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I’m the Wife of a Former N.F.L. Player. Football Destroyed His Mind

218 points by uptown 9y ago

shkkmo 9y ago
Let's keep this in mind next time there is a domestic abuse scandal involving an NFL player. Perhaps shaming the NFL into booting the player and cutting off his benefits isn't a appropriate solution for someone whose behavior may partially be the result of brain damage accrued while providing us with entertainment.
debt 9y ago
I don't mean to make to big a stretch here, but shouldn't the advertising companies also be held morally culpable for exacerbating CTE? I mean the NFL had an incentive to increase the hits and blows to make it more entertaining, to draw more people, to sell ads. I do see a future, where, unless the sport changes, companies will start pulling their ads from football games.
- kareemsabri 9y ago
  Sure, but there's degrees of moral responsibility. Shouldn't the spectators, should the player's parents etc.
  - chrxr 9y ago
    "Who killed Davey Moore, Why an' what's the reason for?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_Davey_Moore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_Davey_Moore
- whatshisface 9y ago
  If the dominant motivation wasn't to make the big games more interesting, I don't know what it would be! Although "evil laundering" is definitely something that we have to watch out for, it isn't always practical to hold people responsible for their entire supply chains when we could otherwise go straight to the actual problem-causers.
- babygoat 9y ago
  As you said, more hits and blows draw more viewers. Ad sales increase. Until violence becomes less popular, I'm not convinced that companies will start pulling their ads.
  - this_user 9y ago
    Ultimately, the audience is responsible. The NFL is merely delivering what people want to see. And the audience are the people who are paying for this, either directly by buying tickets or broadcasts or indirectly by buying products that are advertised. Everyone else is just following the money, and they have no incentive to stop.
    - leggomylibro 9y ago
      >And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up. - Terry Pratchett, Night Watch
    - steaknsteak 9y ago
      It's a shared responsibility. The NFL has devoted a lot of effort to hiding the reality of what the audience is watching. Now that we know fully how dangerous it is, it's our responsibility to stop watching it.
crb002 9y ago
Also a high rate of insulin resistance. You can't stay on an NFL diet after you retire. The NFL should get retirees a free pre-made meal plan and gym membership.
- switchbak 9y ago
  What is an NFL diet? And why would one stay on it after you're done the intense training? If you're a professional athlete, odds are you know a fair amount about (sports) nutrition, and you've spent much of your life in some kind of gym. Given the severity of the brain related symptoms described here, I don't think these are on par at all.
  - jccooper 9y ago
    > What is an NFL diet? Eating a lot. > And why would one stay on it after you're done the intense training? Habit. Many players struggle with adjusting their diet when the intense physical activity drops off after they stop playing.
    - Clubber 9y ago
      Many athletes are like this. Look at Mike Tyson, Charles Barkley, me, etc.
    - VLM 9y ago
      Unfortunately I can personally attest that this happens to military personnel after they leave the military.
    - roguecoder 9y ago
      Especially when many professional players have long-term health consequences that make physical activity harder. Diet control can also cause long-term metabolic changes. Keeping body fat low and fluctuating weight, as often happens with seasonal sports, are both associated with long-term obesity and health problems.
- wenc 9y ago
ransom1538 9y ago
Insane. Smashing your head into the helmet of a 300lb person for thousands of hours causes issues? /apologies for reddit style
- askafriend 9y ago
  There aren't many things in the world that are simple enough that they can be described in a snarky one-line quip. This however, is one of them. I really do think it's that simple. The sport itself is flawed in design.
  - dekhn 9y ago
    I've always thought football was a sport intentionally designed as an analogy to war, so in some sense, head injuries are an expected outcome.
    - breck 9y ago
      An Army professor and former college football athlete described combat to our class once as “Football with guns”. It’s a gross reduction I’m sure but probably some truth to it.
      - dekhn 9y ago
        I think George Carlin summed it up best: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/humor7.shtml http://www.baseball-almanac.com/humor7.shtml Football is a twentieth-century technological struggle. Football is played on a gridiron, in a stadium, sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium. Football begins in the fall, when everything's dying. In football you wear a helmet. Football has hitting, clipping, spearing, piling on, personal fouls, late hitting and unnecessary roughness. Football is rigidly timed, and it will end even if we've got to go to sudden death. n football the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.
dmitrygr 9y ago
I'm surprised that American football doesn't come with a prop-65 like warning in CA. Seems like it should now that the link with CTE is confirmed. Maybe if it was labeled as what it is (slow suicide for the sake of random people watching), it would start to finally lose popularity
cypherpunks01 9y ago
Excellent Intercept article came out about this yesterday- https://theintercept.com/2018/02/01/nfl-concussion-super-bowl-protocol-football/ https://theintercept.com/2018/02/01/nfl-concussion-super-bow...
wbracken 9y ago
Honest question - football helmets have not changed that much in what, 25 years? Are there any efforts underway to use technology to improve the protection provided by helmets? What about a softer layer outside the hard plastic. What about crumple zones for lack of a better term - that means helmets are designed to absorb one large hit, then be replaced. I am sure there are studies underway, but seems like an area ripe for "disruption"...
- aphextron 9y ago
