I would never let my child play contact football. The data is beyond clear that this sport causes irreparable life altering damage to the brain.
A lot of football players also suffer from mental health issues which, not to state the obvious, is likely not helped by banging your head all the time.
It's well established that the effects of repeated head trauma are cumulative, with progressively longer healing periods, worse symptoms, etc. And that sub-concussive impacts also accumulate along with the concussive impacts.
From the article:
The bulk of the head impacts that these former NFL players experienced didn’t occur at the NFL level. They occurred at the collegiate level ... and at the high school level and in many cases the youth level. And all of those cumulative hits to the head added up to result in an increased risk,” said Daneshvar.
As someone who has had multiple concussions in other sports, the impacts in youth football are absolutely sufficient to cause concussions and more minor (but still cumulatively damaging) trauma. The fact that they're a repeated part of the game and not occasional incidents is very, very bad.
Requiring a child to play football should be actual child abuse, and even allowing it should be frowned upon the way that letting a child play with a blowtorch is.
Due to the number of concussions per minute played. It could be worse (boxing), but it's not difficult to see how some sports are far riskier than others
Certainly, football isn't the only thing people do that leads to head injuries.
But if it is significantly worse than other sports, why not single it out as the worst thing ever?
Several sports increase the risk of CTE, but football has been more studied, I think because the incidence of obviously impared former players is higher than in other sports.
Alosco et al. (2017) – Age of First Exposure to Tackle Football and Later-Life Cognitive Impairment and Neuropsychiatric Symptoms (Translational Psychiatry)
[https://doi.org/10.1038/tp.2017.197]
Sure but the quality of gear you get in the NFL is much higher than what your typical kid gets. I regret the two years of football I played in high school.
I am surprised by the otherwise intelligent and caring parents I have met who had their elementary schoolers playing tackle football. I don't understand that decision at all.
Unless it’s actually banned below a certain age, what are you going to do if that’s what they want to do with their life?
If they don’t play and everyone else does, their development will be many years behind their peers which makes it unlikely they could play at a high level.
Yes, I think parents who see tackle football as an unsafe sport for their children are okay with not setting up their kids to play it at a high level.
And like any responsible parents, they presumably also don't just defer to what they're elementary aged children "want to do with their life" nor feed into the exaggeration that "everybody else" does anything at all, let alone play tackle football.
If you disagree with the dangers of the sport or are afraid of shaping your children's life choices for their own benefit, that's fine for you, but the rhetorical and snide way you presume others should share that view seems strange.
Ah. Yes, I didn't pick that up in what you wrote. The seeming fatalism about how there's not much to do until or unless that happens eclipsed it. That seemed to be the focus of your comment and I could only re-contextualize it once you made it more clear her.
>And like any responsible parents, they presumably also don't just defer to what their elementary aged children "want to do with their life" nor feed into the exaggeration that "everybody else" does anything at all, let alone play tackle football.
This is the only wise position. Despite the commonly and misleading film tropes, children do not know themselves perfectly. Often the adults "holding them back" are doing those children a great favor.
If they don't play a game which damages their brain when they are children, they won't be able to go into a career which damages their brain as an adult. Hmmm.
99.9% of high school football players aren't good enough to make a career out of it no matter what they do. Avoiding literal brain damage at the cost of forcing my child into a group they're virtually certain to be in anyway seems totally fine.
Same here. When did Boston University start publishing about the CTE/football connection? 10 or 15 years ago? A couple I know, one with a public health degree from an Ivy, still let one of her kids play through all of that, and he played at the college level, too.
At the same time, a lot of parents (myself included) steered kids to other sports. That had another effect: there was even more pressure on parents who didn't care about CTE (and their kids) to get into football because kiddie leagues and especially high school teams were short of players. This happened to a friend whose two boys were strong hockey players, the coach at their school pushed them to try out for football the following season.
It's a deeply ingrained cultural tradition in a lot of places. It's an extremely hard sell to tell people to reject their traditions because of a relatively nebulous and uncertain danger. "I played football and I was fine" is a powerful argument.
Tackle football is basically the only sport my kids are not allowed to play. I don’t talk about it because I don’t want it to become something forbidden and therefore cool, but if they naturally find their way there and start getting pushy about it, it’s one of the few things I’m prepared to put my foot down about with no compromise.
