The Concussion Diaries
January 12, 2017 1:19 PM   Subscribe

Zac Easter knew what was happening to him. He knew why. And he knew that it was only going to get worse. So he decided to write it all down—to let the world know what football had done to him, what he'd done to his body and his brain for the game he loved. And then he shot himself.
posted by bologna on wry (64 comments total) 47 users marked this as a favorite
 
Youth Football participation plummeting: "Football has seen age 6-14 participation drop from 3 million in 2010 to 2.169 million just five years later—a massive 27.7 percent drop."

Gee, I wonder why.
posted by leotrotsky at 1:30 PM on January 12, 2017 [26 favorites]


.
posted by mochapickle at 1:37 PM on January 12, 2017


. Typechip is -never- playing football. (or any other sport with a high CTE level)
posted by FritoKAL at 1:42 PM on January 12, 2017


FYI for those interested in a CW, the article is pretty explicit about what happened. I'm a parent and it was a difficult read.

A relative of mine was engaged to a college offensive lineman, and had to break it off eventually because after a few years of on and off concussion problems he just wasn't the same person.

The fact that we're still throwing our kids into this meat grinder is hard to understand.
posted by selfnoise at 1:49 PM on January 12, 2017 [21 favorites]


I wonder how long before having played football is a negative class marker. Maybe it's already happened.

It's all unconscionable.
posted by schadenfrau at 1:54 PM on January 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


I think we're probably there re: class marker status. Not to the point that we are with, say, boxing, but definitely past a serious inflection point.

The whole thing is made worse by the fact that the big-time kids who play are putting in 4 to 6 years of full-contact play before college, and then 3 to 4 more years of even more intense play, before it's possible for them to be paid.
posted by uberchet at 2:02 PM on January 12, 2017 [4 favorites]


.
posted by Silverstone at 2:15 PM on January 12, 2017


uberchet: "The whole thing is made worse by the fact that the big-time kids who play are putting in 4 to 6 years of full-contact play before college, and then 3 to 4 more years of even more intense play, before it's possible for them to be paid."

Well and the fact that only 0.08% of high-school players ever make it to the NFL.(PDF) So for every thousand kids beating their brains out on the field, less than one makes it to the pros. That's some shitty odds for a payoff vs. damaging your brain for life.
posted by octothorpe at 2:21 PM on January 12, 2017 [28 favorites]


That was a very hard thing to read.

.
posted by Existential Dread at 2:25 PM on January 12, 2017 [12 favorites]


This was making me sick to read but I had to stop about 2/3rds of the way through. Turns out, prior to his son's problems, dad thought that CTE was something that spoiled NFL-millionaires had made up to cover for their bad choices. It's just fucking the same thing over and over. "No, I don't want to hear about the problem if it means I might have to give up something I like. If it threatens a closely held value, then it's made up bullshit."
posted by skewed at 2:33 PM on January 12, 2017 [75 favorites]


Most of the top prep schools still play football, but they basically only play each other, and they have a hard cap of 8 games/season IIRC. (Exeter and Andover quite famously have a rivalry that goes back decades, which makes me doubt that they'll do away with the sport completely anytime soon — more likely they'd modify the rules but keep it as an event.)

It would be interesting to track the number of concussive injuries in those games vs. in more typical public school settings, and in particular in the very competitive highschool programs that are (perceived to be) feeders into D1 college programs. Although I have no hard evidence, I find it somewhat difficult to believe that the families who send their kids to Exeter and its ilk would tolerate a significant risk of brain damage to their dynasties' next generations.
posted by Kadin2048 at 2:33 PM on January 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


We could take away tackling. (Sorry, no one's watching the National Flag Football League.)

Is that really true? I imagine professional flag football with a level of physical contact consistent with what happens in the NBA, and it seems to me that could be a pretty exciting sport.

One of the most exciting plays in football is a long pass, and given the rules regarding pass interference, physical contact isn't what makes it exciting, unless you think the hit once the receiver lays hands on the ball is the only part that's worth watching.
posted by layceepee at 2:38 PM on January 12, 2017 [11 favorites]


This is probably not going to go over well, but I question whether football is really the death sentence that people are making it out to be. On the one hand, 100% of football suicides showing evidence of CTE is hard to argue, but on the other hand, there are hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of kids playing football every year. Only a small fraction of those kill themselves. Presumably a larger fraction suffer concussions. So the concussion + time = suicide equation seems to be missing something. There would seem to be at least one additional factor at play. Maybe the actual research is controlling for other factors; I don't read neuroscience journals for fun, so I don't know. But the popular media narrative doesn't seem to take anything else into account.

Anecdote: I've had two concussions, and I've gone through bouts of depression. In my case, which of course means nothing, the latter preceded the former. It's been about 8 years since my last concussion, and 10 since my last depression. I mean, I guess there's always the potential for something to happen in the future, but things have been going OK for me. Again, one data point means nothing, but the narrative is so overwhelming, and that has been the opposite of my experience.

Mods, I realize that this is a painful OP, and this may not be the place to have this debate. So feel free to delete this comment and we can debate this in a future post instead.
posted by kevinbelt at 2:41 PM on January 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


It's a good question, and as far as I can tell (having never played football, and having only ever had one minor concussion) the real issue is that concussions/CTE can be catastrophic to certain individuals, and it's impossible to predict the outcome until it's happened. Another example of what Zac Easter suffered is the story of Tyler Sash, a safety with Iowa and the NY Giants. Dead at 27, with CTE of the same severity as that of Junior Seau.

