Link: What's the end game from all the concussion debate across football?

Bamabuzzard

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http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/15176495/bruce-arians-arizona-cardinals-moms-afraid-let-sons-play-football

I linked an article from ESPN where Bruce Arians for the second time in only a few weeks or so has publicly spoken out about the game being under attack. Speaking to highschool coaches and anyone with a microphone in their hand he's basically advocated the game and has said the game is being attacked.


But here's my question, with all this attention being brought to the NFL and the game of football regarding the dangers of CTE. What is the end result of it? Are people going to continue to push until the game is basically risk free from head injury? If so, what type of game will we have? Will it be worth watching? Or will the game ultimately die on the vine from parents not allowing their kids to play?

Where is the game headed with this?
 

mdb-tpet

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http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/15176495/bruce-arians-arizona-cardinals-moms-afraid-let-sons-play-football

I linked an article from ESPN where Bruce Arians for the second time in only a few weeks or so has publicly spoken out about the game being under attack. Speaking to highschool coaches and anyone with a microphone in their hand he's basically advocated the game and has said the game is being attacked.


But here's my question, with all this attention being brought to the NFL and the game of football regarding the dangers of CTE. What is the end result of it? Are people going to continue to push until the game is basically risk free from head injury? If so, what type of game will we have? Will it be worth watching? Or will the game ultimately die on the vine from parents not allowing their kids to play?

Where is the game headed with this?
The game must move to a less physically damaging model to be viable long term. I don't know how long it can stand to be a sport that damages brains for life, although, science and medicine may figure out how to manage CTE in near future. Then there's knee, spine, shoulder, etc. issues.

I just hope football doesn't continue to deflect/confuse model of marketing and information that other industries have used so well (Tobacco, lead, etc.). However, for whatever reason new people still start smoking everyday (WTH is wrong with those people?).

The end game I think will be changing tackling methods, helmet shock sensors, long term player health tracking, no/limited tackling in youth leagues, and some unthought of changes coming soon.
 

Intl.Aperture

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Tough to know. As far as bodily or head injury related arguments, I always look at MMA, UFC and Boxing as other sports where the prime objective is bodily harm. So on those grounds I don't know how much could be done against the league. On player level, as long as there is fame and money to be had, there will be players. As far as professions go it's hardly the most dangerous and the lucrative pay makes it desirable. I think the media's problem with the whole ordeal is that it appears perverse to derive entertainment or pleasure from an act that may eventually cripple a person completely. Which is why I brought up fighting. (Feel free to compare and contrast the 2 until the cows come home, I've no interest in dissecting it needlessly.)

I think ultimately the big effect on the sport will be smaller talent pools but it's hard to see it falling out of favor with the public. It would be several generations of change because it's so ingrained in our society -it's a part of this nation's DNA at this point. What I COULD see happening is more of a crackdown at the collegiate level. With the way college campuses are behaving of recent it would not surprise me if there was a movement to restrict the sport in some way. That could potentially start something.

This is as large a sociological occurrence as any in the country. This sport is pervasive in every American's life so the opinions and perception, and therefore actions and consequences will be almost unpredictable. I have a harder time knowing how all this will shake out than a political election.
 

Tideflyer

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It`s hard for me to imagine the game being the same as it is today in 10-15 years time, if not sooner. The nature of the game itself, when married up with the size, speed, and inertia of the modern player, is just not compatible with the structure of the human body.
 

davefrat

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I don't think it's limited to concussions anymore regarding long term health concerns.
the fact of the matter is that the game is so brutal that it leaves relatively young men (in their 40's and 50's) in the condition of men in their 70's.
if they don't have brain damage, they have crippling orthopedic problems.
I love the game, but I'm not sure how much longer it will continue in its current form.
 

CrimsonForce

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Part of the end game is perfectly healthy and elite players retiring early from the NFL such as Calvin Johnson, BJ Raji, D'Brickashaw Ferguson etc. In the long term it could bring down the overall level of play in the NFL but I don't think that would impact the popularity of the NFL. Outside of the that I'm not sure what the negative ramifications would be..
 