I tried contact football in 7th grade and only lasted a few practice sessions. I was shocked by what I saw; other kids throwing their bodies into each other as if they were just bags of meat, sometimes colliding head-on. The ferocity with which they did it seemed like a source of pride for them and there was this sense of one-upmanship on who could tackle the best. The whole thing felt insane to me and I backed out immediately. I was involved in other sports like baseball and basketball so I was used to competitiveness, but nothing on that level of disregard for safety.
Equivalent of boxing and other combat sports, I suppose. Equipment that makes a sport almost requiring high speed collisions on every play safe doesn’t exist.
Here's a link to the study.[1] Since CTE can only be diagnosed by slicing up the brain, and former NFL players only tend to donate their brains to study if they're experiencing cognitive issues, there's obviously a bias in the sample. They tried to adjust for this by looking at rates of cognitive impairment in NFL players who donated their brains versus those who didn't. The ratio varied from 1.8x to 4x depending on age at death.
Unfortunately the number of brains studied isn't large enough to determine whether different positions have different levels of CTE. I'd guess that kickers would have very low risk compared to other positions, as they are rarely involved in collisions. Their stats hint that is the case, but the p-values are ridiculously high due to the small sample size.
John Urschel cited the CTE risk when he decided to quit the NFL and pursue his math PhD. He just published https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.06785 which seems to be a significant result from where I'm standing, but I can't really tell what's what with math at that level.
> In August 2015, an incident gave him a taste of what a prolonged NFL career could mean. Urschel suffered a helmet-to-helmet collision with Ravens safety Terrence Brooks during an open-field drill in practice. The impact knocked the OL unconscious.
> While recovering, Urschel realized that he could not solve high-level mathematical proofs and noticed a drop in his cognitive abilities and sharpness. It took almost a month for his mental clarity to return, giving him a firsthand glimpse of brain trauma's dangers.
> Subsequently, in spring 2016, he secretly enrolled in MIT's applied mathematics doctoral program. He juggled MIT coursework during the week with Ravens games on Sundays, staying up late to balance both commitments.
> Since his early NFL retirement, Urschel completed his PhD in 2021, served as a member at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, and returned to MIT as a tenure-track assistant professor in 2023.
> Leonetti recently spoke to retired players alongside EarQ at a meeting of the Chicago chapter of the NFL Players Association. When Leonetti asked how many players had experienced concussions during their career, they all raised their hands. When Leonetti asked how many have experienced hearing loss approximately 25 percent raised their hands. When he asked how many have tinnitus approximately 50 percent raised their hands.
I haven't watched an NFL game in years. I can no longer enjoy seeing people trade their brain function and lifespan for money that way. For that matter I recently revisited an extreme skiing video I bought long ago. Several of the people in the credits are dead now.
All sports carry some risk. I ride a road bike. I wouldn't tell others how to weigh the risks of their sports of choice. I just wouldn't pay to watch someone fly a wing suit, knowing how some of those people have died.
> For that matter I recently revisited an extreme skiing video I bought long ago. Several of the people in the credits are dead now.
As someone who has been doing backcountry snowboarding for a long time all I can say that adrenaline is a hell of a drug and in general it’s not that hard to guess which of your friends will die (have died) doing this stuff. Avalanches just don’t care about how cool your line is.
Though nowhere near as bad as my friend who also does parachuting (wingsuits mainly these days). Once people get into base jumps and/or proximity flying end never seems to be that far away.
It's the money factor where I draw the line. It's a kind of perverse selection that the best of these athletes in extreme sports are the ones who get paid to do it, though probably just enough to scrape out a living until they age out, or die.
I'm sure there's some obscure spelunker who died in a cave, unknown to anyone but their friends. It's the commercialization of risk for entertainment that makes it icky. At some point along that curve it's OK for a civilized society to just say no, to boxing, for example.
I also stopped watching football several years ago, for various reasons including excessive violence. Occasionally I miss the sport's competition and rivalries and excitement but I went deeper on satisfying alternatives, For example, I watch and travel to see pro and college basketball and women's professional golf.
There are even studies linking soccer ("football") to an increased risk of dementia. One large study found that the risk was highest among defenders (who tend to head the ball most frequently) and lowest among goalkeepers (who rarely do.)
That study stopped short of establishing a link to CTE specifically, which can only be definitively diagnosed postmortem. But smaller autopsy studies have found CTE in former soccer players.
We focus a lot on Boxing and American football, but I suspect the risk of CTE is far more widespread across sports than is talked about (every concussion, hard contact, head impact, etc all add up)
I love football, but it's insane that we allow this for entertainment. Guardian helmets are insufficient. They need to commit to big changes, some of which will alter the game. No head in practice whatsoever. Redesign the line of scrimmage. Mandatory month out for concussions. I'll still enjoy whatever it becomes.
