New Evidence Strengthens Link Between Football and Brain Trauma

September 18, 2015 12:55 PM

PBS's Frontline reports that a new study of the brains of deceased NFL players shows that 87 of 91 brains, 96%, had signs of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. The condition, caused by repeated head trauma, has been discovered in 79% of the 165 NFL athletes studied to date. These new findings are released just as the NFL gets its 2015-16 season underway and weeks before the release of the new Will Smith film Concussion, about the neurologist who first discovered the degenerative brain disease in a deceased NFL player's brain ten years ago.

Previously on MetaFilter: The 2013 Frontline documentary "League of Denial" and the retirement of player Chris Borland earlier this year in response to his own brain trauma concerns

posted by briank (107 comments total)

They studied the brains of players who were so convinced they had CTE that they donated their brains to researchers. 96% of those players turned out to have CTE.

Pretty worthless research unless it was intended to study the accuracy of self-diagnosis, as a foundation for later research that would simply ask older players if they thought they had CTE.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 1:04 PM on September 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

stupidsexyFlanders did you RTFA? Even with those caveats, the latest numbers are “remarkably consistent” with past research from the center suggesting a link between football and long-term brain disease, said Dr. Ann McKee, the facility’s director and chief of neuropathology at the VA Boston Healthcare System.

Among the many, many reasons you should not watch football or let your children play, early death by brain injury is pretty high up there.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:05 PM on September 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

I want to see some studies on the political leanings of victims of CTE; football is nearly a religion in regions of the country, and those regions are politically very right wing.

Just curious. (seriously, it may sound trollish, but I'm genuinely curious).
posted by el io at 1:12 PM on September 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

I stood on the sideline of the University of Florida football game last Saturday and thought to myself I was experiencing something that in 50 years won't exist. With all of the evidence of CTE in former college and pro football players I would have to imagine we're living in the age of "peak-football." I can't imagine any parent wanting their son to play pop-warner football with the media pounding the drum on this issue. Or maybe I'm wrong and American-style football becomes the gladiator sport many think it should be along the same lines as boxing and the UFC.
posted by photoslob at 1:13 PM on September 18, 2015 [6 favorites]

It's a not entirely unpopular idea in certain circles that liberals made up CTE as part of their eternal war on America.
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:14 PM on September 18, 2015 [9 favorites]

Yep, it's going to wither from the ground up. Absent a complete re-imagining of the sport, football in 25 years will hold the same role in popular culture that boxing does now.
posted by leotrotsky at 1:16 PM on September 18, 2015 [3 favorites]

Also, I hope OJ Simpson donates his brain to science, because I'd be very surprised if he didn't show symptoms of CTE.
posted by leotrotsky at 1:17 PM on September 18, 2015 [7 favorites]

When I was in middle school and high school (late 1980s), I played football. In high school, especially, I remember taking Nuprin before practices so the headaches after big hits did not last as long, and more than once, being hit so hard in the head that everyone else's white practice jerseys looked like they had prisms on them.

Looking back, this was probably something I should have avoided.
posted by 4ster at 1:18 PM on September 18, 2015 [6 favorites]

I am curious about the prevalence -- has anyone done a study of the brains of people who are demographically similar with the studied football players, but are not football players? Or of football players not thought to have CTE? It's described in the article as a rare disease, but then this data seems to indicate it's way more prevalent than thought. It would be great to have a true apples-to-apples comparison of how common it is in football players versus the general population...
posted by phoenixy at 1:24 PM on September 18, 2015 [5 favorites]

Smells like blood and lawsuits.
posted by BrotherCaine at 1:26 PM on September 18, 2015

I can't imagine any parent wanting their son to play pop-warner football with the media pounding the drum on this issue.

I wonder if this is something that feels truer than it is because it's true for people on Metafilter. I've definitely met parents in the last year who talked about their kids playing football without mentioning or seeming to think about head injuries at all. I think you're right about 50 years from now, but probably not right about how parents feel today or for the next ten years.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 1:29 PM on September 18, 2015 [30 favorites]

I think you're exactly right, Bulgaroktonos. These proclamations about the death of football are a result of the kind of people who come to MeFi.

I don't even think 50 years from now anything will have changed. I think people will gladly and enthusiastically continue to sign up to play and watch football even with full knowledge of the dangers.

Comparisons to boxing don't work: boxing, even in its heyday, was never as ubiquitous or big as football is, on every level. Too many people want too badly to play and watch football for these dangers to matter.
posted by Sangermaine at 1:33 PM on September 18, 2015 [12 favorites]

Yep, it's going to wither from the ground up. Absent a complete re-imagining of the sport, football in 25 years will hold the same role in popular culture that boxing does now.

I'm not nearly that optimistic. There's a hell of a lot of money flowing in and out of both college and professional football -- far more, I'm guessing, than there ever was floating around the boxing world. I suspect that, plus a good measure of cognitive dissonance, will keep football around in its current incarnation for a good long time.
posted by holborne at 1:33 PM on September 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

I think you're right about 50 years from now, but probably not right about how parents feel today or for the next ten years.

I give it twenty years. Enough time for the folks growing up with this knowledge to steer a generation away from football.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 1:34 PM on September 18, 2015

No, no, no guys, too soon for this. We've got another six months of deflategate to get through before we could possibly consider hearing more about CTE.
posted by davros42 at 1:40 PM on September 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

I give it twenty years. Enough time for the folks growing up with this knowledge to steer a generation away from football.

There are more than a million high school boys playing football right now. There are 1696 on active NFL rosters.

That's a lot of steering.
posted by tallthinone at 1:43 PM on September 18, 2015 [3 favorites]

I wonder if this is something that feels truer than it is because it's true for people on Metafilter.

I believe attitudes are changing but over the next 4-5 years research will show whether or not the stories about CTE are having a long-term effect on pop warner and mighty might football programs. I can report that attitudes about CTE, concussions and football are changing because of how seriously I've seen the private school where my wife works track any student who suffers a concussion. Football players are routinely made to sit out practices and games and I know of several students who quit the team after a severe concussion. This also goes for lacrosse and even cheerleading.
posted by photoslob at 1:44 PM on September 18, 2015 [3 favorites]

I'm not an expert, but wasn't boxing kept popular by being one way for physically gifted people to escape poverty? Even if the majority never made it, they still wanted to try.

I can easily see American football going strong for a very long time, carried on the backs of people dying to escape poverty, and cheered on by people who would gladly watch them do so.
posted by YAMWAK at 1:46 PM on September 18, 2015 [20 favorites]

I don't know if this info will make football or the NFL disappear in the next 2-5 decades, but I do think the class and racial demographics will continue to shift radically, starting in youth football and moving on to professional football.