KrAzY3

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I think a lot of what we're seeing is not indicative of "normal" football play. We see people who played professionally, in many cases well into their 30s paraded out as examples of what football can do to you, but do you know anyone who had a physically demanding profession that they did for over ten years and doesn't exhibit signs of wear and tear? I don't, it comes with the territory. Where my dad worked there were guys that died on the job, guys with missing fingers, guys who got cancer, heck my dad got an asbestos settlement. My dad died of cancer in his 60s, how do I know it wasn't work related? They are not going to do a multi-million dollar study on that though. Does that mean you shouldn't try to make a safe work environment and accept inevitable consequences? Of course you should try to make things safer, but people simply have to accept that some professions are going to come with certain dangers. Racing, boxing, MMA, but not just sports. Firemen, miners, soldiers, etc... one can easily compile a list of professions that are extremely likely to produce long-term consequences.

If one really wants to avoid the pitfalls of those things, then one shouldn't wait until your body is broken down to get out of them. A soldier shouldn't wait until he's forced to resign, a boxer shouldn't wait until he can't physically stand in the ring anymore, and a football player shouldn't wait until he can't play the game anymore. This is more about knowing your limitations than anything else. Everyone always knew football over a matter of decades could cause harm, this was never up for debate. The key is to know when to give it up. We simply can't criticize players for retiring "early", because what they are really doing is retiring at a point in time in which their injuries are minimal.

Another thing we are missing here is that most people who play football are not dealing with major issues for the rest of their life. Look at Nick Saban, how many people do you know his age that have his mental sharpness and his physical mobility? He's a product of football to and this is what people forget. This is a game that can be good for the individual playing it, this is a game that has health benefits as well. I'd argue that if the choice is between your kid sitting on a couch eating a bag of chips or playing football, he's probably going to lead a healthier life if he chooses the latter. And that's a key point. Don't confuse a few years of amateur football with playing at the professional level for over a decade, it's simply not the same.

Then, we have the scientific side of things. The data is not really conclusive yet. It appears that playing football can lead to certain changes in the brain but the exact implications of this are unknown. The obvious thing here is to try and protect the head from harm. The one thing though is treatment and that's part of what we are not really looking at here. In the past, these issues were compounded. Someone would get a concussion, then continue playing while their brain was not healed. Healing, proper care, etc... are all frontiers that science needs to focus on in this case. It's not just about avoiding injuries (which can be incurred doing almost anything), it's about how to treat and heal these. I think that's one of the biggest issues in this entire situation, they acted as though there was no damage at all and anyone who has injured something and then tried to go on as though it's not usually found they only made it worse.

Finally, there's the fan aspect. I'm sorry, but unless they make the game unwatchable, I don't see it as dying out. You know football was originally almost banned right? That boxing was banned? MMA was severely limited in the beginning, etc... There's an appetite for these sort of sports both from the fan perspective and the player perspective. If you want to hit somebody, it's darn sure better to do it in a ring, or a cell, or on a football field than anywhere else for example.
 
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CaliforniaTide

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I think the ultimate effect is a long ways off. The way I see it, a lot of the issues we're seeing pop up right now are a result of the old practices/attitudes. Currently there is a shift in attitudes and practices towards CTE and hits to the head. Since it's football, I don't see how you could ever eliminate CTE due to the natural circumstances of the brain - it just isn't possible. It may mean less people playing football, but sometimes, that's okay.
 

B1GTide

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I have read studies that make pretty compelling correlative cases for the link between CTE and head injuries (and sports like football). But, just as we still hear people say that we only have correlative evidence tying cancer to cigarette smoking, we have NFL executives arguing that a causative link has not been "proven" here. Well, until we make some huge jump in our technological ability that will enable us to see into the workings of the human brain in real time without limiting a person's life in so doing, we will always be limited to correlation. Proving cause in some things just isn't possible with current technology so we have to err on the side of human safety.

So, I believe that football damages the brains of the people who play the sport. But I also believe that we should be free to play a sport with this kind of risk once we reach our age of majority. The real question for me is, should society protect children from the sport even if their parents approve? That is really a political question, but the future of the sport will be determined by the direction that we take as a nation.
 

KrAzY3

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I have read studies that make pretty compelling correlative cases for the link between CTE and head injuries (and sports like football).
There's two major issues here though. One is exactly what CTE does, and how to treat it. What we are witnessing here is a condition caused not just by harm done but by harm being done and going untreated. Medical science really needs to pin down not just what CTE does, other than just naming an abnormality, but then it needs to get into how to treat it. I have some annoyance in pointing at something we don't understand well at all and blaming everything on it. That isn't even the biggest issue to me though.

We are most likely looking at the consequence of an injury not being treated and then the area being re-injured repeatedly. Almost any strenuous activity if done in excess will produce harmful side effects. Running for instance, will lead to damage if you do it in excess. Yet most people would argue running is healthy. So we need to determine to what extent the harm done reaches a level that the body can't just naturally heal itself.

