7 ms·

N.F.L. Tried to Influence New Concussion Research, Congressional Study Finds

190 points by jstreebin 10y ago

DannyBee 10y ago
"“A series of misunderstandings and disputes might have been avoided had F.N.I.H. reminded the N.F.L. of its obligation to fund the study” under the original agreement years before, the study concluded." Yeah, i mean, i can't count the number of times basically threatening someone who wants to pull out of funding has avoided "misunderstandings" and "disputes". Oh wait, no, it's done the exact opposite.
cheeze 10y ago
The problem that I see with the NFL is that they are essentially a monopoly on American Football. As a fan, I don't really have any choices. I detest many things that the NFL does, can't believe some of the players are allowed to play the game after what they do outside of work, etc. yet I have no option if I want to watch football. Combine this with the fact that NFL football is culturally ingrained in many peoples lives and you end up with a behemoth that can't be stopped. Even if I wanted to boycott the NFL (more than I do as-is), the game will be on at literally every food/drink establishment I enter, people will be talking about it (and playing fantasy) at work, and on Thanksgiving, my family is going to watch football, that's just how it is. I really wish there was some alternative. I would gladly support a league of slightly worse players if it wasn't as scummy as the NFL has proven itself to be.
- some-guy 10y ago
  The real question is: if this information about the link between health and playing football becomes more widespread, will people stop playing? People certainly wouldn't stop watching due to the culture that you describe, but I assume that young would-be players may second-guess their decisions. The smaller the talent pool of a sport, the less competitive and skillful it becomes. I'm not convinced that the NFL as an organization would completely suffer though.
  - chc 10y ago
    I don't think an up-and-comer aiming for a career in the NFL is someone who really cares about the odds or the downsides of that choice. The most likely outcome of that career path is failure even if you don't get injured.
    - brndn 10y ago
      There have been a few recent cases of NFL players retiring early due to the long-term health concerns of concussions, but it's certainly not common.
  - ProAm 10y ago
    The minute there is a successful lawsuit at the high school or collegiate level where the school must pay 1 million plus you will start to see a change. I would guess high schools will drop the sport, and colleges will need to do something to either compensate players or also drop the sport. No one wants that much financial liability on their ledger.
  - Thriptic 10y ago
    The biggest risk to the NFL isn't young players finding the game dangerous, but their concerned moms. If the middle school and high school programs die off from parental concern then the NFL is doomed.
- powera 10y ago
  There is high school football, college football, the Arena league, soccer. The NFL is by no means "a monopoly on football". It is a monopoly on televised football on Sundays, I suppose. Which isn't really a monopoly at all.
  - forrestthewoods 10y ago
    It's a monopoly on professional football. The players association has even filed lawsuits with respect to collusion and anti-trust.
- r00fus 10y ago
  > I would gladly support a league of slightly worse players if it wasn't as scummy as the NFL has proven itself to be. Isn't this what the USFL and XFL were intended to be? Even if the other league were to focus on niches (like indoor football). I don't see how this changes without some anti-trust kind of oversight by a higher authority than the already profit-focused (with the consequential ethically blinders) NFL.
  - karmelapple 10y ago
    College football, although it feeds the NFL, still has some rules in place that reduce some of the bad behavior. Of course, there's plenty of problems there, too, but these days I feel much less guilty cheering for a university team than for a pro team.
    - askldfhjkasfhd 10y ago
      I disagree. At least in the NFL, players are making (incredibly good) money. In the NCAA, so many "student"-athletes are taken advantage of much more than NFL players.
      - newjersey 10y ago
        I absolutely agree. The situation would be different if the coaches/college administrators didn't make so much money. I still wonder: would it break any laws for a university system to institute a pay cap across the board?
        askldfhjkasfhd 10y ago
        Let's not forget the college itself is making an unhealthy amount of money. It's not just the personnel, it's the universities. I attended Vanderbilt and was incredibly proud to see then-Chancellor Gee actually eliminated teh athletic department. He believed the department had too much power because of it's revenue generating capabilities, and the only way around that was elimination.
    - 10y ago
- karmajunkie 10y ago
  I imagine there were some very progressively-minded patricians in ancient Rome saying much the same thing about gladiators in the coliseum.
  - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
    I wonder, but I doubt it. Gladiator stuff originated as funerary ritual. So being religious, there's pretty much already a monopoly.
- balls187 10y ago
  At the same time, there are a lot of really GREAT NFL players who do great things for their communities. Surely if a few shitheads spoil the NFL for you, the many more that are perennial nominees for the Walter Payton Player Award should make it easier to support.
- joshkpeterson 10y ago
  You're welcome to watch another sport. There's plenty of good ones, you might not miss football.
- mikestew 10y ago