Not the OP but I don't think you can. The issue is you're stopping a moving object with your body. That is always going to cause damage. I think the armor itself also promotes big hits. I truly think that's the reason Rugby is a safer game; the hits are more painful, and you're not hitting each other with a carbon fiber helmet.
So CTE is not just about concussions but any amount of damage consistently over time that accrues.
Current line of scrimmage situation is the worst case scenario. Linemen are a few feet away from each other and they start from a crouched position. They explode up and hit the opposing line, very often with their helmet/crown, down after down, 60-70 times a game. You could not plan a better way to get CTE.
1) Neutral zone at the line, they start 2 yards away from each other.
2) Have to start from standing position, and/or:
3) First contact has to be arms
It would be a bit of an adjustment like it was for dynamic kickoff. But the juice would be worth the squeeze. You're never going to stop all head trauma in a contact sport but the mechanics of the line positions are basically designed for it.
I'd get some hate for this on football forums, but targeting needs to be enforced a lot more strictly than it is. The NFL also did a good job reforming kickoffs, they're much safer now than they were, but we need to do something about punts.
It adds a sort of tragic element to the game. Growing up I used to cheer for big hits now there's a recognition you are often watching someone lose several years off of their life.
There's also these guardian caps to reduce some of the shock, but they're not very effective - they absorb like 10% of the blow, and you don't see very many players wearing them in-game.
The main issue seems to be shock to the brain being sloshed around inside the skull, even neck-snapping type impacts without any contact to the head itself can cause brain injury. The extra helmet padding doesn't do anything to reduce that. Plenty of linemen have been diagnosed with CTE even though their play doesn't involve as much helmet contact or high speed collision.
The number one change they could make to the game to make it safer is going back to leather helmets. Players would be far more cautious.
Or with technology we have today, not allow any helmet contact to any part of the body. You could outfit the helmets with a sensor and a light so the refs know it happened.
Yes, this would drastically change the game and how it is played. But it would probably still be entertaining enough to draw in the crowds they hope to draw in.
I remember in an eight grade game coming back to the huddle and the lineman who played next to me was talking about his sister's homework. He clearly had a concussion and we (the players) sent him to the sideline where the coaches berated him for coming out of the game and sent him back (this was in the 80s).
Already at the JV level I saw multiple concussions in games. Not kos but guys woozy liked they'd been punched. Nobody cared back then (US south).
Is this magnified that NFL selects for big men hitting extra hard due to body size physics. Impact force / wear and tear / fatigue doesn't scale linearly to body mass receiving. Like if there was weight class / height class american football, where with BMI/FFMI cap, would smaller bodies beat the shit out of each other on the regular with less accumulated effects.
Played for four years ... my conclusion: regular, calm, ordinary people don't usually excel at american football. Aggressive, intense, competitive folk have a great time tho' ... it's not safe at all. Every last one of the starters self-identify as: a headbuster!
The lifetime risks and dangers involved in many of these sports is my main counterargument to those I encounter that oppose the NIL money flowing into collegiate sports for removing the amateurism feel of it.
The young men and women are putting their health and safety on the line potentially with life altering injuries, they should be compensated for it. Doubly so since beforehand the universities were more than happy to profit solely from their work.
This is such a brutal sport. For reasons outside my control (see: partner), NFL games are on in my house every weekend—and therefore in my peripheral vision. It seems like every game a 20 something in their prime is being carted off for a season ending injury. Unacceptable costs. Tennis is the way. Boxing without contact.
>The bulk of the head impacts that these former NFL players experienced didn’t occur at the NFL level. They occurred at the collegiate level ... and at the high school level and in many cases the youth level. And all of those cumulative hits to the head added up to result in an increased risk,” said Daneshvar.
As a youth football from 5 years old in the 90s to high school in 00s in the Midwest, this is not surprising at all. Things are competitive from a young age. We more recently know much better, but this knowledge. The taught knowledge was protecting one’s neck from injury with “proper” form. From my lived experience at those times, there was 0 mention of head injuries, and blacking out and dizziness after hits were ignored by all if you were able to stand or walk within a short period of time.