  >Honest question - football helmets have not changed that much in what, 25 years? Are there any efforts underway to use technology to improve the protection provided by helmets? What about a softer layer outside the hard plastic. What about crumple zones for lack of a better term - that means helmets are designed to absorb one large hit, then be replaced. I am sure there are studies underway, but seems like an area ripe for "disruption"... The very existence of hard plastic helmets is what has caused the issue in the first place. It creates enough protection that people are able to hit much, much harder than normal, which causes concussion/CTE. You can fix the game by getting rid of the pads.
  - roguecoder 9y ago
    Prior to pads players were dying. The problem is not the pads that make trauma survivable: the problem is that the sport is designed to inflict trauma when played as designed.
- hdctambien 9y ago
  Here's an article from 6 months ago about new helmet technology. http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2017/08/08/revolutionary-new-zero1-football-helmet-may-help-nfl-players-reduce-concussions.html http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2017/08/08/revolutionary-new-zer...
  - kbouck 9y ago
    > "The outermost layer deforms like a car bumper, yielding when it's hit and slowing impact forces." The helmets would need frequent changing, or else they might look like demolition derby cars by halftime.
justaman 9y ago
50 years ago when there was only had a small leather helmet, players wouldn't go head first into each other. I thought this is an overlooked point worth mentioning. Without a doubt the level of roughness has increased in 50 years and so has the methods of diagnosis for injuries.
- jonknee 9y ago
  The players were also way smaller and less athletic. Today's receivers are the size of linemen in the past.
  - smt88 9y ago
    They're also probably significantly faster, which increases the force of the hits even more.
- wcarron 9y ago
  Indeed. I played rugby and found that players are much more concerned with not injuring themselves. There were not any spear-tackles or leading with the head. Mostly cause you'll literally get knocked unconscious (or break your neck) if you try it. Additionally, in rugby it's illegal to lift a player off both feet, and high tackles are much more heavily enforced, which forces players to use proper wrapping tackles instead of just smashing into each other trying to knock the ball-carrier down. However, at the high level, spinal injuries are more common and actually a lot of players have been paralyzed. Especially in scrums. Just wanted to compare football and rugby in this context. I think both sports are dangerous but, generally, I agree that the increasing protections provided by helmets and gear enables football players to take much bigger risks and hits. It's definitely a factor in the increase of CTE instances.
  - potta_coffee 9y ago
    Tackling in rugby involves wrapping the legs and immobilizing the player rather than slamming into them as hard as possible. (Maybe inaccurate but that's how I was taught to do it).
  - 9y ago
bproven 9y ago
I still assert if you take away all (or most) of the armor that modern players have the injuries would go down. All of the spearing, head leading etc would no longer happen.
- roguecoder 9y ago
  While we see these sorts of chronic problems and a rise in repetitive injuries, the number of deaths dropped dramatically with the introduction of helmets. "Between rule changes and the 1973 creation of NOCSAE, the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment, head-injury fatalities in high school football declined by three-quarters.": http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/The-312/May-2012/A-Brief-History-of-Football-Head-Injuries-and-a-Look-Towards-the-Future/ http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/The-312/May-2012/...
- phyller 9y ago
  Anecdotal evidence, I played rugby in college. We'd send at least one person to the hospital every game. But few head injuries. A friend of mine who played football played rugby the spring of his senior year, and promptly broke his neck by leading with his head when tackling as he was used to. Fortunately he didn't sever anything, no permanent damage. Personally I think a lot of our injuries were because we had a lot of former football players who were used to a different sport. It takes time to adjust. My "career" (fun hobby) ended from a ridiculous move from an overzealous opponent that destroyed my shoulder. If we were wearing football gear everything would have been fine. I wonder if rugby players in the US get injured more frequently than in other countries because of our legacy of American football.
- jccooper 9y ago
  Chronic injuries might go down. Immediate injuries would go up. All the helmets and pads weren't added for no reason.
- TheCoelacanth 9y ago
  Before the addition of padding you had players dying during play frequently.
SCAQTony 9y ago
Take the pads and helmets off and make it flag football. Therein, the game will be transformed into both athleticism and grace and would probably attract females into a womens league as well.
- unclebucknasty 9y ago
  Interestingly, my kid's flag football league cites stats that there are more concussions in flag football than in tackle, at least in that age group. I am not sure that I totally believe those stats, but the larger point is that any concussion in flag football would be due to an incidental collision. However, in tackle football collisions are built into the game, so every play is an opportunity for a sub-concussive blow, the accumulation of which has been found to be more damaging than the one-off full concussion. So, yeah. Flag football FTW.
- bjornlouser 9y ago
  The NFL is more likely to take the pads and helmets off one team during the first half, then switch the gear to the other team for the second half.
alva 9y ago
As I come from the UK and am not familiar with NFL, what moves specific to this sport cause this? This issue is not prevalent at all in Rugby, which is arguably more dangerous (no pads or helmets)
- SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
  Players tackle harder and in more dangerous manners (head first) because the pads lessen the apparent impact. They make it not hurt, but they don't actually prevent damage.