I live a few hundred yards from a very large, very urban high school that has a lot of famous NFL alumni (including a notable, controversial current star player). The school's overall demographic is shifting visibly in response to gentrification of the city as a whole and the local neighborhood in particular, so it's interesting to see the increasing contrast between the demographics of regular school days and game days.
posted by vunder at 1:46 PM on September 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

There are more than a million high school boys playing football right now. There are 1696 on active NFL rosters.

That's a lot of steering

Yeah, but how many 1st graders are playing? How many fewer are playing than before? In twelve years, how many fewer will there be playing in high school?

And how about liability? Schools are supporting activities that actively cause brain damage. How long do you think that will last before the lawsuits begin to descend?

People always overestimate change over the short term, and drastically underestimate in over the medium and long term. When the President of the United States is saying "I Would Not Let My Son Play Pro Football" that's a pretty big sea change.

American Football as it currently exists is dead. It just takes awhile for the body to cool.
posted by leotrotsky at 1:49 PM on September 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

This development doesn't have to convince the general population in order for it to be bad news for the sport. All it needs to convince are the insurance companies involved with insuring the leagues, schools/school districts, etc. If those rates start shooting up, it'll be done as an organized sport.
posted by feloniousmonk at 1:49 PM on September 18, 2015 [4 favorites]

I think there were a hell of a lot more opportunities to be a semi-professional boxer, vs the whole 1696 people playing professional football.
posted by dilaudid at 1:49 PM on September 18, 2015

Bring on Cyberball!
posted by schoolgirl report at 1:50 PM on September 18, 2015 [6 favorites]

I can easily see American football going strong for a very long time, carried on the backs of people dying to escape poverty, and cheered on by people who would gladly watch them do so.

Part of the appeal of a sport comes from having played it yourself, or plausibly being able to envision yourself as a player. If football dies in the high schools and park playing fields, the NFL dies along with it.
posted by leotrotsky at 1:52 PM on September 18, 2015 [3 favorites]

After being in an ER where there were two young boys brought in from football practice or a game to an ER on stretchers, strapped down so they wouldn't make whatever injuries they had sustained worse, I will do what I can to keep my two boys out of football. No one was talking about brain trauma, it was general body trauma of slamming yourself into someone else, with the false security of heavy-duty padding.

I know, you can learn how to hit and take a hit, but that's not the sort of sport I can support my boys getting into. Rugby is out, too, because spinal injuries scare me, too. Let's stick with the genteel sports of water polo and basketball.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:53 PM on September 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

I give it twenty years. Enough time for the folks growing up with this knowledge to steer a generation away from football.

There's too much money made from this business for it to be allowed to evaporate, and too much entertainment provided to the public that the state doesn't have an interest in protecting the business from folding. What is more likely is that:

- The NFL slowly increases technical requirements for safety equipment, particularly where head and neck protection are offered
- The US government silently works with the NFL to proceed with these adjustments, where judges "grandfather" in risks taken by current and past players in assessing damages in tort actions
- Highly-compensated players continue to assume the above-average risk of bodily harm from playing professional sports while the technology improves
posted by a lungful of dragon at 1:53 PM on September 18, 2015 [3 favorites]

The way (pro) football was played in the 70s and 80s is so different from the way it is played now. Guys were hitting with their helmets and routinely continued playing while concussed! It is sickening to watch the footage of those old games. Now it seems to be a much safer sport (Heads Up tackling, concussion awareness) and honestly, players' ACLs seem to be in more danger then their brains. For kids, there is a much higher rate of concussion in soccer and lacrosse than in football -- all three of mine play football and lacrosse and the worst concussions I ever have seen were in lacrosse games. The lacrosse helmet simply is not designed to protect the head against a concussion, but there is a lot of contact in that game.

In general, I think that coaches and parents are so much more aware of the dangers of a concussion on a growing brain. The role of football in American culture, however…I'm not sure that it is going away anytime soon. Even though my own kids love and play the sport, I have very mixed feelings about it and the way it dominates popular culture (not to mention the way the professional players are revered and paid).
posted by Blogwardo at 1:56 PM on September 18, 2015 [5 favorites]

Blogwardo, FTA: "That finding supports past research suggesting that it’s the repeat, more minor head trauma that occurs regularly in football that may pose the greatest risk to players, as opposed to just the sometimes violent collisions that cause concussions."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:58 PM on September 18, 2015 [3 favorites]

Absent a complete re-imagining of the sport, football in 25 years will hold the same role in popular culture that boxing does now.

Largely replaced by something worse (UFC)?
posted by rocket88 at 2:01 PM on September 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yeah, but how many 1st graders are playing? How many fewer are playing than before? In twelve years, how many fewer will there be playing in high school?

Many, many fewer. But the there will still be an able supply for the NFL for a very, very long time. Cut the million in half in 10 years, and then half again in 10 years, and then half again in 10 years. You'd still have 125,000 teenagers playing football 30 years from now. The NFL needs about 1% of them.

And how about liability? Schools are supporting activities that actively cause brain damage. How long do you think that will last before the lawsuits begin to descend?

Taking it out of the schools doesn't equal taking it away. If high school basketball went away, nothing would change in the sport. The AAU circuit is far more important as a showcase for college coaches. Something similar would fill the void in football.

People always overestimate change over the short term, and drastically underestimate in over the medium and long term. When the President of the United States is saying "I Would Not Let My Son Play Pro Football" that's a pretty big sea change.

I agree. I think the sport will change drastically, I just don't see it completely going away anytime soon because 'football' has gone beyond sport -- it's embedded in our culture.
posted by tallthinone at 2:04 PM on September 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

And how about liability? Schools are supporting activities that actively cause brain damage. How long do you think that will last before the lawsuits begin to descend?

This is what I believe will do the most damage. Public school systems won't want to leave themselves exposed to lawsuits. I bet you'll see private high schools drop the sport in the next 10-15 years.
posted by photoslob at 2:05 PM on September 18, 2015

Seahawks coach Pete Carroll tells his squad ‘tackle like a rugby player’, part of What the NFL Can Learn From Rugby, also implemented as UW football, Chris Petersen, taking the lead in safer tackling techniques

But as Rugby players warned of long-term brain injury risks in a silent epidemic of brain injury the sport must confront, merely tackling better won't solve the issue.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 2:05 PM on September 18, 2015 [3 favorites]

My hope is that the game can adapt to one where the higher energy collisions are called as penalties instead of cheered and encouraged.
Football is an awesome game of skill, finesse, strategy, and athleticism. We can make it safer and still preserve what makes it great.
posted by rocket88 at 2:13 PM on September 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

Another interesting thing about football demographics in the head-injury era is to compare it with other pro sports that are not currently plagued by head-injury findings:

Basketball has perhaps displaced football as the "up from poverty" choice for physically gifted young African-American boys. Perhaps this continues....though perhaps on the other hand, there's not enough room for that. There's a lot of talk about the new stars of basketball coming from families of relative privilege with access to coaches and facilities, rather than from the inner city school programs. Also, we've seen a huge influx of overseas players into basketball, particularly physically very big dudes from Eastern Europe. In other words, there might not be enough room for US football defectors looking for a way out of poverty.