  The "as a fan" part makes my solution difficult. Me, I just don't pay attention at all partly out of the issues you mention (to me, it's ethically along the lines of watching gladiators in ancient Rome; YMMV), and also because I just don't find it interesting. It does make me a little out of touch, for instance a coworker on Slack compared the gait of someone in the office to "Marshawn". I thought they misspelled "marshmallow". Oooooh, that explains those "beast mode" stickers that never made any sense until now. I did, however, kind of go through the same thing with pro cycling (and cycling in general) once it turned out that, by my assessment, the whole sport was full of PEDs top-to-bottom. I just quit watching, and watch other sports like MotoGP. And you know what? I don't need to watch paid professionals spin their legs in circles. Maybe you don't need to watch 300 lb. men run into each other as hard as they can. Oh, you used to play football, hence your interest? I used to be a next-stop-is-a-pro-contract bike racer. Regional-level race official once the legs got old and the dreams of a pro contract had long since died. That's a sunk cost, and the whole thing disgusted me enough to just quit paying attention. You won't right any wrongs by not watching football, make no mistake. But at some point one needs to weigh whether "being a fan" is more important than not participating in a part of popular culture that has aspects that you "detest".
- hoorayimhelping 10y ago
  College football is a great alternative, as is the NHL. The NHL doesn't seem to have the same kind of conduct or injury problems that the NFL does. NCAA football isn't as tight or disciplined as the NFL, but the variance in skill level leads to some really exciting moments, and the passion and excitement really comes through most broadcasts. Way more teams means way more football.
  - washadjeffmad 10y ago
    College aged adults aren't immune to the long term effects of repeated head trauma. Unreported injuries among younger players may even be worse because of lying to stay in the game or trying to go all out to get noticed and win that lottery so many poor, talented kids buy into. But you don't see what happens after the years of them hurting themselves; no one follows and reports on the has beens who never made it, the ones who failed on the road the stardom. Football is dangerous to long term brain health as long as people are impacting at any force with their heads and spines. There's more to the game than brute collisions and take downs, but it needs a rules update for it to be on the right side of modern medical science in the 21st century. The only reasons not to are to protect the feelings of everyone who's been rooting on the pain and to shield the heads (how funny) from liability and litigation against their investments. If they admit the way it's being played hurts people and damages their brains, it'll be a shitstorm of guilt and blame. Parents, coaches, and fans all over are going to blame themselves for pushing their and other people's kids into getting late life brain damage for some local fame and and viewing pleasure. Right now, someone is running damage control in the news saying reported concussions are higher for every sport compared to football-- emphasis on reported. No one is writing it down because it's just a "part of the game" unless they get knocked out or seize and EMS is called. If you're still on your feet and a smelling salt[1] gets your eyes focused, you're not concussed, you just need to toughen up. I wish I were exaggerating. [1] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6_QhPICfavwJ:escholarship.org/uc/item/7qq7b12k.pdf+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
stanfordkid 10y ago
follow the fucking money don't listen to words ... when will people learn?
dluan 10y ago
In 200 years, when we look back on how science was funded, it will seem backwards and poorly designed. Big money has infiltrated politics, media & journalism, and of course science, but for some reason the public regards scientific research as still somewhat authentic and immune to corruption. This is far from the truth, especially in the U.S., there is hardly any authentic science left. Even those well intentioned researchers play into the system of perverse incentives; publish or perish. Climate science, tobacco research, energy (see fracking), sugar, pharma (see IP), the field of macroeconomics, etc there need to be changes if not at least different avenues for how research is funded. Otherwise it will lead to what I like to think of as intellectual inequality.
- tlb 10y ago
  The vast majority of science research doesn't affect public policy. It's toward some goal, like making a process work better. Those scientists still need to be honest, but nobody is throwing big money at them to sway their agenda. Then sometimes, suddenly, huge money depends on a question of science. I assume concussion research was like this for a long time: they were just trying to find the best way to heal brains after damage, and it was fine to take money from whomever would fund it. Then suddenly there's a question relevant to policy: do football players suffer a lot of permanent brain damage? In fact it's crazy that such research would be funded by an organization that would be destroyed if the answer turned out a certain way. One should expect no better than with cigarette companies funding lung cancer research.
  - themartorana 10y ago
    When an organization "funds" research that comes to a conclusion said organization knows to be false, that is fraud, outright. We should not accept fraud as "par for the course" or "we should expect no better." Actively attempting to defraud customers, employees, or government should be a crime.
    - tlb 10y ago