Then we get into an area that medical science is very limited in. How do you heal the brain? The brain in some ways can heal itself and we have some ways of treating certain things. Often though, if there's harm done to the brain we just view it as permanent. That's not necessarily the case, it's just a limitation of where medical science is right now. So, a major thing going forward has to be ok how do we bring the brain back to a healthy state and now do we properly treat a fresh injury and help it heal. It is in a way like setting a broken bone. If you set it and treat it properly, the area will heal fine in most cases. If you do not, however, there will be long term consequences. I believe that's a significant portion of what is actually going on.

It simply isn't realistic to tell everyone, no more contact. That's not going to be a resolution. Ban hockey, ban heading in soccer, ban boxing, ban football, ban mma, etc... you can't just make it all go away. So prevention and treatment has to go hand in hand. But, there always has to be the knowledge that a body is likely to only take so much, there's nothing wrong with retiring from pro-sports when you are 30. There should be no shame in that and people can retire at 30 and lead a long healthy life (there are plenty of examples of people doing just that), whether they were a boxer, a football player, or a MMA fighter. It's often the ones that can't let it go that end up paying the highest price.
 

RTR91

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I have read studies that make pretty compelling correlative cases for the link between CTE and head injuries (and sports like football). But, just as we still hear people say that we only have correlative evidence tying cancer to cigarette smoking, we have NFL executives arguing that a causative link has not been "proven" here. Well, until we make some huge jump in our technological ability that will enable us to see into the workings of the human brain in real time without limiting a person's life in so doing, we will always be limited to correlation. Proving cause in some things just isn't possible with current technology so we have to err on the side of human safety.

So, I believe that football damages the brains of the people who play the sport. But I also believe that we should be free to play a sport with this kind of risk once we reach our age of majority. The real question for me is, should society protect children from the sport even if their parents approve? That is really a political question, but the future of the sport will be determined by the direction that we take as a nation.
CTE has become a trigger acronym now.

Exhibit A

To write a headline stating Stabler had CTE is more than a joke. He didn't die because he had CTE, but because CTE is such a hot topic right now we get those headlines.

You give the example of cigarettes and cancer. The parallel headline would be "Roger Peterson had Cancer" even though Roger Peterson died from a car accident.

I've mentioned it before, but Mike Golic had a very good rant about it one day after we learned Frank Gifford had CTE. Did he die because of CTE or natural causes after living 84 years?
 

theballguy

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We are a very litigious country. That's the only reason for all this. The NFL doesn't want to get sued down the road. People like being outraged. Also, for some reason, we feel like we need to prevent every negative thing that will ever happen to people. Find the cause (or what we think is the cause) and change laws to "fix" it. Note that the news these days is not about reporting bad events nearly as much as it is editorializing what the reporter thinks will fix the problem du jour. Football is supposed to be brutal. We may as well switch it to rugby or soccer but I'm sure we'll find something wrong with those eventually. Maybe basketball on grass will make everyone feel better. Wuss country.
 

RobK

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Or will the game ultimately die on the vine from parents not allowing their kids to play?


THIS
I think this is why the NFL is so aggressively marketing their league and the game internationally (with games in London, China, Mexico City, etc.). They know that in the next decade or so, the domestic talent pool with decline considerably. But the developing an international talent pool (given the lack of infrastructure, youth leagues, etc.) will be much harder than it will be to develop an international fan base.
 

KrAzY3

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CTE has become a trigger acronym now.

Exhibit A

To write a headline stating Stabler had CTE is more than a joke. He didn't die because he had CTE, but because CTE is such a hot topic right now we get those headlines.

You give the example of cigarettes and cancer. The parallel headline would be "Roger Peterson had Cancer" even though Roger Peterson died from a car accident.

I've mentioned it before, but Mike Golic had a very good rant about it one day after we learned Frank Gifford had CTE. Did he die because of CTE or natural causes after living 84 years?
That's one of the main things I take issue with. They are yelling CTE at every turn, without actually connecting CTE to symptoms in some of these individuals. It is all just "THEY HAVE CTE!". Frank Gifford lived a long life and was active in a career well past retirement age. Does that mean CTE did him no harm? No, but what harm did CTE do to him? That's the burden of proof.

Anyway, as to participation in football and what not... how many people does anyone here know that box or do MMA? Now how many people do you know that are fans of one of those sports? There's nothing at all that says there has to be a massive number of people competing for the sport to be popular with fans.
 

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