  - kllrnohj 9y ago
    Just like boxing gloves make boxing far more dangerous and even deadly than UFC, despite UFC having a more violent appearance.
    - sli 9y ago
      Something I was told when I was new to training in martial arts is that lighter gloves used in MMA and, for example, traditional karate dojos (simple cotton gloves with light padding -- same design as many MMA gloves, just different materials) simply protect your hands, not the other person's face. Boxing gloves, by contrast, can and do cause the same sort of faulty reasoning as football helmets when education isn't properly included: there's padding, therefore I can hit harder. Except, no, it (clearly) doesn't work that way. Certainly not when mass is a variable in the equation.
    - kasey_junk 9y ago
      There isn’t a lot of long term evidence that suggests the hitting in UFC is less damaging than the hitting in boxing. It is just as likely that the brain trauma differences are due to the dramatically less number of hits taken. This has more to do with the rules than the gloves. We can be reasonably sure of that because boxing could change the glove types trivially and haven’t even in places that have changed other rules for safety (youth & Olympic boxing).
deleted 9y ago
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dominotw 9y ago
mma fighters like Eryk Anders who were once NFL players claim that NFL is much more dangerous than mma. yet MMA seems to get much more scrutiny( bans ect) than NFL. I saw an interesting house regulatory committee meeting where people like Randy Couture testified on this topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S03Z6a2ABWk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S03Z6a2ABWk
- roguecoder 9y ago
  The NFL spends massive amounts of money deflecting responsibility: https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2018/01/nfl-cdc-tbi162490/ https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2018/01/nfl-cdc-tbi162490/
criddell 9y ago
NFL players are at least well compensated and are adults making decisions for themselves. My problem is at the high school and college level. The kids are playing with great intensity for nothing more than love of the game and maybe the opportunity to move up. The long term risks seem way too high. I'd say the same thing about kids playing soccer. I don't think heading the ball should be allowed in high school or college play. I was relieved when my daughter quit soccer.
- bpicolo 9y ago
  > adults making decisions for themselves That's the crux of the biggest issue. The NFL actively covered up/denied evidence that concussions were damaging for decades.
  - criddell 9y ago
    Lots of damage has been done that's for sure. I was mostly thinking about the future.
    - x0x0 9y ago
      They're not actually well compensated. http://www.businessinsider.com/charts-expose-how-badly-nfl-players-get-paid-2013-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/charts-expose-how-badly-nfl-p... They're not actually protected in any way, because NFL contracts aren't guaranteed. Imagine what you would do if your doctor worked for your boss, and when your doctor asked if you were injured, telling the truth would allow your boss to fire you on the spot with zero compensation. Every time the subject comes up there's lots of whining by the NFL, but somehow the NBA, NHL, and MLB survived with essentially guaranteed contracts. NFL players also don't actually have options. Scholarships are a joke and most of them learn virtually nothing. They started down the path to the NFL well before they were adults capable of making decisions, and by the time they're eligible for an NFL career, they typically don't have the academics to do much else. (Obviously there are exceptions, but Richard Sherman is not your average NFL player.)
      - 9y ago
iteriteratedone 9y ago
He destroyed his mind and got paid well for it. There are many dangerous jobs out there and usually the pay reflects it. The player union and company needs to invest in solutions. If there are none apparent it might cost less to up salaries then invest in R and D. The owners dont want players to get long term damage. Mining orgs dont want miners to get black lung. Tech solutions are a great place for this but its not a moral issue. He chose to play pro football. Its not footballs fault. And not every player gets brain damage so lets hear some numbers on that. What was this guys diet? Some people get brain damage that dont play football.
- Retra 9y ago
  Why would you think player pay has anything to do with risk of injury? There are very few occupations where this is true, and celebrity sports are close to the last place to assume that is happening.
Waterluvian 9y ago
My concern is that changing Football will be difficult, if not impossible. It would be like asking them to change the Bill of Rights because some of it is outdated. It's a religion to many Americans.
- Clubber 9y ago
  It will be a slow process, but you hear parents now saying they would never let their children play, while when I was growing up, parents encouraged their children to play. College is a feeder to the NFL. High school is a feeder to College, etc. Once you limit the source of nourishment, it will die in it's current state, but it will take a while.
  - softawre 9y ago
    Agreed. My kids are kindergarten age now and I won't let them play football.
  - roguecoder 9y ago
    College donors can also have an impact here. Right now, football makes colleges money. There's been recent controversy over Wesleyan, for example, focusing on football because of the money it makes: https://slate.com/culture/2017/12/wesleyan-university-football-is-good-business.html https://slate.com/culture/2017/12/wesleyan-university-footba... If donors stopped giving in response to football and started demanding accountability for the long-term effects of the sport, it could have a major effect. It may also require coordinated action, since no one wants to be the first college to give up the cash cow. This is where action by the NCAA or even legislation would be helpful.
- steaknsteak 9y ago