      How could they know something to be false, when their own scientists said it was true? They should have known it was bullshit (in Frankfurt's technical sense [0]), though. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit: "As such, bullshit can be neither true nor false; hence, the bullshitter is someone whose principal aim—when uttering or publishing bullshit—is to impress the listener and the reader with words that communicate an impression that something is being or has been done, words that are neither true nor false, and so obscure the facts of the matter being discussed"
tn13 10y ago
Private parties trying to influence research in a way that it benefits them ? I am not surprised at all. I think the worse trend is when government authorities do this. Then it becomes witch-hunt. "Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker used Greenpeace list to target climate change skeptics" http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/4/virgin-islands-attorney-general-claude-walker-used/?page=all http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/4/virgin-island...
tacojuan 10y ago
The NFL is trying it's damned hardest to become as corrupt as FIFA
bvladimir 10y ago
Do u need to hire licensed hackers who can even stand in court, they offer the best hacking services ranging from background checks,upgrade results, surveillance ( includes access to social networks, social servers, icloud and much more). infidelity cases and can trace people, totally worth your money. you can reach them by email : whitewiz007@programmer.net
KevinEldon 10y ago
When this issue of safety comes up I wonder why the NFL is being assigned responsibility for protecting the players when the players have the ability to define rules to protect their own safety through their union. The union should fund studies, provide their own doctors and trainers, and fight for the rights to ensure the rules of the game align to their findings and keep their members as safe as they want to be.
- themartorana 10y ago
  It's not that they're being assigned responsibility so much as actively campaigning against it - which puts them squarely in the middle of the issue. If the union was fighting for safety while the NFL was remaining quiet it'd be one thing. But when the organization is actually working to make the game more dangerous, they've squared off against the players.
- balls187 10y ago
  It's a good question, and I suspect that it's because the players who could influence that decision (the leaders and highly paid super star athletes), are not incentivized to sour their relationship with the NFL and the team owners over the health and well being of all players. That is, their individual goal is to maximize the money they make while they play, and fighting for better working conditions may run orthogonal to that. The NFLPA has a lot of good intentions, but without the support of the league stars, it's difficult to make any reason progress.
  - KevinEldon 10y ago
    I think you're probably right and wonder then if it's not the players themselves who are to blame (at least when the fans/public gets "outraged" about this issue). It's awkward to assign (some) blame to the same class that contains the victims, but it seems in their own pursuit of wealth they might be forfeiting their own safety. Owners would care about the short-term safety of players so that they can realize their investments, but really don't have any long term incentive to care care about player health.
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
The NFL is probably going to be subject to an RJR vs. United States thing soon enough.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
patrickburke 10y ago
The Frontline on this issue was good. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/league-of-denial/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/league-of-denial/
m0llusk 10y ago
This sport will be dead in a generation or two. Parents don't want their kids doing something that demonstrably causes brain damage. Without a full cohort of kids involved the level of competition will starve off interest in the sport.
- wiseleo 10y ago
  There will still be plenty of broke parents who will want to give their children that one shot at stardom. Take a look at backgrounds of fighters in boxing and MMA. These sports are explicitly about hurting the other person and people still volunteer to participate.
  - mindcrime 10y ago
    FWIW, MMA is likely much less brutal than boxing or football. Lighter gloves provide less hand protection, and many fights end in a submission instead of a knockout. And assuming you tap out appropriately, there's no serious injury from a knee bar, or a heel hook, or even a rear naked choke.
cwilkes 10y ago
Why didn't they go to Paul Allen's brain institute for research?
tosseraccount 10y ago
NFL is pretty tame. This is tougher : http://deadspin.com/crazy-ass-italian-sport-combines-rugby-with-bare-knuckl-1612721772 http://deadspin.com/crazy-ass-italian-sport-combines-rugby-w...
snarfy 10y ago
With 80% of basic cable bills going to pay for ESPN, NFL as a non-profit organization, and all of tax breaks and stadiums paid for with taxes, it is absolutely disgusting the level of subsidizes going into football. They'll cancel band class and shop class, but the high school football team will still get new uniforms. There are so many better things the money and energy could be used for, things that actually improve society. Instead we have a method of crowd control that goes back to the Romans.
- samfisher83 10y ago
  Espn costs about 6.61. Not 80% of the cable bill. http://www.whatyoupayforsports.com/numbers/ http://www.whatyoupayforsports.com/numbers/
cadou191 10y ago
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190 points by jstreebin 10y ago