Baseball became notably white and Latino a while back. Will urban black kids start going back to youth baseball and then up through the professional levels (or at least becoming an urban audience for baseball)? I mentioned the large urban school near my house - there's also a black Hall of Fame baseball player who graduated from the the school in the 70s. I don't think he'd play baseball today, and the school's baseball program isn't particularly good. I wonder if there's any chance that will start to shift. Like basketball, though, baseball is increasingly populated with stars from overseas.

I don't see American Football importing increasing levels of talent from overseas. There's been a class demographic difference between the positions for a long time (the brains vs the brawn). If we believe that a decline in youth football participation, or a shift in which youth participates, will affect the NFL (both in terms of players and in terms of audience), will we continue to have the Tom Bradys - the white upper middle class QBs? If we don't, do we start to lose the corresponding audience?
posted by vunder at 2:16 PM on September 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

I bet you'll see private high schools drop the sport in the next 10-15 years.

Not so fast though, because football is, for most private schools, a huge driver of alumni donations.
posted by telegraph at 2:18 PM on September 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

> I don't see American Football importing increasing levels of talent from overseas.

American football has much less presence as a sport overseas. Baseball is popular in Central and South America, Japan, Korea and other countries. Basketball is popular in Central Europe and, to a lesser degree, everywhere else. American football leagues in other countries are rare enough to merit their own "hey didja know" stories during slow news cycles.
posted by ardgedee at 2:20 PM on September 18, 2015

Largely replaced by something worse (UFC)?

First I've heard of someone claiming MMA is worse than boxing. In terms of brain trauma, the conventional wisdom was the opposite. Seems like there's at least some validity to that.
posted by mullacc at 2:21 PM on September 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

I don't think anyone would dispute the links between brain trauma and NASCAR, or Formula 1, or open wheel racing. Or skiing. None of these sports are on the decline because of it. What makes American football special?
posted by three blind mice at 2:23 PM on September 18, 2015

I don't think anyone would dispute the links between brain trauma and NASCAR, or Formula 1, or open wheel racing. Or skiing. None of these sports are on the decline because of it.

Because you're not supposed to crash in those sports. And everyone understands that if you do screw up or suffer an accident, the consequences can be fatal. In football hitting one another is a routine and integral part of the game. And until recently it wasn't well understood that playing the game correctly could be fatal anyway.
posted by mullacc at 2:28 PM on September 18, 2015 [16 favorites]

Comparisons to boxing don't work

They don't work for many reasons and are only offered by people who seem to have no factual understanding of boxing or its popularity. It's still big; it draws ratings, live gates and PPV buys. It's certainly bigger worldwide versus just North America, but the notion that boxing has been marginalised to obscurity is not correct. The highest paid athlete in North America is a boxer.
posted by Dark Messiah at 2:28 PM on September 18, 2015 [3 favorites]

> I don't think anyone would dispute the links between brain trauma and NASCAR, or Formula 1, or open wheel racing. Or skiing. None of these sports are on the decline because of it. What makes American football special?

Why do you even do this?

Kids do not typically begin racing Formula 1 cars when they're seven; the goal of those sports is not to crash your body on purpose, repeatedly, over the entire course of the game/match/race, into other participants.
posted by rtha at 2:32 PM on September 18, 2015 [18 favorites]

You may enjoy this episode of Radiolab! One of the interesting factoids in the podcast is that youth participation in football is indeed declining! But, youth participation in sports is declining across the board. The suggestion in the episode is that this is because of video games, but there were only anecdotes to support that.
posted by chrchr at 2:34 PM on September 18, 2015

Football isn't special, there have been concerns raised over concussions in soccer and lacrosse, just to name two other sports. If you think this is just a football thing, it's because you are dialed in to football and not looking at the bigger picture.

Soccer's Concussion Crisis

Concussions in Lacrosse

There's more. Much, much more. Football is just a very prime target because of the massive nature of the NFL and the premium placed on brutality.
posted by Dark Messiah at 2:35 PM on September 18, 2015 [4 favorites]

Kid's do begin racing at age 7, though certainly not in F1 cars. Also the point of football, while it does involve a lot of crashing bodies, is not to acquire brain injuries. That race drivers sometimes die in accidents or that football players often have chronic injuries are unfortunate side effects and not considered desirable by anyone involved.
posted by chrchr at 2:38 PM on September 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

There is a significant institutional difference in encouragement when it comes to violence in football over car racing. In football, smashing some guy helps your team directly — making a play, or maybe even taking an opposing team member entirely out of the game. Racing, you crash someone and you're not doing anyone any favours. Those are not comparable.
posted by Dark Messiah at 2:39 PM on September 18, 2015

Kids do not typically begin racing Formula 1 cars when they're seven; the goal of those sports is not to crash your body on purpose, repeatedly, over the entire course of the game/match/race, into other participants.

No, they start in karting at age 5. I have no idea what the injury risks are--it's almost impossible to flip one of these because of their wide track. But I wholeheartedly agree with the rest of your comment.
posted by mullacc at 2:41 PM on September 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

Football is just a very prime target because of the massive nature of the NFL and the premium placed on brutality.

What's your point? Seems reasonable to start with the most brutal of sports.
posted by mullacc at 2:43 PM on September 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

Racing, you crash someone and you're not doing anyone any favours.

Not true. It happens routinely in NASCAR and occasionally in F1. F1 is both a team sport and an individual sport.
posted by chrchr at 2:45 PM on September 18, 2015

What's your point? Seems reasonable to start with the most brutal of sports.

At no point did I say that was unreasonable. I was indicating why it seems like it's being singled out. (Which I argue it is not.)
posted by Dark Messiah at 2:45 PM on September 18, 2015

I was indicating why it seems like it's being singled out. (Which I argue it is not.)

The tone of your comments ("you are dialed in to football and not looking at the bigger picture") seem to imply that we're doing it wrong.
posted by mullacc at 2:51 PM on September 18, 2015

Meanwhile, the NFL keeps pumping millions into "research", when in reality things like stopping the mauling of receivers with both feet in the air and using the crown of the helmet as a missile (aka the "Brandon Meriweather Double Special") probably will prevent more concussions that some kevlar thingamajob that reduces impact speed by 1% and cost 20 millions to put in production. The problem will be overcoming the resistance of the most traditional fans of human bumper cars that is pro and prollegge gridiron at this point.