Yeah. The rules need to change substantially at all levels. I can't see another way out, without just banning the sport outright. In soccer, they've already done it at the kid's level. My kids' teams don't allow heading the ball at all. That's such an obvious win. It changes soccer pretty substantially, but it's still a lot of fun, and much safer with that rule in place. Football has enough money that I'm sure someone can solve this by adjusting the rules towards safety without completely changing what makes the game fun.
That said, it may not be solvable. It's not just helmet-to-helmet collisions that are the problem. You often see players make a diving grab, and their head slams into the ground when they land. That's micro-concussion territory that may be unavoidable. But, my guess is it's an 80/20 rule. If you somehow eliminate player-to-helmet hits altogether, you'd probably end up in a good enough place.
The percent of the general population that gets Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy? This isn't a naturally occurring phenomena. It's the cumulative result of repetitive skull impacts and concussions.
A recent prior study - I think one of those mentioned in the article - said other studies found very little, maybe one or two brains in the samples. And that included a study of military veterans.
Note that ex-players dying last decade played ~50 years prior, in the ~1960s. It was a significantly more violent game than it is today. Look up Chuck Bednarik's famous hit on Frank Gifford, and Bednarik's reaction after - that was a highlight.
I still think it's dangerous and changes are needed, but today's players are safer.
I know the millennial urge is to have everything condensed down to a one minute video that knocks down orthodox thinking and presents a bold new idea that magically no one has ever thought of before. It's never as simple as they make it seem. However, that's actually the case here - the solution seems to boil down to banning tackles in practice until HS or college outside of gamedays and acknowledging that five-year-olds can still sustain CTE.
I wonder if it's possible to take the head out of American football, and use helmets as just extra protection in accidents - like helmets in almost every other endeavor (climbing, construction, bicycling, etc.). Make it a game played from the neck down.
You can count on people saying it's impossible, 'this isn't football', players saying 'I can't play this way; I'll retire', etc. That happens with every change, including the ones that all the players accept and play with now, and which are part of the most popular sport in the U.S. Not unlike responses to changes in technology.
Already, things like helmet-to-helmet hits, spearing helmet-first, etc. are against the rules (I don't know the exact rules). Players can control what body parts make contact with what on the opposing player - obviously: in other things in life, including other sports, you don't instinctively lead with your skull.
I would guess that blocking between the offensive and defensive lines would be the biggest change. They begin inches apart and slam into each other at the start of each play, and generally whoever gets leverage lower will win. I think it would just look different, more arms and less body-to-body.
Also, are there sensors for helmets that would pickup impacts? I think sensing the accoustics / vibrations might be sufficient.
This isn't an NFL problem, it's the very nature of the game. The lifelong damage is done by the time they reach that point. Average NFL tenure is less than 4 years, but anyone who reaches that level has been playing since they were 8.
I'm kinda surprised its that low. Football, especially at the pro and college levels, has players (especially linemen) taking car crash level hits every single play.
I would never let my child play contact football. The data is beyond clear that this sport causes irreparable life altering damage to the brain.
A lot of football players also suffer from mental health issues which, not to state the obvious, is likely not helped by banging your head all the time.
playing at nfl level and kid level is something very different
Yes, and?
It's well established that the effects of repeated head trauma are cumulative, with progressively longer healing periods, worse symptoms, etc. And that sub-concussive impacts also accumulate along with the concussive impacts.
From the article: The bulk of the head impacts that these former NFL players experienced didn’t occur at the NFL level. They occurred at the collegiate level ... and at the high school level and in many cases the youth level. And all of those cumulative hits to the head added up to result in an increased risk,” said Daneshvar.
As someone who has had multiple concussions in other sports, the impacts in youth football are absolutely sufficient to cause concussions and more minor (but still cumulatively damaging) trauma. The fact that they're a repeated part of the game and not occasional incidents is very, very bad.
Requiring a child to play football should be actual child abuse, and even allowing it should be frowned upon the way that letting a child play with a blowtorch is.
there you said it: you got concusions from other sports. so why single out football as the worst thing ever?
CTE isn’t caused by concussions. Hence the rest of their comment.
Due to the number of concussions per minute played. It could be worse (boxing), but it's not difficult to see how some sports are far riskier than others
Certainly, football isn't the only thing people do that leads to head injuries.
But if it is significantly worse than other sports, why not single it out as the worst thing ever?
Several sports increase the risk of CTE, but football has been more studied, I think because the incidence of obviously impared former players is higher than in other sports.
Is it not worse?