"“A series of misunderstandings and disputes might have been avoided had F.N.I.H. reminded the N.F.L. of its obligation to fund the study” under the original agreement years before, the study concluded." Yeah, i mean, i can't count the number of times basically threatening someone who wants to pull out of funding has avoided "misunderstandings" and "disputes". Oh wait, no, it's done the exact opposite.

cheeze 10y ago

The problem that I see with the NFL is that they are essentially a monopoly on American Football. As a fan, I don't really have any choices. I detest many things that the NFL does, can't believe some of the players are allowed to play the game after what they do outside of work, etc. yet I have no option if I want to watch football. Combine this with the fact that NFL football is culturally ingrained in many peoples lives and you end up with a behemoth that can't be stopped. Even if I wanted to boycott the NFL (more than I do as-is), the game will be on at literally every food/drink establishment I enter, people will be talking about it (and playing fantasy) at work, and on Thanksgiving, my family is going to watch football, that's just how it is. I really wish there was some alternative. I would gladly support a league of slightly worse players if it wasn't as scummy as the NFL has proven itself to be.

some-guy 10y ago
The real question is: if this information about the link between health and playing football becomes more widespread, will people stop playing? People certainly wouldn't stop watching due to the culture that you describe, but I assume that young would-be players may second-guess their decisions. The smaller the talent pool of a sport, the less competitive and skillful it becomes. I'm not convinced that the NFL as an organization would completely suffer though.
- chc 10y ago
  I don't think an up-and-comer aiming for a career in the NFL is someone who really cares about the odds or the downsides of that choice. The most likely outcome of that career path is failure even if you don't get injured.
  - brndn 10y ago
    There have been a few recent cases of NFL players retiring early due to the long-term health concerns of concussions, but it's certainly not common.
- ProAm 10y ago
  The minute there is a successful lawsuit at the high school or collegiate level where the school must pay 1 million plus you will start to see a change. I would guess high schools will drop the sport, and colleges will need to do something to either compensate players or also drop the sport. No one wants that much financial liability on their ledger.
- Thriptic 10y ago
  The biggest risk to the NFL isn't young players finding the game dangerous, but their concerned moms. If the middle school and high school programs die off from parental concern then the NFL is doomed.
powera 10y ago
There is high school football, college football, the Arena league, soccer. The NFL is by no means "a monopoly on football". It is a monopoly on televised football on Sundays, I suppose. Which isn't really a monopoly at all.
- forrestthewoods 10y ago
  It's a monopoly on professional football. The players association has even filed lawsuits with respect to collusion and anti-trust.
r00fus 10y ago
> I would gladly support a league of slightly worse players if it wasn't as scummy as the NFL has proven itself to be. Isn't this what the USFL and XFL were intended to be? Even if the other league were to focus on niches (like indoor football). I don't see how this changes without some anti-trust kind of oversight by a higher authority than the already profit-focused (with the consequential ethically blinders) NFL.
- karmelapple 10y ago
  College football, although it feeds the NFL, still has some rules in place that reduce some of the bad behavior. Of course, there's plenty of problems there, too, but these days I feel much less guilty cheering for a university team than for a pro team.
  - askldfhjkasfhd 10y ago
    I disagree. At least in the NFL, players are making (incredibly good) money. In the NCAA, so many "student"-athletes are taken advantage of much more than NFL players.
    - newjersey 10y ago
      I absolutely agree. The situation would be different if the coaches/college administrators didn't make so much money. I still wonder: would it break any laws for a university system to institute a pay cap across the board?
      - askldfhjkasfhd 10y ago
        Let's not forget the college itself is making an unhealthy amount of money. It's not just the personnel, it's the universities. I attended Vanderbilt and was incredibly proud to see then-Chancellor Gee actually eliminated teh athletic department. He believed the department had too much power because of it's revenue generating capabilities, and the only way around that was elimination.
  - 10y ago
karmajunkie 10y ago
I imagine there were some very progressively-minded patricians in ancient Rome saying much the same thing about gladiators in the coliseum.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  I wonder, but I doubt it. Gladiator stuff originated as funerary ritual. So being religious, there's pretty much already a monopoly.