And keep in mind the league could, for instance, start throwing a 15-yd penalty if a second player runs 10 yards to T-Bone a receiver in the middle, but injuries always happen in a contact sport. Soccer had a problem with gruesome leg injuries in the 80s, started forcing players to use shinpads, red cards for tackles from behind and stomping/stud first and properly maintained grass, and still this week there was a player in the Champions League with a complete leg fracture. Shit happens. The job of the rule boards should be to minimize the odds of that happening.
posted by lmfsilva at 2:54 PM on September 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

seem to imply that we're doing it wrong.

Noting a difference in perspectives. Nothing more.

(EDIT: removed a pointlessly antagonistic end note. Sorry if there was confusion; none of my posts are meant to harangue anyone. I am trying to be neutral in tone and may not have succeeded.)
posted by Dark Messiah at 2:55 PM on September 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

Just a month ago we had the FPP "Pro-Wrestlers' Mortality Rates are Nearly THREE TIMES Worse Than Normal". If the WWE isn't currently dying on the vine, the NFL certainly won't. If anything, the 'cultural change' will most likely be to make participants into a 21st century kind of Roman Gladiators. And in the process, those silly sci-fi movies about Future Bloodsports will look a lot less silly.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:14 PM on September 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

I watch a lot more soccer than football, but I've never seen an NFL concussion on TV that begins to approach the jaw-dropping awfulness of the one Kramer got in the World Cup final game last summer, or the one Bindon got in the 2012 Olympics. That both of them were allowed to continue playing is horrifying.

HOWEVER, that's not the point. What makes football dangerous to the brain isn't (just) the stunning concussions players get during games. It's the repeated, constant, sub-concussive events they get during practice. It's beginning to become apparent that there's no such thing as a safe head injury, and that three little ones all in a row may be as damaging -- or more so -- than one solid bell-ringer.
posted by KathrynT at 3:16 PM on September 18, 2015 [6 favorites]

The WWE deaths have more to do with abusing painkillers and steroids than CTE specifically, though the Chris Benoit murders certainly highlighted it as a very real issue. Since then, WWE has done a lot to mitigate head trauma. Pro-wrestling is inherently very dangerous, but you don't see WWE guys taking chairshots to the head anymore, nevermind multiple ones in succession with zero protection — not even their hands. They've also banned certain moves that have an inherently higher risk than your average wrestling spots (for example, the Tombstone Piledriver was banned entirely for a while, after Steve Austin was nearly paralyzed and Darren Drozdov was.) *

Wrestling is still very, very hard on a person and I am sure that even with the changes I noted that it's leaving broken bodies. That said, I think WWE adapted well and also moved their product towards a much younger demographic and stopped going for ultra violence all the time.

* - the Benoit murders killed my fandom, so my information from 2006 onward is spotty as I don't keep up like I used to. If I got anything wrong there, please correct me.
posted by Dark Messiah at 3:25 PM on September 18, 2015

HOWEVER, that's not the point. What makes football dangerous to the brain isn't (just) the stunning concussions players get during games. It's the repeated, constant, sub-concussive events they get during practice. It's beginning to become apparent that there's no such thing as a safe head injury, and that three little ones all in a row may be as damaging -- or more so -- than one solid bell-ringer.

Soccer is probably going to be revealed to have the same problem because of all the headers.
posted by Drinky Die at 3:54 PM on September 18, 2015

WWE does not command the same volume of money, or place in US sports culture, as an industry that NFL does. No comparison. If the NFL's earnings and profile shrink to the volume of WWE, that will certainly be "dying on the vine."
posted by vunder at 4:16 PM on September 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

stupidsexyFlanders wrote: They studied the brains of players who were so convinced they had CTE that they donated their brains to researchers. 96% of those players turned out to have CTE.

Pretty worthless research unless it was intended to study the accuracy of self-diagnosis, as a foundation for later research that would simply ask older players if they thought they had CTE.

That's really all they can do right now, since, so far, CTE can only be diagnosed post-mortem.

This June, as a member of a control group of men who never played contact sports, I took part in a CTE study at Boston University Hospital. The stated goal of the research, as I understand it, is to find other methods to diagnose than slicing the brain up and looking at it under a microscope.

I will say that the doctors and other researchers I met understand how important and life changing the results will be when the research turns out the way they expect it to. I don't think any of them have a vendetta against the NFL, but if this is a world of caring, thinking, feeling people, football would disappear. I think that means that people will be playing football for a long time. Evolution in action?
posted by dubwisened at 4:23 PM on September 18, 2015 [5 favorites]

I love watching football. I'm trying to quit watching it. This is why.
posted by Joey Michaels at 4:35 PM on September 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

Boxing lost its appeal because there was no FanDuel or DraftKings for boxing.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 4:41 PM on September 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

No, there's real betting. And lots of it done on boxing matches.
posted by Dark Messiah at 4:48 PM on September 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

I think there is an underappreciation for how much boxing was a religion back in the day when the NFL was an upstart curiosity. An event that put the world heavyweight title at stake was as universally anticipated as the Super Bowl is today and when Muhammad Ali got his belt taken away for defying the draft it was a big fucking deal.

And I think the beginning of the decline of boxing's popularity can be traced straight to Ali's later fate, as it became obvious he had been badly harmed. Ali was also followed by some less than stellar example champions, and in boxing there's no team to throw the bad player off of when he does something nasty out of the ring. The NFL also has a string of unpleasant person problems brewing, though, in addition to the medical difficulties.

I think the liability issue will force the game to be radically changed within 10 years. I wouldn't be surprised to see universal helmet instrumentation with computer enforced maximum loads and timeouts, in addition to rules changes to further reduce the incidence of hard hits. The game may manage to endure though due to its deep cultural entrenchment; as noted above it's already a very different game than what was played in the 1970's and that seems to be accepted.
posted by Bringer Tom at 4:54 PM on September 18, 2015 [7 favorites]

The same pool of young men that volunteer for the military will continue to opt for football.
posted by notreally at 4:56 PM on September 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

Okay I was kind of joking about the FanDuel/DraftKings thing but not really. Boxing fell out of favor because matches were rigged, it was difficult to find on television, and there were very few stars. Yes, one or two boxers make a lot of money. But the rest of them? Who are they? When do they box next? Where? Only the most rabid boxing fan could tell you. Contrast this with the NFL. Local teams, lots of stars, and it's incredibly predictable: every fall and winter, 17 weeks of pure football goodness. The rigid schedule lends itself -- even more than baseball and boxing -- to fantasy sports, which is rapidly replacing straight up over/under and pick against the spread as the nation's gambling of choice. In the era of cut the cord, live events are one of the few things that demand having your butt in a seat at a set time; as a result, advertisers can reliably sell commercials; in turn, more and more money is being funneled into pro sports leagues. Add to that the fact that when it comes to a football, a great number of viewers have actual skin in the game, it's reasonable to assume that it ain't going goddamned nowhere. Not for awhile, at least.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:06 PM on September 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

I am beyond certain that the attitude that the sport will take is that the info collected reflects a time before concussions and brain trauma were taken seriously, and now that they are, things will improve and everyone should wait and see how the current batch of athletes fare.
I have read elsewhere that some coaches are advocating a change to rugby style tackling technique, and I'm certain that there are helmet companies out there itching to cash in on an environment that urges better head safety.
the NFL will take a long hard look at kickoffs (the most dangerous play), but no, football is not going anywhere anytime soon.
posted by OHenryPacey at 5:13 PM on September 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

And I think the beginning of the decline of boxing's popularity can be traced straight to Ali's later fate, as it became obvious he had been badly harmed. Ali was also followed by some less than stellar example champions, and in boxing there's no team to throw the bad player off of when he does something nasty out of the ring. The NFL also has a string of unpleasant person problems brewing, though, in addition to the medical difficulties.