  It won't change quickly enough, people will simply stop playing it, and eventually stop watching it as well. I've already stopped watching NFL football (mostly, it's hard to completely cut off from a team I've followed since childhood), as it just makes me too uncomfortable to watch. The big hits don't feel exciting anymore, just gruesome now that I know the reality of how unsafe it is. And I don't plan to let my children play it. Many people are of the same mind, and I think the tide will turn eventually.
j9461701 9y ago
>But who these men have become is not who they are, and I write that with conviction. The symptoms they display are beyond their control and occur through no fault of their own. These men chose football, but they didn’t choose brain damage. Completely true, and the previous generation of players rightly deserves compensation for being lied to by the NFL. They didn't know the devil's bargain they were striking. But the next generation? The ones who do now know? Muhammand Ali was suffering from severe brain damage as early as 29, but kept boxing anyway because he was addicted to the fame and the glory. He'd come out of a match slurring his words and struggling to maintain a normal stride, yet would still deny any possibility of his brain being damaged by all the fighting. He was too tough, he was too fast, he was too macho. Until he wasn't, and then it was too late. This all coming after nearly a century of research showing the degenerative effects of boxing on the human mind. Some jobs simply carry with them the understanding you are going to be "used up" by participating. Wrestlers, boxers, hockey players, and now footballers. Some men are willing to destroy themselves in pursuit of wealth and fame, and it's difficult to say it's our job as a society to overrule their choices about their own bodies. However, I do think pop culture should try to stop downplaying the effects of this kind of stuff. Super heroes, for example, send the message to kids that you can engage in violence altercations for decades, and the only negative impacts will be physical (if they exist at all). I laughed out loud during TKDR when Batman's only injury from all his fighting is a bum knee and a few scars - his brain should be mush, are you kidding me?
- andrewchoi 9y ago
  > Some jobs simply carry with them the understanding you are going to be "used up" by participating. Wrestlers, boxers, hockey players, and now footballers. Some men are willing to destroy themselves in pursuit of wealth and fame, and it's difficult to say it's our job as a society to overrule their choices about their own bodies. I think one of the more interesting comparisons starts when you look past professions that promise fame and fortune, and start looking at jobs like firefighting, police work, and military service. I would argue that there is a similar progression of personnel (as evidenced by earlier retirement and pension ages for these professions) but the pot of gold at the end of rainbow is less celebrity and more a consistent job and service to one's community. Where do those professions stand on the spectrum?
andrewl 9y ago
NFL player and mathematics doctoral student John Urschel retired last summer because he was afraid of possible brain damage. He'd had a concussion and found that for some weeks after his ability to think about math was impaired. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Urschel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Urschel
- edanm 9y ago
  Thanks for this! I always think of him whenever discussion of the NFL comes up, and I had no idea he retired.
rplst8 9y ago
First off, I mostly abhor football. But there are all sorts of dangerous jobs. Deep sea fishermen, coal miners, oil riggers, heck even long haul truckers are high risk due to how dangerous highway travel is. People are allowed to make decisions on their own about the trade-offs and run their own lives. If you want a job that is less risky, study hard and go to college. Then you can get an office job and all of the things that come with that (obesity, diabetes, and heart disease).
- oh_sigh 9y ago
  Sure, but most people aren't sending their 13 year olds to training camps for coal mining or oil rigging, whereas football is figuratively and literally drilled into the heads of a huge swath of young men in our country from the time they are born.
- dopamean 9y ago
  Just out of curiosity, why did you think it was important for us to know how much you dislike football?
- watwut 9y ago
  It is also fine to talk about danger of being fishermen, coal miner, oil rigger or haul trucker. It is very ok to warn kids and parents about consequences before they commit their whole life to training it. You are not arguing for people making trade-offs. You are implying that there is something wrong with telling people convincingly about risks and consequences before they make the choice.
onewhonknocks 9y ago
I think it may be a little unfair that the NFL has to pay out for damage that was done in aggregate over an entire lifetime (starting at Pee-Wee and moving on through primary school and Uni).
nashashmi 9y ago
https://www.theplayerstribune.com/jermichael-finley-packers-injury-retirement/ https://www.theplayerstribune.com/jermichael-finley-packers-... “They Basically Reset My Brain” I thought this was an interesting read after reading the headline. It is an article about a person who struggles to regain his mind after concussions after concussions. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14436417 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14436417
banku_brougham 9y ago
There’s a lot of discussion on whether players are compensated for the risk. I’ll add that the career average earnings should include all the players who aspired to an NFL contract but did not succeed.
zaphirplane 9y ago
What aspect of playing a contact sport causes brain damage, is it the sudden stop from a tackle or falling and hitting your head on the grass or ...? Can it be mitigated
- wmeredith 9y ago
  It's your brain bumping into your skull. Usually caused by sudden deceleration.
- wdr1 9y ago
  Repeated collision of your skull, even if it doesn't result in concussion. Linemen are the most prone. https://www.forbes.com/sites/leighsteinberg/2017/07/25/cte-study-sends-shock-waves-through-world-of-football-part-1/#94c4cd54e64d https://www.forbes.com/sites/leighsteinberg/2017/07/25/cte-s...