balls187 10y ago
At the same time, there are a lot of really GREAT NFL players who do great things for their communities. Surely if a few shitheads spoil the NFL for you, the many more that are perennial nominees for the Walter Payton Player Award should make it easier to support.
joshkpeterson 10y ago
You're welcome to watch another sport. There's plenty of good ones, you might not miss football.
mikestew 10y ago
The "as a fan" part makes my solution difficult. Me, I just don't pay attention at all partly out of the issues you mention (to me, it's ethically along the lines of watching gladiators in ancient Rome; YMMV), and also because I just don't find it interesting. It does make me a little out of touch, for instance a coworker on Slack compared the gait of someone in the office to "Marshawn". I thought they misspelled "marshmallow". Oooooh, that explains those "beast mode" stickers that never made any sense until now. I did, however, kind of go through the same thing with pro cycling (and cycling in general) once it turned out that, by my assessment, the whole sport was full of PEDs top-to-bottom. I just quit watching, and watch other sports like MotoGP. And you know what? I don't need to watch paid professionals spin their legs in circles. Maybe you don't need to watch 300 lb. men run into each other as hard as they can. Oh, you used to play football, hence your interest? I used to be a next-stop-is-a-pro-contract bike racer. Regional-level race official once the legs got old and the dreams of a pro contract had long since died. That's a sunk cost, and the whole thing disgusted me enough to just quit paying attention. You won't right any wrongs by not watching football, make no mistake. But at some point one needs to weigh whether "being a fan" is more important than not participating in a part of popular culture that has aspects that you "detest".
hoorayimhelping 10y ago
College football is a great alternative, as is the NHL. The NHL doesn't seem to have the same kind of conduct or injury problems that the NFL does. NCAA football isn't as tight or disciplined as the NFL, but the variance in skill level leads to some really exciting moments, and the passion and excitement really comes through most broadcasts. Way more teams means way more football.
- washadjeffmad 10y ago
  College aged adults aren't immune to the long term effects of repeated head trauma. Unreported injuries among younger players may even be worse because of lying to stay in the game or trying to go all out to get noticed and win that lottery so many poor, talented kids buy into. But you don't see what happens after the years of them hurting themselves; no one follows and reports on the has beens who never made it, the ones who failed on the road the stardom. Football is dangerous to long term brain health as long as people are impacting at any force with their heads and spines. There's more to the game than brute collisions and take downs, but it needs a rules update for it to be on the right side of modern medical science in the 21st century. The only reasons not to are to protect the feelings of everyone who's been rooting on the pain and to shield the heads (how funny) from liability and litigation against their investments. If they admit the way it's being played hurts people and damages their brains, it'll be a shitstorm of guilt and blame. Parents, coaches, and fans all over are going to blame themselves for pushing their and other people's kids into getting late life brain damage for some local fame and and viewing pleasure. Right now, someone is running damage control in the news saying reported concussions are higher for every sport compared to football-- emphasis on reported. No one is writing it down because it's just a "part of the game" unless they get knocked out or seize and EMS is called. If you're still on your feet and a smelling salt[1] gets your eyes focused, you're not concussed, you just need to toughen up. I wish I were exaggerating. [1] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6_QhPICfavwJ:escholarship.org/uc/item/7qq7b12k.pdf+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

stanfordkid 10y ago

follow the fucking money don't listen to words ... when will people learn?

dluan 10y ago

In 200 years, when we look back on how science was funded, it will seem backwards and poorly designed. Big money has infiltrated politics, media & journalism, and of course science, but for some reason the public regards scientific research as still somewhat authentic and immune to corruption. This is far from the truth, especially in the U.S., there is hardly any authentic science left. Even those well intentioned researchers play into the system of perverse incentives; publish or perish. Climate science, tobacco research, energy (see fracking), sugar, pharma (see IP), the field of macroeconomics, etc there need to be changes if not at least different avenues for how research is funded. Otherwise it will lead to what I like to think of as intellectual inequality.