I tend to think that the decline of boxing (in the U.S.) had more to do with the rise of football and basketball than anything else. I suppose you could argue that the causation was the other way around though.
posted by atoxyl at 5:17 PM on September 18, 2015

I used to love pro football and follow it when people like Kyle Rote, Sam Huff, “Broadway” Joe Namath, and the recently deceased Frank Gifford played it. No longer. Somewhere along the way the game changed from a sport to a combat one, with gorilla-like behemoths standing over a fallen opponent and pumping their chests. Those golden afternoons on Yale Bowl, with student athletes tackling low and even helping an opponent stand up after a tackle, are long gone. Along with single wings and dropkicks. And sportsmanship.

Never mind. Sport follows life, and life has become brutal, money-minded, and mannerless. Why should sport be any different?
posted by IndigoJones at 5:19 PM on September 18, 2015

I used to love pro football and follow it when people like Kyle Rote, Sam Huff, “Broadway” Joe Namath, and the recently deceased Frank Gifford played it. No longer. Somewhere along the way the game changed from a sport to a combat one, with gorilla-like behemoths standing over a fallen opponent and pumping their chests.

There's something deeply troubling about this quote, and I think it has to do with the fact that the named players are all white, and are juxtaposed with 'gorilla-like behemoths.'
posted by Existential Dread at 5:45 PM on September 18, 2015 [19 favorites]

In 1980 the best minds in the USA, dedicated to the study, with a virtually unlimited budget ,could not foresee the fall of the Berlin Wall in 9 years time.

A generation of elite athletes is what? 18-24years old, perhaps 16-22 years old?
6, perhaps 7 years.
Fifty years is almost ten generations of elite athletes.

Never mind college, the first high school to be successfully sued will result in the entire school district shutting down their program.

Can't happen? Well I have some cigarettes to sell you.
No immediate problems, but have another smoke.

The NFL is vulnerable.
posted by yyz at 5:51 PM on September 18, 2015 [4 favorites]

There's something deeply troubling about this quote, and I think it has to do with the fact that the named players are all white, and are juxtaposed with 'gorilla-like behemoths.'

Yeah, it's not like standing over a fallen opponent and pumping your chest was unheard of in Gifford's days.

(Although, counterpoint on that particular hit.)

It's always been a violent sport but it's getting less violent, not more.
posted by Drinky Die at 5:52 PM on September 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah the twisted nostalgia of football's days gone by as a couple of prep school lads gently tumbling upon a grassy meadow on those "golden afternoons" is pretty rich; instead the early days of football were marked by kids dying from spinal injuries (19 deaths in 1905), leading to Roosevelt having to mandate a bunch of rule changes.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:58 PM on September 18, 2015 [8 favorites]

Yes, one or two boxers make a lot of money. But the rest of them? Who are they? When do they box next? Where? Only the most rabid boxing fan could tell you. Contrast this with the NFL

I'm not trying to sound snotty or elitist by any stretch, but this is a distinctly North American opinion. PBC is burning a lot of money getting boxing back on TV, but it never went away. And if you look outside North America business is booming.
posted by Dark Messiah at 6:03 PM on September 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

In 1980 the best minds in the USA, dedicated to the study, with a virtually unlimited budget ,could not foresee the fall of the Berlin Wall in 9 years time.

This. It doesn't matter how popular the game is with fans if the teams and schools can't get insurance, and the litigation has not yet really begun.

One day very soon the entire sport is going to have to make a case that it has changed in deep and fundamental ways or it will become impossible to insure. And while the NFL can negotiate a settlement with its ex-players what about all the colleges and high schools?

I tend to think there will continue to be a game called football, which will be playable in all the purpose-built stadiums that already exist, but it will have very different rules and execution.

I think one way they might pursue that, if the NFL is smart, is to encourage more of an appreciation of the chess match between coaching staffs which is in some ways the real game. It's only really visible though in the "all-22 view" which is shot for the coaching staffs to review plays, but is not shown to the home audience mainly because the coaching staffs don't want all the back seat drivers calling them out on Monday morning.

The problem with showing the game in narrow focus on play action is that it really makes things depend on spectacular events such as passes and, of course, hits. A lot of the violence has already been subdued in the game and a lot more could be, with a lot of the line action changed to more of a shoving contest; they are already talking about what such rules changes would look like. But without the spectacular hits you need something else for the home audience to follow up on. Show the way players run routes, the way coaches try to arrange and avoid matchups, and maybe you could get that.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:05 PM on September 18, 2015 [3 favorites]

this is a distinctly North American opinion

Well, yeah. Isn't any discussion of the future of the NFL going to be USA-centric? It's not popular outside of the states (maybe Canada?).
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:05 PM on September 18, 2015

That's fair, and perhaps I'm reading too much into "boxing is dead." Rather than refute every example, I guess my position is best summed up as: nothing's comparable to the NFL in North America. That's part of the problem, as they are resisting — and actively sabotaging — any efforts to address the CTE concerns. There's also the issue of rampant painkiller abuse which, if not officially OK'ed is given the blind eye. (But don't you DARE smoke a plant for relief.)
posted by Dark Messiah at 6:07 PM on September 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

That's part of the problem, as they are resisting — and actively sabotaging — any efforts to address the CTE concerns.

I honestly think the NFL has by now figured out that trying to suppress CTE is akin to King Canute ordering the tide to roll back. They know they're fucked.

The NFL is used to getting its way, and it has taken all this time for them to realize that this is too big for even their influence to smooth over. This isn't pushing over a major city to make them build a stadium. Here they are coming against an opponent that is at least their equal, the insurance industry. I think that's been clear to them for three or four years now. They can buy politicians and steamroll municipal governments but they can't play ball without insurance, and while the NFL might be willing to try self-insurance none of the feeder schools from which they get players will be willing to. It doesn't matter how many young men are willing to take the hits for glory if nobody is willing to train them and sort them out by skill.