218 points by uptown 9y ago

Let's keep this in mind next time there is a domestic abuse scandal involving an NFL player. Perhaps shaming the NFL into booting the player and cutting off his benefits isn't a appropriate solution for someone whose behavior may partially be the result of brain damage accrued while providing us with entertainment.

debt 9y ago

I don't mean to make to big a stretch here, but shouldn't the advertising companies also be held morally culpable for exacerbating CTE? I mean the NFL had an incentive to increase the hits and blows to make it more entertaining, to draw more people, to sell ads. I do see a future, where, unless the sport changes, companies will start pulling their ads from football games.

kareemsabri 9y ago
Sure, but there's degrees of moral responsibility. Shouldn't the spectators, should the player's parents etc.
- chrxr 9y ago
  "Who killed Davey Moore, Why an' what's the reason for?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_Davey_Moore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_Davey_Moore
whatshisface 9y ago
If the dominant motivation wasn't to make the big games more interesting, I don't know what it would be! Although "evil laundering" is definitely something that we have to watch out for, it isn't always practical to hold people responsible for their entire supply chains when we could otherwise go straight to the actual problem-causers.
babygoat 9y ago
As you said, more hits and blows draw more viewers. Ad sales increase. Until violence becomes less popular, I'm not convinced that companies will start pulling their ads.
- this_user 9y ago
  Ultimately, the audience is responsible. The NFL is merely delivering what people want to see. And the audience are the people who are paying for this, either directly by buying tickets or broadcasts or indirectly by buying products that are advertised. Everyone else is just following the money, and they have no incentive to stop.
  - leggomylibro 9y ago
    >And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up. - Terry Pratchett, Night Watch
  - steaknsteak 9y ago
    It's a shared responsibility. The NFL has devoted a lot of effort to hiding the reality of what the audience is watching. Now that we know fully how dangerous it is, it's our responsibility to stop watching it.

crb002 9y ago

Also a high rate of insulin resistance. You can't stay on an NFL diet after you retire. The NFL should get retirees a free pre-made meal plan and gym membership.

switchbak 9y ago
What is an NFL diet? And why would one stay on it after you're done the intense training? If you're a professional athlete, odds are you know a fair amount about (sports) nutrition, and you've spent much of your life in some kind of gym. Given the severity of the brain related symptoms described here, I don't think these are on par at all.
- jccooper 9y ago
  > What is an NFL diet? Eating a lot. > And why would one stay on it after you're done the intense training? Habit. Many players struggle with adjusting their diet when the intense physical activity drops off after they stop playing.
  - Clubber 9y ago
    Many athletes are like this. Look at Mike Tyson, Charles Barkley, me, etc.
  - VLM 9y ago
    Unfortunately I can personally attest that this happens to military personnel after they leave the military.
  - roguecoder 9y ago
    Especially when many professional players have long-term health consequences that make physical activity harder. Diet control can also cause long-term metabolic changes. Keeping body fat low and fluctuating weight, as often happens with seasonal sports, are both associated with long-term obesity and health problems.
wenc 9y ago

ransom1538 9y ago

Insane. Smashing your head into the helmet of a 300lb person for thousands of hours causes issues? /apologies for reddit style

askafriend 9y ago
There aren't many things in the world that are simple enough that they can be described in a snarky one-line quip. This however, is one of them. I really do think it's that simple. The sport itself is flawed in design.
- dekhn 9y ago
  I've always thought football was a sport intentionally designed as an analogy to war, so in some sense, head injuries are an expected outcome.
  - breck 9y ago
    An Army professor and former college football athlete described combat to our class once as “Football with guns”. It’s a gross reduction I’m sure but probably some truth to it.
    - dekhn 9y ago
      I think George Carlin summed it up best: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/humor7.shtml http://www.baseball-almanac.com/humor7.shtml Football is a twentieth-century technological struggle. Football is played on a gridiron, in a stadium, sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium. Football begins in the fall, when everything's dying. In football you wear a helmet. Football has hitting, clipping, spearing, piling on, personal fouls, late hitting and unnecessary roughness. Football is rigidly timed, and it will end even if we've got to go to sudden death. n football the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.

dmitrygr 9y ago

I'm surprised that American football doesn't come with a prop-65 like warning in CA. Seems like it should now that the link with CTE is confirmed. Maybe if it was labeled as what it is (slow suicide for the sake of random people watching), it would start to finally lose popularity

cypherpunks01 9y ago

Excellent Intercept article came out about this yesterday- https://theintercept.com/2018/02/01/nfl-concussion-super-bowl-protocol-football/ https://theintercept.com/2018/02/01/nfl-concussion-super-bow...

wbracken 9y ago

Honest question - football helmets have not changed that much in what, 25 years? Are there any efforts underway to use technology to improve the protection provided by helmets? What about a softer layer outside the hard plastic. What about crumple zones for lack of a better term - that means helmets are designed to absorb one large hit, then be replaced. I am sure there are studies underway, but seems like an area ripe for "disruption"...