> The fact that they're a repeated part of the game and not occasional incidents is very, very bad.
did you even read? the bulk happened at collegiate level
also there are studies on this
McKee et al. (2023) – Neuropathologic and Clinical Findings in Young Contact Sport Athletes Exposed to Repetitive Head Impacts (JAMA Neurology) [https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/fullarticle/2...]
Alosco et al. (2017) – Age of First Exposure to Tackle Football and Later-Life Cognitive Impairment and Neuropsychiatric Symptoms (Translational Psychiatry) [https://doi.org/10.1038/tp.2017.197]
even intl football headers have concerns
Sure but the quality of gear you get in the NFL is much higher than what your typical kid gets. I regret the two years of football I played in high school.
did you enjoy it at the time?
I'm sure people enjoy heroin at the time.
The best part about heroin is your brain can recover from it. CTE not so much.
Not enough to play senior year
The average weight of the front line NFL player is over 310 lbs.
At that size ratio from kids to pro, they should be rivaling Dark Helmet from Space Balls.
From an injury perspective: What are they? Let's assume we're talking MS/HS football where the mass of the players is enough to really do some damage.
Provide your data Mr. Thrwaway, if that even is your real name.
Yes! A child with a developing brain, and no medical staff on the sidelines is potentially in a worse situation.
> playing at nfl level and kid level is something very different
Correct. NFL payers are better paid, get better medical care, have better training and equipment, and their brains are more developed.
As mentioned elsewhere here the damage is cumulative and started in their youth
I am surprised by the otherwise intelligent and caring parents I have met who had their elementary schoolers playing tackle football. I don't understand that decision at all.
Unless it’s actually banned below a certain age, what are you going to do if that’s what they want to do with their life?
If they don’t play and everyone else does, their development will be many years behind their peers which makes it unlikely they could play at a high level.
But maybe you’re okay with that.
Yes, I think parents who see tackle football as an unsafe sport for their children are okay with not setting up their kids to play it at a high level.
And like any responsible parents, they presumably also don't just defer to what they're elementary aged children "want to do with their life" nor feed into the exaggeration that "everybody else" does anything at all, let alone play tackle football.
If you disagree with the dangers of the sport or are afraid of shaping your children's life choices for their own benefit, that's fine for you, but the rhetorical and snide way you presume others should share that view seems strange.
I guess you missed the point so why don’t I spell it out to you.
The correct thing to do is to ban tackle football below a certain age. Probably college. That levels the playing field.
Ah. Yes, I didn't pick that up in what you wrote. The seeming fatalism about how there's not much to do until or unless that happens eclipsed it. That seemed to be the focus of your comment and I could only re-contextualize it once you made it more clear her.
Sorry about the misread!
>And like any responsible parents, they presumably also don't just defer to what their elementary aged children "want to do with their life" nor feed into the exaggeration that "everybody else" does anything at all, let alone play tackle football.
This is the only wise position. Despite the commonly and misleading film tropes, children do not know themselves perfectly. Often the adults "holding them back" are doing those children a great favor.
If they don't play a game which damages their brain when they are children, they won't be able to go into a career which damages their brain as an adult. Hmmm.
Gotta stick to the crowd at all costs, its so uncomfortable outside of it right
99.9% of high school football players aren't good enough to make a career out of it no matter what they do. Avoiding literal brain damage at the cost of forcing my child into a group they're virtually certain to be in anyway seems totally fine.
Same here. When did Boston University start publishing about the CTE/football connection? 10 or 15 years ago? A couple I know, one with a public health degree from an Ivy, still let one of her kids play through all of that, and he played at the college level, too.
At the same time, a lot of parents (myself included) steered kids to other sports. That had another effect: there was even more pressure on parents who didn't care about CTE (and their kids) to get into football because kiddie leagues and especially high school teams were short of players. This happened to a friend whose two boys were strong hockey players, the coach at their school pushed them to try out for football the following season.
It's a deeply ingrained cultural tradition in a lot of places. It's an extremely hard sell to tell people to reject their traditions because of a relatively nebulous and uncertain danger. "I played football and I was fine" is a powerful argument.
Still doesn’t mean you can’t look at those people as foolish, no different than if they handed a cigarette to their teen or let their kid get obese.
Tackle football is basically the only sport my kids are not allowed to play. I don’t talk about it because I don’t want it to become something forbidden and therefore cool, but if they naturally find their way there and start getting pushy about it, it’s one of the few things I’m prepared to put my foot down about with no compromise.
Football, boxing... seem the top two to cross off. I think skiing is perhaps the third to cross off.
At least with skiing, getting hit in the head isn't the point.