I suspect the NFL is seriously considering changes far more radical than they are letting on because they know the status quo is completely unsustainable. They may be in talks with entities like the SEC about it. They have to do something, and pretty soon, because one day a court judgement is almost certainly going to flash through the sport like a lightning strike and make the game as it exists now completely unplayable. If they don't have a plan to deal with that all those stadiums are going to be hosting flea markets on Sundays in October.
posted by Bringer Tom at 6:17 PM on September 18, 2015 [5 favorites]

this is a distinctly North American opinion

Well, yeah. Isn't any discussion of the future of the NFL going to be USA-centric? It's not popular outside of the states (maybe Canada?).

Well, while we're here discussing the death of football Roger Goodell is still scheming to get a team in London. And appreciating the record ratings.
posted by Drinky Die at 6:24 PM on September 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

And don't forget the Aussie on the 49ers!
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:26 PM on September 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

I suspect the NFL is seriously considering changes far more radical than they are letting on because they know the status quo is completely unsustainable

I'm not a follower of the sport, but I follow all CTE news because my primary focus is combat sports. (Which I often call "concussion farming," as I eternally wrestle with my preoccupation with legally sanctioned violence.)

Despite my Twitter feed becoming unreadable whenever an NFL game is on, I do hope you are right in this. My cynical belief is that the people at the helm are more concerned with extracting immediate profits and forestalling the inevitable — kicking the can far enough down the road that it's someone else's problem.

Even if football was indisputably proven to lead to CTE and all associated horrors, there is so much momentum in The System that short of an unrealistic all-out ban on the sport, it's going to take a lot of time to wind down. The unfortunate part of that is the damage currently being dished out and ignored or disputed.

The real scary part is that even if everyone agrees "this is bad, people shouldn't take hits to the head EVER," we're no closer to fixing the damage — even alleviating the symptoms as they express themselves has proven difficult. Dementia's a bastard regardless of the cause.
posted by Dark Messiah at 7:49 PM on September 18, 2015

All of the confident proclamations in this thread about football's impending doom are hilarious. It's the most popular sport in the country by a billion miles. It's a second religion in large swaths of the country, and billions of dollars are involved.

You're not going to strangle it with high premiums, and your fantasies of youth leagues drying up in twenty years are deluded.

Football will adapt long before it dies. Whether those changes adequately address the risks is an open question.
posted by echocollate at 8:16 PM on September 18, 2015 [6 favorites]

Yeah, and it should be noted the areas where it is a religion are extremely diverse. You have the Northeast cities mainly with their NFL teams, all of the south with their college teams, Texas with both and crazy high school football devotion too, and everywhere else in the country with one level or another to some degree. There is no geographical or political divide on it, all over the country there are football territories where the game is simply not going to die. It's going to evolve and change as it always has for at least the next century.
posted by Drinky Die at 8:56 PM on September 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

There's something deeply troubling about this quote, and I think it has to do with the fact that the named players are all white, and are juxtaposed with 'gorilla-like behemoths.'

In Taki's Magazine? Well I never!
posted by atoxyl at 2:05 AM on September 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

(CTE has been known as dementia pugilistica for a century)

Actually, the two conditions are very distinct from one another, neurologically. CTE is a systematic condition observed in the whole brain, whereas dementia pugilistica is concentrated in the midbrain and shows much less degeneration in cortex. Specifically, there is a region right in the middle of the brain called the "substantia nigra" that is especially damaged by boxing, and this is the very region that also degenerates in Parkinson's patients. Hence the different symptoms: dementia pugilistica looks almost exactly like Parkinson's disease, whereas CTE does not.

The reason for the difference is thought to depend on the kind of damage the brain is being subjected to. Dementia pugilistica seems to be the result of a kind of "twisting" damage that is most pronounced in the midbrain, because most big hits in boxing are not direct blows to the center of mass, but instead hit the head obliquely and spin it on the neck. CTW, on the other hand, seems to come from the whole brain sloshing around in the skull. The forces involved in the NFL are much, much greater than those in boxing (enough to regularly lift people off their feet while they are running full tilt), so the brain is really bouncing around in the skull cavity in a way that isn't seen in boxing, but that is seen in professional wrestling (where, again, whole bodies are being hurled about).
posted by belarius at 7:00 AM on September 19, 2015 [4 favorites]

I don't think this has been mentioned yet, but NPR recently did a story about high school football in Texas:

"Football is alive and well in the Lone Star state. But for the first time in Texas's history, the number of high school football players has actually gone down over the last five years. And according to the National Federation of State High School Associations, that's true for a majority of other states too.

In Texas, the decline is small, not quite 3 percent. But really, there shouldn't be any decline at all. Texas is growing so fast it can barely build enough schools to keep up."

They go on to speculate about a few possible causes for the decline, which are frustratingly not backed up by any research. Still, it'll be interesting to see if this trend continues.
posted by gueneverey at 7:04 AM on September 19, 2015

instead the early days of football were marked by kids dying from spinal injuries (19 deaths in 1905), leading to Roosevelt having to mandate a bunch of rule changes.

The reminiscence was to the 1950's, not to 1905.
posted by IndigoJones at 7:21 AM on September 19, 2015

One of the memorable moments, in my opinion, from League of Denial was when they spoke about how football changes constantly. It isn't that long ago historically that players died on the field because they were playing without helmets. Same with hockey - if you watch games from the 1970s, people didn't wear helmets.

There is a lot wrong with the game and the NFL. There are also a lot of smart earnest people for whom football is about tradition and family who want to change it for the better. Ann McKee is one of the leading researchers in this field. She's also a Green Bay Packers fan.

I'm not prepared to sacrifice any future children of mine to the gods of the gridiron. But those claiming that football is on the brink make me think of the Mark Twain quote: "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."
posted by kat518 at 9:21 AM on September 19, 2015

But the problem isn't just concussions. It's not just leading with your head. It's sub-concussive hits on the lone of scrimmage every play, too. That too causes CTE.
posted by persona au gratin at 9:22 AM on September 19, 2015

As long as there is Texas, American boys will bash their skulls together, American girls will cheer in short skirts, & whole towns will base their self worth on Friday Night Lights..

Teddy Roosevelt presided over an era where Football was almost banned because there were so many horrific injuries & deaths on field. TR was all in favor of separating the men from the boys with a little organized violence (being an advocate for the "Strenuous Life"), but killing & maiming them doesn't allow for them to take a lesson away. So the rules were changed and padding introduced.

Today the players don't die on the field from their injuries, but the game is still killing & maiming them. Question is, can footbal be made safe to the point of Americans still wanting to watch it? Because nobody wants to watch touch football.