tlb 10y ago
The vast majority of science research doesn't affect public policy. It's toward some goal, like making a process work better. Those scientists still need to be honest, but nobody is throwing big money at them to sway their agenda. Then sometimes, suddenly, huge money depends on a question of science. I assume concussion research was like this for a long time: they were just trying to find the best way to heal brains after damage, and it was fine to take money from whomever would fund it. Then suddenly there's a question relevant to policy: do football players suffer a lot of permanent brain damage? In fact it's crazy that such research would be funded by an organization that would be destroyed if the answer turned out a certain way. One should expect no better than with cigarette companies funding lung cancer research.
- themartorana 10y ago
  When an organization "funds" research that comes to a conclusion said organization knows to be false, that is fraud, outright. We should not accept fraud as "par for the course" or "we should expect no better." Actively attempting to defraud customers, employees, or government should be a crime.
  - tlb 10y ago
    How could they know something to be false, when their own scientists said it was true? They should have known it was bullshit (in Frankfurt's technical sense [0]), though. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit: "As such, bullshit can be neither true nor false; hence, the bullshitter is someone whose principal aim—when uttering or publishing bullshit—is to impress the listener and the reader with words that communicate an impression that something is being or has been done, words that are neither true nor false, and so obscure the facts of the matter being discussed"

tn13 10y ago

Private parties trying to influence research in a way that it benefits them ? I am not surprised at all. I think the worse trend is when government authorities do this. Then it becomes witch-hunt. "Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker used Greenpeace list to target climate change skeptics" http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/4/virgin-islands-attorney-general-claude-walker-used/?page=all http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/4/virgin-island...

tacojuan 10y ago

The NFL is trying it's damned hardest to become as corrupt as FIFA

bvladimir 10y ago

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KevinEldon 10y ago

When this issue of safety comes up I wonder why the NFL is being assigned responsibility for protecting the players when the players have the ability to define rules to protect their own safety through their union. The union should fund studies, provide their own doctors and trainers, and fight for the rights to ensure the rules of the game align to their findings and keep their members as safe as they want to be.

themartorana 10y ago
It's not that they're being assigned responsibility so much as actively campaigning against it - which puts them squarely in the middle of the issue. If the union was fighting for safety while the NFL was remaining quiet it'd be one thing. But when the organization is actually working to make the game more dangerous, they've squared off against the players.
balls187 10y ago
It's a good question, and I suspect that it's because the players who could influence that decision (the leaders and highly paid super star athletes), are not incentivized to sour their relationship with the NFL and the team owners over the health and well being of all players. That is, their individual goal is to maximize the money they make while they play, and fighting for better working conditions may run orthogonal to that. The NFLPA has a lot of good intentions, but without the support of the league stars, it's difficult to make any reason progress.
- KevinEldon 10y ago
  I think you're probably right and wonder then if it's not the players themselves who are to blame (at least when the fans/public gets "outraged" about this issue). It's awkward to assign (some) blame to the same class that contains the victims, but it seems in their own pursuit of wealth they might be forfeiting their own safety. Owners would care about the short-term safety of players so that they can realize their investments, but really don't have any long term incentive to care care about player health.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago

The NFL is probably going to be subject to an RJR vs. United States thing soon enough.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

patrickburke 10y ago

The Frontline on this issue was good. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/league-of-denial/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/league-of-denial/

m0llusk 10y ago

This sport will be dead in a generation or two. Parents don't want their kids doing something that demonstrably causes brain damage. Without a full cohort of kids involved the level of competition will starve off interest in the sport.

wiseleo 10y ago
There will still be plenty of broke parents who will want to give their children that one shot at stardom. Take a look at backgrounds of fighters in boxing and MMA. These sports are explicitly about hurting the other person and people still volunteer to participate.
- mindcrime 10y ago
  FWIW, MMA is likely much less brutal than boxing or football. Lighter gloves provide less hand protection, and many fights end in a submission instead of a knockout. And assuming you tap out appropriately, there's no serious injury from a knee bar, or a heel hook, or even a rear naked choke.

cwilkes 10y ago

Why didn't they go to Paul Allen's brain institute for research?

tosseraccount 10y ago

NFL is pretty tame. This is tougher : http://deadspin.com/crazy-ass-italian-sport-combines-rugby-with-bare-knuckl-1612721772 http://deadspin.com/crazy-ass-italian-sport-combines-rugby-w...

snarfy 10y ago

With 80% of basic cable bills going to pay for ESPN, NFL as a non-profit organization, and all of tax breaks and stadiums paid for with taxes, it is absolutely disgusting the level of subsidizes going into football. They'll cancel band class and shop class, but the high school football team will still get new uniforms. There are so many better things the money and energy could be used for, things that actually improve society. Instead we have a method of crowd control that goes back to the Romans.

samfisher83 10y ago
Espn costs about 6.61. Not 80% of the cable bill. http://www.whatyoupayforsports.com/numbers/ http://www.whatyoupayforsports.com/numbers/

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