Wait until you hear about shinty.
Have you ever seen ice hockey? Okay well imagine that if it was on a field and if you made it into a really fast and violent contact sport.
Skiing is pretty awesome and IMO risk of concussion or serious injury is very low if you are not a freestyle or extremely aggressive/risky skier.
Football and boxing involve guaranteed sub-concussion head impacts every session and likely full concussions at least a few times a year.
I tried contact football in 7th grade and only lasted a few practice sessions. I was shocked by what I saw; other kids throwing their bodies into each other as if they were just bags of meat, sometimes colliding head-on. The ferocity with which they did it seemed like a source of pride for them and there was this sense of one-upmanship on who could tackle the best. The whole thing felt insane to me and I backed out immediately. I was involved in other sports like baseball and basketball so I was used to competitiveness, but nothing on that level of disregard for safety.
Equivalent of boxing and other combat sports, I suppose. Equipment that makes a sport almost requiring high speed collisions on every play safe doesn’t exist.
I stopped following football back when these studies started coming out and I realized it was a bloodsport, just slower.
Here's a link to the study.[1] Since CTE can only be diagnosed by slicing up the brain, and former NFL players only tend to donate their brains to study if they're experiencing cognitive issues, there's obviously a bias in the sample. They tried to adjust for this by looking at rates of cognitive impairment in NFL players who donated their brains versus those who didn't. The ratio varied from 1.8x to 4x depending on age at death.
Unfortunately the number of brains studied isn't large enough to determine whether different positions have different levels of CTE. I'd guess that kickers would have very low risk compared to other positions, as they are rarely involved in collisions. Their stats hint that is the case, but the p-values are ridiculously high due to the small sample size.
1. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
John Urschel cited the CTE risk when he decided to quit the NFL and pursue his math PhD. He just published https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.06785 which seems to be a significant result from where I'm standing, but I can't really tell what's what with math at that level.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Urschel
> In August 2015, an incident gave him a taste of what a prolonged NFL career could mean. Urschel suffered a helmet-to-helmet collision with Ravens safety Terrence Brooks during an open-field drill in practice. The impact knocked the OL unconscious.
> While recovering, Urschel realized that he could not solve high-level mathematical proofs and noticed a drop in his cognitive abilities and sharpness. It took almost a month for his mental clarity to return, giving him a firsthand glimpse of brain trauma's dangers.
> Subsequently, in spring 2016, he secretly enrolled in MIT's applied mathematics doctoral program. He juggled MIT coursework during the week with Ravens games on Sundays, staying up late to balance both commitments.
> Since his early NFL retirement, Urschel completed his PhD in 2021, served as a member at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, and returned to MIT as a tenure-track assistant professor in 2023.
https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/legitimate-liability-ex-ra...
Don't forget the hearing loss and tinnitus, too. Boxers and footballers tend to go deaf.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140707134223.h...
> Leonetti recently spoke to retired players alongside EarQ at a meeting of the Chicago chapter of the NFL Players Association. When Leonetti asked how many players had experienced concussions during their career, they all raised their hands. When Leonetti asked how many have experienced hearing loss approximately 25 percent raised their hands. When he asked how many have tinnitus approximately 50 percent raised their hands.
I haven't watched an NFL game in years. I can no longer enjoy seeing people trade their brain function and lifespan for money that way. For that matter I recently revisited an extreme skiing video I bought long ago. Several of the people in the credits are dead now.
All sports carry some risk. I ride a road bike. I wouldn't tell others how to weigh the risks of their sports of choice. I just wouldn't pay to watch someone fly a wing suit, knowing how some of those people have died.
> For that matter I recently revisited an extreme skiing video I bought long ago. Several of the people in the credits are dead now.
As someone who has been doing backcountry snowboarding for a long time all I can say that adrenaline is a hell of a drug and in general it’s not that hard to guess which of your friends will die (have died) doing this stuff. Avalanches just don’t care about how cool your line is.
Though nowhere near as bad as my friend who also does parachuting (wingsuits mainly these days). Once people get into base jumps and/or proximity flying end never seems to be that far away.
It's the money factor where I draw the line. It's a kind of perverse selection that the best of these athletes in extreme sports are the ones who get paid to do it, though probably just enough to scrape out a living until they age out, or die.
I'm sure there's some obscure spelunker who died in a cave, unknown to anyone but their friends. It's the commercialization of risk for entertainment that makes it icky. At some point along that curve it's OK for a civilized society to just say no, to boxing, for example.