Hell, from what I can see, more people play fantasy football than touch footbal. Touch requires moving and being outside.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 10:22 AM on September 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

killing & maiming them doesn't allow for them to take a lesson away

I'm probably influenced a lot lately by reading stuff about WWI, a depressing literary habit sparked by falling into some literature about the early 20th century, and now it's like I'm in a deep trench and can't advance...

anyway, my response to this is that killing and maiming them doesn't allow them to be drafted, either. We used to just be a lot more tolerant of the risk of everything up to and including death over ideas like national honor. There's a lot of reasons for all that, but reading this about things like this has made me a bit despairing about the species as a whole being as rational as we're cracked up to be.

That quote about boys bashing their skulls together and girls cheering in short skirts - I don't think I'm an especial prude, but my kids are in band so I'm at all the h.s. football games, and our majorettes and cheerleaders are dressed in a way and doing stuff that pretty much obliges me to avert my gaze. Tomorrow (Sunday) many of these young women will be sitting in church in dresses that at least get to the knees and their mothers would smack them if they crossed their legs carelessly...

So there is a drive for violence with a side dressing of sex that's baked into the species pretty much, that we recognize as a problem but we can't deny. I have some problems with it, and I think over the course of centuries we're sublimating it somewhat, and lessening its consequences, but I think it's going to die hard. So to speak...

as a practical observation after all this philosophy, the new targeting penalties ARE at least putting some practical cost to the coaches and players into changing the way they're taught to hit. So there is that. Concussions are no joke, but not to be overlooked is all the other orthopedic trauma these boys are taking. I know several men who have had severe back and knee problems just from playing high school football. I think for it to be completely cleaned up would make the sport unrecognizable.
posted by randomkeystrike at 10:38 AM on September 19, 2015 [4 favorites]

Concussions are no joke, but not to be overlooked is all the other orthopedic trauma these boys are taking. I know several men who have had severe back and knee problems just from playing high school football. I think for it to be completely cleaned up would make the sport unrecognizable.

That's my general feeling about this whole deal. Even if we can get head injuries under control, there's no way to play football without the rest of the body getting injured. Every single former or current football player I've ever spoken to on this has at least one fairly permanent injury, usually in the shoulder or knee. A high-school football player I work with was talking hopefully that he MIGHT make it through this season without getting hospitalized. He re-tore his shoulder in a practice before the first game. I was in the marching band at one of our high-school games when a guy literally lost his leg (not on the field thankfully, they cut it off later.) at the knee from a bad hit. Lost his leg playing football.

I guess I'm just totally opposed to football in it's current form so it doesn't really matter to me, but this focus on long-term head injuries seems tunnel visioned. Sure, if you can make it through years of massive abuse of the rest of your body without getting sidelined with some other injury you likely have some brain trauma to deal with, but there's a lot more people who spend the rest of their life after high-school with a badly damaged joint, and culture's main response to that is to call them battle scars and try and make it a point of pride.

I had a hunting accident that tore some tendons in both my knees (weird story) in a way that is very common amoung football players. Whenever I tell a new doctor, or anyone really, the first response is always to assume it was an old football injury, and to assume I feel some gruff pride about taking one FOR THE TEAM, and it's disgusting. Once I mention that no, it was just some dumbshit hunting accident, that vanishes, and I'm treated like a normal patient again. It's surreal how much more honorable sports injuries are seen to be than other types, and that attitude is a big part of the problem.
posted by neonrev at 11:34 AM on September 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

The thing is the other orthopedic injuries associated with football have always been known quantities. People are willing to be maimed for glory if they think in their fading years they will have great stories to tell from their wheelchairs to dim the chronic pain. That sort of thing is also the cost of war. Strapping young men accept that risk.

CTE is a very different sort of thing though. It gives you no warning and destroys you as a person in an insidious, fundamental, and terrible way. There is no physical therapy, no pain to man it up through, no war wound to show off. You are just replaced with a stupid, dangerous, and crazy version of yourself so slowly that nobody really notices until it's far too late. The same strapping young men who are willing let their knees blow out and shatter bones all over the place and play more through the healing are scared shitless of CTE.

As they should be. There is no glory in dementia. There is no honor in it. It does not permit for an after career in coaching or as a color commentator for the local radio station. Even without CTE football savages the life expectancy of its players, but everyone has always pretty much known that. It's the way CTE savages the life expectancy that is going to force change, because neither the players nor the fans are going to see glory or honor or anything to admire or be proud of in that kind of ending.
posted by Bringer Tom at 11:58 AM on September 19, 2015 [6 favorites]

Americans would watch touch football if that's what was on TV. That won't happen, of course, because the NFL and others will find more subtle ways to change the game in order to maintain their plausible deniability in the face of lawsuits by former players over time, but fundamentally "football" is a cultural institution as much or more than it's a particular game, and as long as there is some sort of game being played called "football" which involves two teams and a 100-yard field and an oblong ball, the audience and the money will still be there for the foreseeable future.

If the NFL was smart, they'd basically "rugbyize" football: no high tackles, less padding, no helmets, etc. You'd get some entertainingly gruesome superficial injuries, which would preserve the blood-sport aspect of things that our culture apparently requires, but they'd be more treatable injuries instead of creeping TBIs. That's easier to deal with both medically and in terms of insurance/liability; you don't have the uncertainty over a long horizon if most injuries are immediate, even if they're serious.

I don't think that'll happen, though, because it's too hard to accomplish that incrementally from where we are right now. Instead, even though it's the wrong direction, I think they'll go the direction of more padding rather than less: gel-cushioned helmets with MEMS accelerometers so you can measure players' impacts and set some sort of maximum daily exposure level, like people working in a nuclear facility do with film badges. They'll have their pet scientists (they can call up the oil companies if they need a referral or two; I'm sure some of the owners could put them in touch) play up the "uncertainty" and "open questions" in order to continuously stay one step ahead of being caught in an indefensible position by former players or their estates -- I expect to hear "based on the best information available at the time..." a lot. They don't really have to fix the problem for good as much as they have to just show that they're trying to fix the problem, and then keep fixing if and when the evidence comes in that it didn't work. Eventually they will reach an equilibrium point where the public (and the courts) shrug it off as an assumed risk.

Where exactly you get when you fast-forward that incrementalist approach for a few decades is a really good question (it might just be "slow-motion rugby in body armor"), along with what will happen at the youth levels (probably the same thing but with lower 'exposure levels') but it's hard to imagine any realistic scenario where you have an existential threat to the football ecosystem as a whole.
posted by Kadin2048 at 3:47 PM on September 19, 2015

If the NFL was smart, they'd basically "rugbyize" football: no high tackles, less padding, no helmets, etc

This is often proposed, but it isn't a fix. Rugby is just less studied than football. There aren't fewer head injuries in rugby. They're just not as far along at addressing the issue.