aphextron 9y ago
>Honest question - football helmets have not changed that much in what, 25 years? Are there any efforts underway to use technology to improve the protection provided by helmets? What about a softer layer outside the hard plastic. What about crumple zones for lack of a better term - that means helmets are designed to absorb one large hit, then be replaced. I am sure there are studies underway, but seems like an area ripe for "disruption"... The very existence of hard plastic helmets is what has caused the issue in the first place. It creates enough protection that people are able to hit much, much harder than normal, which causes concussion/CTE. You can fix the game by getting rid of the pads.
- roguecoder 9y ago
  Prior to pads players were dying. The problem is not the pads that make trauma survivable: the problem is that the sport is designed to inflict trauma when played as designed.
hdctambien 9y ago
Here's an article from 6 months ago about new helmet technology. http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2017/08/08/revolutionary-new-zero1-football-helmet-may-help-nfl-players-reduce-concussions.html http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2017/08/08/revolutionary-new-zer...
- kbouck 9y ago
  > "The outermost layer deforms like a car bumper, yielding when it's hit and slowing impact forces." The helmets would need frequent changing, or else they might look like demolition derby cars by halftime.

justaman 9y ago

50 years ago when there was only had a small leather helmet, players wouldn't go head first into each other. I thought this is an overlooked point worth mentioning. Without a doubt the level of roughness has increased in 50 years and so has the methods of diagnosis for injuries.

jonknee 9y ago
The players were also way smaller and less athletic. Today's receivers are the size of linemen in the past.
- smt88 9y ago
  They're also probably significantly faster, which increases the force of the hits even more.
wcarron 9y ago
Indeed. I played rugby and found that players are much more concerned with not injuring themselves. There were not any spear-tackles or leading with the head. Mostly cause you'll literally get knocked unconscious (or break your neck) if you try it. Additionally, in rugby it's illegal to lift a player off both feet, and high tackles are much more heavily enforced, which forces players to use proper wrapping tackles instead of just smashing into each other trying to knock the ball-carrier down. However, at the high level, spinal injuries are more common and actually a lot of players have been paralyzed. Especially in scrums. Just wanted to compare football and rugby in this context. I think both sports are dangerous but, generally, I agree that the increasing protections provided by helmets and gear enables football players to take much bigger risks and hits. It's definitely a factor in the increase of CTE instances.
- potta_coffee 9y ago
  Tackling in rugby involves wrapping the legs and immobilizing the player rather than slamming into them as hard as possible. (Maybe inaccurate but that's how I was taught to do it).
- 9y ago

bproven 9y ago

I still assert if you take away all (or most) of the armor that modern players have the injuries would go down. All of the spearing, head leading etc would no longer happen.

roguecoder 9y ago
While we see these sorts of chronic problems and a rise in repetitive injuries, the number of deaths dropped dramatically with the introduction of helmets. "Between rule changes and the 1973 creation of NOCSAE, the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment, head-injury fatalities in high school football declined by three-quarters.": http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/The-312/May-2012/A-Brief-History-of-Football-Head-Injuries-and-a-Look-Towards-the-Future/ http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/The-312/May-2012/...
phyller 9y ago
Anecdotal evidence, I played rugby in college. We'd send at least one person to the hospital every game. But few head injuries. A friend of mine who played football played rugby the spring of his senior year, and promptly broke his neck by leading with his head when tackling as he was used to. Fortunately he didn't sever anything, no permanent damage. Personally I think a lot of our injuries were because we had a lot of former football players who were used to a different sport. It takes time to adjust. My "career" (fun hobby) ended from a ridiculous move from an overzealous opponent that destroyed my shoulder. If we were wearing football gear everything would have been fine. I wonder if rugby players in the US get injured more frequently than in other countries because of our legacy of American football.
jccooper 9y ago
Chronic injuries might go down. Immediate injuries would go up. All the helmets and pads weren't added for no reason.
TheCoelacanth 9y ago
Before the addition of padding you had players dying during play frequently.

SCAQTony 9y ago

Take the pads and helmets off and make it flag football. Therein, the game will be transformed into both athleticism and grace and would probably attract females into a womens league as well.

unclebucknasty 9y ago
Interestingly, my kid's flag football league cites stats that there are more concussions in flag football than in tackle, at least in that age group. I am not sure that I totally believe those stats, but the larger point is that any concussion in flag football would be due to an incidental collision. However, in tackle football collisions are built into the game, so every play is an opportunity for a sub-concussive blow, the accumulation of which has been found to be more damaging than the one-off full concussion. So, yeah. Flag football FTW.
bjornlouser 9y ago
The NFL is more likely to take the pads and helmets off one team during the first half, then switch the gear to the other team for the second half.

alva 9y ago

As I come from the UK and am not familiar with NFL, what moves specific to this sport cause this? This issue is not prevalent at all in Rugby, which is arguably more dangerous (no pads or helmets)

SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
Players tackle harder and in more dangerous manners (head first) because the pads lessen the apparent impact. They make it not hurt, but they don't actually prevent damage.
- kllrnohj 9y ago
  Just like boxing gloves make boxing far more dangerous and even deadly than UFC, despite UFC having a more violent appearance.
  - sli 9y ago
    Something I was told when I was new to training in martial arts is that lighter gloves used in MMA and, for example, traditional karate dojos (simple cotton gloves with light padding -- same design as many MMA gloves, just different materials) simply protect your hands, not the other person's face. Boxing gloves, by contrast, can and do cause the same sort of faulty reasoning as football helmets when education isn't properly included: there's padding, therefore I can hit harder. Except, no, it (clearly) doesn't work that way. Certainly not when mass is a variable in the equation.
  - kasey_junk 9y ago
    There isn’t a lot of long term evidence that suggests the hitting in UFC is less damaging than the hitting in boxing. It is just as likely that the brain trauma differences are due to the dramatically less number of hits taken. This has more to do with the rules than the gloves. We can be reasonably sure of that because boxing could change the glove types trivially and haven’t even in places that have changed other rules for safety (youth & Olympic boxing).

deleted 9y ago

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dominotw 9y ago

mma fighters like Eryk Anders who were once NFL players claim that NFL is much more dangerous than mma. yet MMA seems to get much more scrutiny( bans ect) than NFL. I saw an interesting house regulatory committee meeting where people like Randy Couture testified on this topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S03Z6a2ABWk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S03Z6a2ABWk

roguecoder 9y ago
The NFL spends massive amounts of money deflecting responsibility: https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2018/01/nfl-cdc-tbi162490/ https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2018/01/nfl-cdc-tbi162490/

criddell 9y ago

NFL players are at least well compensated and are adults making decisions for themselves. My problem is at the high school and college level. The kids are playing with great intensity for nothing more than love of the game and maybe the opportunity to move up. The long term risks seem way too high. I'd say the same thing about kids playing soccer. I don't think heading the ball should be allowed in high school or college play. I was relieved when my daughter quit soccer.

bpicolo 9y ago
> adults making decisions for themselves That's the crux of the biggest issue. The NFL actively covered up/denied evidence that concussions were damaging for decades.
- criddell 9y ago
  Lots of damage has been done that's for sure. I was mostly thinking about the future.
  - x0x0 9y ago
    They're not actually well compensated. http://www.businessinsider.com/charts-expose-how-badly-nfl-players-get-paid-2013-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/charts-expose-how-badly-nfl-p... They're not actually protected in any way, because NFL contracts aren't guaranteed. Imagine what you would do if your doctor worked for your boss, and when your doctor asked if you were injured, telling the truth would allow your boss to fire you on the spot with zero compensation. Every time the subject comes up there's lots of whining by the NFL, but somehow the NBA, NHL, and MLB survived with essentially guaranteed contracts. NFL players also don't actually have options. Scholarships are a joke and most of them learn virtually nothing. They started down the path to the NFL well before they were adults capable of making decisions, and by the time they're eligible for an NFL career, they typically don't have the academics to do much else. (Obviously there are exceptions, but Richard Sherman is not your average NFL player.)
    - 9y ago

iteriteratedone 9y ago

He destroyed his mind and got paid well for it. There are many dangerous jobs out there and usually the pay reflects it. The player union and company needs to invest in solutions. If there are none apparent it might cost less to up salaries then invest in R and D. The owners dont want players to get long term damage. Mining orgs dont want miners to get black lung. Tech solutions are a great place for this but its not a moral issue. He chose to play pro football. Its not footballs fault. And not every player gets brain damage so lets hear some numbers on that. What was this guys diet? Some people get brain damage that dont play football.

Retra 9y ago
Why would you think player pay has anything to do with risk of injury? There are very few occupations where this is true, and celebrity sports are close to the last place to assume that is happening.

Waterluvian 9y ago

My concern is that changing Football will be difficult, if not impossible. It would be like asking them to change the Bill of Rights because some of it is outdated. It's a religion to many Americans.

Clubber 9y ago
It will be a slow process, but you hear parents now saying they would never let their children play, while when I was growing up, parents encouraged their children to play. College is a feeder to the NFL. High school is a feeder to College, etc. Once you limit the source of nourishment, it will die in it's current state, but it will take a while.
- softawre 9y ago
  Agreed. My kids are kindergarten age now and I won't let them play football.
- roguecoder 9y ago
  College donors can also have an impact here. Right now, football makes colleges money. There's been recent controversy over Wesleyan, for example, focusing on football because of the money it makes: https://slate.com/culture/2017/12/wesleyan-university-football-is-good-business.html https://slate.com/culture/2017/12/wesleyan-university-footba... If donors stopped giving in response to football and started demanding accountability for the long-term effects of the sport, it could have a major effect. It may also require coordinated action, since no one wants to be the first college to give up the cash cow. This is where action by the NCAA or even legislation would be helpful.
steaknsteak 9y ago
It won't change quickly enough, people will simply stop playing it, and eventually stop watching it as well. I've already stopped watching NFL football (mostly, it's hard to completely cut off from a team I've followed since childhood), as it just makes me too uncomfortable to watch. The big hits don't feel exciting anymore, just gruesome now that I know the reality of how unsafe it is. And I don't plan to let my children play it. Many people are of the same mind, and I think the tide will turn eventually.