I also stopped watching football several years ago, for various reasons including excessive violence. Occasionally I miss the sport's competition and rivalries and excitement but I went deeper on satisfying alternatives, For example, I watch and travel to see pro and college basketball and women's professional golf.
There are even studies linking soccer ("football") to an increased risk of dementia. One large study found that the risk was highest among defenders (who tend to head the ball most frequently) and lowest among goalkeepers (who rarely do.)
That study stopped short of establishing a link to CTE specifically, which can only be definitively diagnosed postmortem. But smaller autopsy studies have found CTE in former soccer players.
We focus a lot on Boxing and American football, but I suspect the risk of CTE is far more widespread across sports than is talked about (every concussion, hard contact, head impact, etc all add up)
I love football, but it's insane that we allow this for entertainment. Guardian helmets are insufficient. They need to commit to big changes, some of which will alter the game. No head in practice whatsoever. Redesign the line of scrimmage. Mandatory month out for concussions. I'll still enjoy whatever it becomes.
> Redesign the line of scrimmage.
What are your thoughts on how to redesign the line of scrimmage?
Not the OP but I don't think you can. The issue is you're stopping a moving object with your body. That is always going to cause damage. I think the armor itself also promotes big hits. I truly think that's the reason Rugby is a safer game; the hits are more painful, and you're not hitting each other with a carbon fiber helmet.
So.. NFL but remove all padding?
So CTE is not just about concussions but any amount of damage consistently over time that accrues.
Current line of scrimmage situation is the worst case scenario. Linemen are a few feet away from each other and they start from a crouched position. They explode up and hit the opposing line, very often with their helmet/crown, down after down, 60-70 times a game. You could not plan a better way to get CTE.
1) Neutral zone at the line, they start 2 yards away from each other.
2) Have to start from standing position, and/or:
3) First contact has to be arms
It would be a bit of an adjustment like it was for dynamic kickoff. But the juice would be worth the squeeze. You're never going to stop all head trauma in a contact sport but the mechanics of the line positions are basically designed for it.
I'd get some hate for this on football forums, but targeting needs to be enforced a lot more strictly than it is. The NFL also did a good job reforming kickoffs, they're much safer now than they were, but we need to do something about punts.
100% agreed
75% is an estimate. Of the 396 brains actually examined, 93% had CTE, though donors skew heavily toward players with symptoms.
It adds a sort of tragic element to the game. Growing up I used to cheer for big hits now there's a recognition you are often watching someone lose several years off of their life.
There's also these guardian caps to reduce some of the shock, but they're not very effective - they absorb like 10% of the blow, and you don't see very many players wearing them in-game.
The main issue seems to be shock to the brain being sloshed around inside the skull, even neck-snapping type impacts without any contact to the head itself can cause brain injury. The extra helmet padding doesn't do anything to reduce that. Plenty of linemen have been diagnosed with CTE even though their play doesn't involve as much helmet contact or high speed collision.
The number one change they could make to the game to make it safer is going back to leather helmets. Players would be far more cautious.
Or with technology we have today, not allow any helmet contact to any part of the body. You could outfit the helmets with a sensor and a light so the refs know it happened.
Yes, this would drastically change the game and how it is played. But it would probably still be entertaining enough to draw in the crowds they hope to draw in.
I remember in an eight grade game coming back to the huddle and the lineman who played next to me was talking about his sister's homework. He clearly had a concussion and we (the players) sent him to the sideline where the coaches berated him for coming out of the game and sent him back (this was in the 80s).
Already at the JV level I saw multiple concussions in games. Not kos but guys woozy liked they'd been punched. Nobody cared back then (US south).
Is this magnified that NFL selects for big men hitting extra hard due to body size physics. Impact force / wear and tear / fatigue doesn't scale linearly to body mass receiving. Like if there was weight class / height class american football, where with BMI/FFMI cap, would smaller bodies beat the shit out of each other on the regular with less accumulated effects.
Played for four years ... my conclusion: regular, calm, ordinary people don't usually excel at american football. Aggressive, intense, competitive folk have a great time tho' ... it's not safe at all. Every last one of the starters self-identify as: a headbuster!
The lifetime risks and dangers involved in many of these sports is my main counterargument to those I encounter that oppose the NIL money flowing into collegiate sports for removing the amateurism feel of it.
The young men and women are putting their health and safety on the line potentially with life altering injuries, they should be compensated for it. Doubly so since beforehand the universities were more than happy to profit solely from their work.