The helmets in football allow some kinds of hits that wouldn't be possible without them, but they prevent fatal skull fractures. Helmets are not going away.
posted by chrchr at 4:23 PM on September 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

Bennet Omalu is a pathologist. Give us some credit.
posted by Missense Mutation at 6:59 PM on September 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

I don't know if the NFL is smart enough to think of this, but this is how I would sort it out if I was magically switched out with Roger Godell:

First, universal helmet instrumentation. This is already being done by a team or two experimentally, but it would be mandatory and not just for data collection. Within a year or two all the collision data would be assimilated in real game time and limited by player for game, season, and career exposure. This would become part of the chess match between coaching staffs -- we have player W, who we might use on this play, but do we use him now and risk limiting him out on concuss points or save him for the fourth quarter?

Then, that precedent set, instrument the rest of the uniform. The tech exists, it isn't all that expensive even today and it's getting ever cheaper. Why rely on crude TV coverage when there are accelerometers on every six square inches of uniform? Reconstruct plays digitally to resolve flag disputes. Use it to make great graphics for the home audience. Use it to limit lifetime orthopedic injuries by unambiguously penalizing their causes.

People love football but sports people also love technology, as one might see from the way sports networks are always first to jump on new video animation tech. Put that tech on the field and make it part of the game. People will accept it and even eat it up, and it could put a big thumb (if not a total stop) on the life expectancy hit the players take. I think that would be an interesting game to watch. (And of course show us the all-22 view so we can see what the coaches are up to.)
posted by Bringer Tom at 7:46 PM on September 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

You can watch the all 22 film on the NFL's streaming service
posted by chrchr at 8:55 PM on September 19, 2015

Putting tech in helmets, is going to be unaffordable to most high school programs.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 9:18 AM on September 21, 2015

I dunno, the tech is unaffordable until it isn't. If it shows promise, it will get mass-produced, the costs will go down, and the insurance companies will gladly offer discounts for using it to offset the remaining cost.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:41 AM on September 21, 2015

Instrumenting helmets would not be all that hard, especially since you could get by with a lower level of performance for high schools where you're more interested in scoring damage potential than generating real-time displays for the viewing audience. You could probably do everything in a helmet with a single ESP8266 and use regular wifi for the connectivity, saving a lot of bucks on base stations and the control software. Put the ESP and a few accelerometers on a single PCB with a battery capable of powering it for a day and you could mass produce them for under $20. That's not unreasonable considering what the existing protective gear costs.

For the big boys you'd want a lot more real-time data for the wonking but there you have the money for custom works with high speed and bandwidth, encryption, and redundancy.
posted by Bringer Tom at 2:38 PM on September 21, 2015

MAPLEWOOD, Mo. — Students and families at Maplewood Richmond Heights High School are looking forward to homecoming, the highlight of the autumn school calendar for decades. But for the first time, the centerpiece event will be soccer, not football.
[...]
Despite the popularity of college and professional football, the number of male high school football players has fallen to about 1.08 million this year, a 2.4 percent decline from five years ago.

Pop Warner, the largest youth football organization, has seen larger decreases. It has also been sued by a parent of a player who committed suicide at 25 and was found to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a brain disease linked to repeated head hits.
posted by rtha at 8:34 PM on September 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

For eight months, Kevin Kolb wasn’t Kevin Kolb. He was somebody else. Concussion No. 4 changed him. At night, he’d stare at the ceiling for four hours straight. His sleep cycle was warped beyond repair. In the morning, he’d brush his teeth in front of the mirror and see a cloud form around his face. Forget coffee. One cup spiraled him into a “whole different realm.” When people spoke to Kolb, he couldn’t digest the information. His short- term memory? Shot. Worst of all, his vision could blur at any moment. “Almost like you’re drunk,” Kolb said, “like everything is fuzzy all the way around you.” And that nearly killed him one day in Western New York. After yet another sleepless night, four weeks after that concussion in Buffalo’s 2013 exhibition game against Washington, Kolb drove toward the team facility in Orchard Park from his residence in Lakeview. Suddenly, without even knowing, Kolb began veering into the middle of the road as another car approached him head-on at 50, 55 miles an hour.
posted by tonycpsu at 2:13 PM on September 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

I was in the marching band at one of our high-school games when a guy literally lost his leg (not on the field thankfully, they cut it off later.) at the knee from a bad hit. Lost his leg playing football.

Holy shit. Compartment syndrome, or something? Hell, even NFL.com acknowledges that compartment syndrome nearly cost Jason Taylor his leg.

Also recently, high school quarterback dies of lacerated spleen.

I'm deeply conflicted, because I know that most of the guys that play and continue to play really do enjoy it. Hell, even Kevin Kolb post-concussion in the article linked above says as much.

Asked if he’d play again given what he knows now, Kolb pauses, sighs, pauses again.

“I think I would,” he said. “Definitely. It taught me so much, what I went through — the highs, the lows. It taught me a lot in life itself. So I wouldn’t take that back for anything.”

I'm watching Michigan football again this year, and enjoying it. But I would enjoy it much more if the game were changed to preserve the strategic aspects and reduce the violence and injuries.
posted by Existential Dread at 4:18 PM on September 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

The school board in Maplewood, a St. Louis suburb, disbanded the high school’s football team in June, even though it reached the state championship game five years ago. A decade ago, such a move would have seemed radical. But concerns are growing about football players’ safety, and soccer and other sports are gaining popularity.

I'm right on this. American Football as we currently know it is already dead.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:13 PM on October 7, 2015

American Football as we currently know it is already dead.

No, they just started touring again!
posted by LizBoBiz at 8:03 AM on October 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

Holy shit. Compartment syndrome, or something?

That sounds sorta like what I understand to have happened, but I wasn't very close to him and I don't know much about orthopedic injuries. As I understand it (and saw it), he was turning to run in a different direction after catching a ball, planted his right foot into our astroturf with the little black pellets (sticky as shit, we had twisted ankles in marching band it was so bad.) and got hit with his momentum, basically turning him 180 degrees pivoting on that foot, tearing all the tendons and breaking some bones in his knee. I could't say what the actual injury was, but his leg was more or less the wrong way around when he got taken off the field. It sticks in the mind.

But hey, he later became very christian and married a lady and works at a bank or something, so it's not all bad for him. He does well with the prosthetic I hear.
posted by neonrev at 11:22 AM on October 12, 2015

Arian Foster completely ignored NFL concussion protocol vs. Colts

NFL needs to very much make sure this never happens again. The rules are there to prevent it, but they are obviously not either strict or enforced enough or both.

And yeah, as somebody who followed Kolb since he entered the league his story is one of the most terrifying I have read. I'm glad at least there is enough awareness of the problem now that people have at least some knowledge about the sort of support he needs.
posted by Drinky Die at 8:16 PM on October 12, 2015

Foster should be treated like he had a concussion, so 1 game out, and for going back in without being observed, he shouldn't be getting paid, too.

If they don't care about the future, hampering their present might be the only thing that works.
posted by lmfsilva at 8:47 PM on October 12, 2015 [1 favorite]