60, 70, 80 years old, to give a shit about football 20 or 30 years from now?

 

[okeefe4prez]

So are you expecting NFL owners, who are 60, 70, 80 years old, to give a shit about football 20 or 30 years from now?

Yes. They have heirs who will inherit their teams. Many of the old line families have monstrous generational wealth and prestige tied to the team.

 

[trj]

Yes. They have heirs who will inherit their teams. Many of the old line families have monstrous generational wealth and prestige tied to the team.

Disagree. The Bears and the Steelers are a prime example. Old guard just worrying about cashing checks. They don’t give a shit about carrying on any sort of legacy that died with their parents or their grandparents.

 

[okeefe4prez]

Disagree. The Bears and the Steelers are a prime example. Old guard just worrying about cashing checks. They don’t give a shit about carrying on any sort of legacy that died with their parents or their grandparents.

Yes, you're right. People with an asset worth north of a billion dollars don't care about the future value of the asset. Only peasants like me who are stacking away total market index funds in UTMA accounts care about passing a legacy onto our children.

 

[trj]

Yes, you're right. People with an asset worth north of a billion dollars don't care about the future value of the asset. Only peasants like me who are stacking away total market index funds in UTMA accounts care about passing a legacy onto our children.

Sarcasm aside…fair point.

 

[SmokeTownHawk]

Yes, you're right. People with an asset worth north of a billion dollars don't care about the future value of the asset. Only peasants like me who are stacking away total market index funds in UTMA accounts care about passing a legacy onto our children.

People like that who can control the system, government and all, will just move to the next big thing, whatever that will be 20 years from now.

 

[Northside Hawk]

I think the sport of football will be gone in 20-30 years. It's sad to see what's happening to these players. I love the sport of football but my heart goes out to the children out there who have lost their father due to this disease.

Late NFL WR Vincent Jackson diagnosed with Stage 2 CTE (espn.com)

2040 is my target date and I've put it in writing on these boards before.

Only a matter of time before someone dies during a game and that will help grease the skids.

 

[trj]

2040 is my target date and I've put it in writing on these boards before.

Only a matter of time before someone dies during a game and that will help grease the skids.

or we are rapidly getting to the point where we all understand the risk of playing football and we are okay those risks.

 

[Glass1/2fullguy]

or we are rapidly getting to the point where we all understand the risk of playing football and we are okay those risks.

I think the risks are becoming clearer every time another former player commits suicide or goes off the deep end. More & more parents are going to continue to think twice w/ allowing their kids to play the game and that’s how the sport will slowly die. It’s not going to be from adult player making the decision but rather the parents weighing the risks and determining the long term health of their child.

 

[HuckFinn]

Safety improvements will likely become more sophisticated. Maybe some hope there?

 

[okeefe4prez]

I think the risks are becoming clearer every time another former player commits suicide or goes off the deep end. More & more parents are going to continue to think twice w/ allowing their kids to play the game and that’s how the sport will slowly die. It’s not going to be from adult player making the decision but rather the parents weighing the risks and determining the long term health of their child.

That's been happening in places like Illinois and the northeast for over a decade. The participation rates have tanked. Probably same in Iowa. Football is holding strong in the south and Texas though. I'd never ever ever let my boy play it, but I think most people in the south will.

 

[okeefe4prez]

Safety improvements will likely become more sophisticated. Maybe some hope there?

You can create systems and rules that minimize external trauma, but you cannot control what the brain does inside the skull and the repetitive deceleration or rattling of the brain inside the skull is actually what causes a lot of problems, not the one time mega hit.

 

[MelroseHawkins]

Safety improvements will likely become more sophisticated. Maybe some hope there?

Remember "two hand touch below the waist". Perhaps will turn into the NFFL. National Flag Football League!

 

[Fryowa]

Safety improvements will likely become more sophisticated. Maybe some hope there?

No equipment can make it safer unless you get rid of tackling and blocking.

It's just physics. If you take a brain moving 25 miles an hour and decelerate it to zero within the space of a couple inches, it shears brain cells apart.

If you bump a brain into a hard surface at low speed 100 times in 3 hours you're going to get the same effect.

The only thing that'll make football safer is to go to either touch or flag. At that point you lose viewers, then there's no money in it, and then the sport dies. It's either that or accept the high probability of significant brain damage.

 

[kicker22]

No equipment can make it safer unless you get rid of tackling and blocking.

It's just physics. If you take a brain moving 25 miles an hour and decelerate it to zero within the space of a couple inches, it shears brain cells apart.

If you bump a brain into a hard surface at low speed 100 times in 3 hours you're going to get the same effect.

The only thing that'll make football safer is to go to either touch or flag. At that point you lose viewers, then there's no money in it, and then the sport dies. It's either that or accept the high probability of significant brain damage.

Great point the other issue is that athletes only continue to get stronger. So the more strength they add to to bulk up and take/deliver the hit the more their they're contributing to the effects of the head trauma. I just don't know how the sport continues to thrive as more and more is learned about CTE and the effects of brain trauma.

Edit: I'll continue to watch it and love the sport while praying and persuading my kids to play other sports.

 

[Fryowa]

Great point the other issue is that athletes only continue to get stronger. So the more strength they add to to bulk up and take/deliver the hit the more their they're contributing to the effects of the head trauma. I just don't know how the sport continues to thrive as more and more is learned about CTE and the effects of brain trauma.

Edit: I'll continue to watch it and love the sport while praying and persuading my kids to play other sports.

I do think they’ve made improvements to tackling which will help, but it’s not going to avoid the sub-concussive hits on the lines, etc. You don’t see so many of the decimating hits that QBs and receivers used to take in the 70s, 80s, and 90s back when it was the wild Wild West and everything was legal.

My son is a freshman and I know at our high school there is zero full speed contact during practices. Our conference’s coaches are luckily mostly in agreement on that. Having played HS football myself and looking back, there really isn’t a lot of benefit to full speed contact during practices. There will always be the “peaked in high school” crowd who say you have to do it to be able to prepare for game situations or that it makes kids tougher, but that’s a bunch of shit to be honest.

Does having very limited contact possibly put our HS team at a disadvantage against highly rated teams? Maybe. I honestly don’t have an answer for that. But I don’t care,either. Maybe 1-2 kids every five years from the state of Iowa are going to make a full living playing sports. There’s better things to do with your brain that beat the shit out of it.