This is such a brutal sport. For reasons outside my control (see: partner), NFL games are on in my house every weekend—and therefore in my peripheral vision. It seems like every game a 20 something in their prime is being carted off for a season ending injury. Unacceptable costs. Tennis is the way. Boxing without contact.
Holy buried lede, Batman:
>The bulk of the head impacts that these former NFL players experienced didn’t occur at the NFL level. They occurred at the collegiate level ... and at the high school level and in many cases the youth level. And all of those cumulative hits to the head added up to result in an increased risk,” said Daneshvar.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/nfl-cte-players-s...
As a youth football from 5 years old in the 90s to high school in 00s in the Midwest, this is not surprising at all. Things are competitive from a young age. We more recently know much better, but this knowledge. The taught knowledge was protecting one’s neck from injury with “proper” form. From my lived experience at those times, there was 0 mention of head injuries, and blacking out and dizziness after hits were ignored by all if you were able to stand or walk within a short period of time.
Great news for the NFL.
This is actually worse for the NFL, as it shows the cumulative impact is more dangerous than players who stop playing at high school
Yeah. The rules need to change substantially at all levels. I can't see another way out, without just banning the sport outright. In soccer, they've already done it at the kid's level. My kids' teams don't allow heading the ball at all. That's such an obvious win. It changes soccer pretty substantially, but it's still a lot of fun, and much safer with that rule in place. Football has enough money that I'm sure someone can solve this by adjusting the rules towards safety without completely changing what makes the game fun.
That said, it may not be solvable. It's not just helmet-to-helmet collisions that are the problem. You often see players make a diving grab, and their head slams into the ground when they land. That's micro-concussion territory that may be unavoidable. But, my guess is it's an 80/20 rule. If you somehow eliminate player-to-helmet hits altogether, you'd probably end up in a good enough place.
Why can't CTE be diagnosed until after death? Do the lesions not show up in scans?
Glad this is being talked about.
The game should be changed. It’s very clear.
People will adapt.
What is the percent of the general population?
The percent of the general population that gets Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy? This isn't a naturally occurring phenomena. It's the cumulative result of repetitive skull impacts and concussions.
Basically zero. It only happens if you keep getting hit in the head.
Google gives 3-6% in non-athletes
Not sure what source that is, but that seems way too high to be non-athletes.
A recent prior study - I think one of those mentioned in the article - said other studies found very little, maybe one or two brains in the samples. And that included a study of military veterans.
Note that ex-players dying last decade played ~50 years prior, in the ~1960s. It was a significantly more violent game than it is today. Look up Chuck Bednarik's famous hit on Frank Gifford, and Bednarik's reaction after - that was a highlight.
I still think it's dangerous and changes are needed, but today's players are safer.
I know the millennial urge is to have everything condensed down to a one minute video that knocks down orthodox thinking and presents a bold new idea that magically no one has ever thought of before. It's never as simple as they make it seem. However, that's actually the case here - the solution seems to boil down to banning tackles in practice until HS or college outside of gamedays and acknowledging that five-year-olds can still sustain CTE.
https://youtu.be/V7MOK-F8o5I?si=ClJcs-vYmSWv_Ph8
I wonder if it's possible to take the head out of American football, and use helmets as just extra protection in accidents - like helmets in almost every other endeavor (climbing, construction, bicycling, etc.). Make it a game played from the neck down.
You can count on people saying it's impossible, 'this isn't football', players saying 'I can't play this way; I'll retire', etc. That happens with every change, including the ones that all the players accept and play with now, and which are part of the most popular sport in the U.S. Not unlike responses to changes in technology.
Already, things like helmet-to-helmet hits, spearing helmet-first, etc. are against the rules (I don't know the exact rules). Players can control what body parts make contact with what on the opposing player - obviously: in other things in life, including other sports, you don't instinctively lead with your skull.
I would guess that blocking between the offensive and defensive lines would be the biggest change. They begin inches apart and slam into each other at the start of each play, and generally whoever gets leverage lower will win. I think it would just look different, more arms and less body-to-body.
Also, are there sensors for helmets that would pickup impacts? I think sensing the accoustics / vibrations might be sufficient.
This isn't an NFL problem, it's the very nature of the game. The lifelong damage is done by the time they reach that point. Average NFL tenure is less than 4 years, but anyone who reaches that level has been playing since they were 8.
I'm kinda surprised its that low. Football, especially at the pro and college levels, has players (especially linemen) taking car crash level hits every single play.