j9461701 9y ago

>But who these men have become is not who they are, and I write that with conviction. The symptoms they display are beyond their control and occur through no fault of their own. These men chose football, but they didn’t choose brain damage. Completely true, and the previous generation of players rightly deserves compensation for being lied to by the NFL. They didn't know the devil's bargain they were striking. But the next generation? The ones who do now know? Muhammand Ali was suffering from severe brain damage as early as 29, but kept boxing anyway because he was addicted to the fame and the glory. He'd come out of a match slurring his words and struggling to maintain a normal stride, yet would still deny any possibility of his brain being damaged by all the fighting. He was too tough, he was too fast, he was too macho. Until he wasn't, and then it was too late. This all coming after nearly a century of research showing the degenerative effects of boxing on the human mind. Some jobs simply carry with them the understanding you are going to be "used up" by participating. Wrestlers, boxers, hockey players, and now footballers. Some men are willing to destroy themselves in pursuit of wealth and fame, and it's difficult to say it's our job as a society to overrule their choices about their own bodies. However, I do think pop culture should try to stop downplaying the effects of this kind of stuff. Super heroes, for example, send the message to kids that you can engage in violence altercations for decades, and the only negative impacts will be physical (if they exist at all). I laughed out loud during TKDR when Batman's only injury from all his fighting is a bum knee and a few scars - his brain should be mush, are you kidding me?

andrewchoi 9y ago
> Some jobs simply carry with them the understanding you are going to be "used up" by participating. Wrestlers, boxers, hockey players, and now footballers. Some men are willing to destroy themselves in pursuit of wealth and fame, and it's difficult to say it's our job as a society to overrule their choices about their own bodies. I think one of the more interesting comparisons starts when you look past professions that promise fame and fortune, and start looking at jobs like firefighting, police work, and military service. I would argue that there is a similar progression of personnel (as evidenced by earlier retirement and pension ages for these professions) but the pot of gold at the end of rainbow is less celebrity and more a consistent job and service to one's community. Where do those professions stand on the spectrum?

andrewl 9y ago

NFL player and mathematics doctoral student John Urschel retired last summer because he was afraid of possible brain damage. He'd had a concussion and found that for some weeks after his ability to think about math was impaired. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Urschel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Urschel

edanm 9y ago
Thanks for this! I always think of him whenever discussion of the NFL comes up, and I had no idea he retired.

rplst8 9y ago

First off, I mostly abhor football. But there are all sorts of dangerous jobs. Deep sea fishermen, coal miners, oil riggers, heck even long haul truckers are high risk due to how dangerous highway travel is. People are allowed to make decisions on their own about the trade-offs and run their own lives. If you want a job that is less risky, study hard and go to college. Then you can get an office job and all of the things that come with that (obesity, diabetes, and heart disease).

oh_sigh 9y ago
Sure, but most people aren't sending their 13 year olds to training camps for coal mining or oil rigging, whereas football is figuratively and literally drilled into the heads of a huge swath of young men in our country from the time they are born.
dopamean 9y ago
Just out of curiosity, why did you think it was important for us to know how much you dislike football?
watwut 9y ago
It is also fine to talk about danger of being fishermen, coal miner, oil rigger or haul trucker. It is very ok to warn kids and parents about consequences before they commit their whole life to training it. You are not arguing for people making trade-offs. You are implying that there is something wrong with telling people convincingly about risks and consequences before they make the choice.

onewhonknocks 9y ago

I think it may be a little unfair that the NFL has to pay out for damage that was done in aggregate over an entire lifetime (starting at Pee-Wee and moving on through primary school and Uni).

nashashmi 9y ago

https://www.theplayerstribune.com/jermichael-finley-packers-injury-retirement/ https://www.theplayerstribune.com/jermichael-finley-packers-... “They Basically Reset My Brain” I thought this was an interesting read after reading the headline. It is an article about a person who struggles to regain his mind after concussions after concussions. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14436417 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14436417

banku_brougham 9y ago

There’s a lot of discussion on whether players are compensated for the risk. I’ll add that the career average earnings should include all the players who aspired to an NFL contract but did not succeed.

zaphirplane 9y ago

What aspect of playing a contact sport causes brain damage, is it the sudden stop from a tackle or falling and hitting your head on the grass or ...? Can it be mitigated

wmeredith 9y ago
It's your brain bumping into your skull. Usually caused by sudden deceleration.
wdr1 9y ago
Repeated collision of your skull, even if it doesn't result in concussion. Linemen are the most prone. https://www.forbes.com/sites/leighsteinberg/2017/07/25/cte-study-sends-shock-waves-through-world-of-football-part-1/#94c4cd54e64d https://www.forbes.com/sites/leighsteinberg/2017/07/25/cte-s...