If playing football through junior high and high school puts a kid at as much risk as Zac Easter suffered, it would be hard to want to roll those dice. Plus, the culture around football (be tough, don't show injuries/weakness, militaristic) doesn't enable these kids to make informed decisions in their own best interest. I certainly don't want to put my kids at that risk.
posted by Existential Dread at 2:52 PM on January 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


So the concussion + time = suicide equation seems to be missing something.

Lawsuits. If the father of the family described in the article wasn't a coach, or wasn't so fervently in love with the game, perhaps he sues the school, or school district for lack of proper medical oversight. Win or lose, fighting lawsuits is expensive, and most school districts in the US are strapped for cash.
posted by Groundhog Week at 2:52 PM on January 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


Sorry, my above comment should be in response to:

This is probably not going to go over well, but I question whether football is really the death sentence that people are making it out to be.

Apologies.
posted by Groundhog Week at 2:55 PM on January 12, 2017


.

His Clash of Clans account. Jesus, he was a boy, wasn't he? A Trump fan, a hard-hitting goon, but under all that, a boy who literally was unable to quite grow up. And he wanted to make sure he would contribute to the world in the only way he could see clear to. It breaks my heart.

I really hope his dad seeks professional help for himself. It would go against everything he stood for, so he probably won't, but there's another gunshot at the end of that road he is walking.
posted by Countess Elena at 2:57 PM on January 12, 2017 [39 favorites]


.
posted by Bringer Tom at 2:58 PM on January 12, 2017


In eight grade, new school, signed up for football. Got some cool shoulder pads, and an even cooler mouth guard that you molded to your teeth with hot water. But then, for some totally minor infraction around the house, my mother punished me with -- no football. Ever.

Seemed a little harsh at the time, but, thanks Mom!
posted by StickyCarpet at 2:59 PM on January 12, 2017 [17 favorites]


Finally finished after raging about the dad for a few minutes.. That poor kid, I can't imagine how it must to have felt to know your brain is seriously injured and that it's unlikely you'll *ever* get better.

I don't see football as a high school/college/professional institution going away on its own anytime in the next 10-15 years. The information about the threat is out there, everyone involved at this point has heard about it. Realistically, most people who play high school and college football don't suffer long-term debilitating injuries, so it's very easy for participants to accept the risk (or even pretend it's a made up liberal plot to destroy another thing that made America great).

The NFL ratings are down, but they could decline for another 20 years before the sport is no longer profitable. Same with college (maybe more, since they have access to cheaper labor). Lawsuits against high schools are a possibility, but so long as parents are aware of the risks they allow their children to take, and schools make real efforts to reduce the risk (which I think they do), it's going to be hard to get to the point where litigation costs are significant. I think for the foreseeable future, this is just one of those pointless risks that we as a society are going to expose our kids to.
posted by skewed at 3:11 PM on January 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


Only a small fraction of those kill themselves. Presumably a larger fraction suffer concussions. So the concussion + time = suicide equation seems to be missing something. There would seem to be at least one additional factor at play. Maybe the actual research is controlling for other factors; I don't read neuroscience journals for fun, so I don't know. But the popular media narrative doesn't seem to take anything else into account.

As someone who played organized sports as a kid I recall that the vast majority of kids don't give a fuck. So very few of those kids are really banging heads with the full on intensity of a prospect.
posted by srboisvert at 3:14 PM on January 12, 2017


the clash at the line of scrimmage is kind of what makes football the sport that it is, and it's what causes a lot of CTE. it's not clear how you could keep that in a no/low-contact game.

i don't know, maybe like make all ineligible players move slowly and turn that part of the game into like, team sumo wrestling? but it's hard to imagine any changes that wouldn't fundamentally destroy the game.
posted by vogon_poet at 3:16 PM on January 12, 2017


American football need to revert. Much of the problem has been the gradual increase in padding technology. Look at what they wore in the 1920's, and a parallel can be made for current day rugby, in which the players have a simple leather helmet, a mouthpiece, and little else in way of protection. The way it's played now is linemen smash directly into each other as hard as possible, and it's the padding that makes those incessant sumo slams a reality.

Take away the padding, and suddenly being a human mountain isn't necessarily a benefit; in fact it's likely a drawback. Players would have to be really fucking careful not to get hurt on the snap, but it would most definitely make the sport safer, at least in the long run. And personally I think it would be a much more fluid, exciting game.

Or the other option: flag football is fun as hell to play, I wonder if a professional league would work, though.
posted by zardoz at 3:20 PM on January 12, 2017 [12 favorites]


Only a small fraction of those kill themselves.

There's a whole set of other conditions from CTE that have serious adverse effects on quality of life. Some of them are even mentioned in the article.
posted by zombieflanders at 3:21 PM on January 12, 2017 [24 favorites]


If you haven't read Concussion by Jeanne Marie Laskas, please do so. It is a haunting, fascinating book.

The NFL is an objectively evil corporation, and although I don't bring it up much in public, I think football in US culture has become almost completely a force of destruction and irreversible harm. (Not just in health-- financial impacts, economic, racial, toxic masculinity). I usually bite my tongue when people around me laugh about their fantasy teams, or that great play last night, but it is just unbelievably bad for humans in every single way.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 3:33 PM on January 12, 2017 [45 favorites]


.
posted by PMdixon at 3:33 PM on January 12, 2017


From Concussion, about the efforts of Dr. Bennet Omalu to get people to listen to him about the effects of CTE:

[section about symptoms of CTE in the brain of a player who never had a concussion]
“Thomas’s diagnosis sheds light on a crucial fact that keeps getting lost in all the hoopla. He never had a recorded concussion.

But CTE is not about the big hit, or not only. A player doesn’t have to be knocked out cold and taken off the field on a stretcher to be in danger of getting CTE. The subconcussive collisions may, in fact, be the real culprit. The little hits. Thousands of them, the little hits that look like nothing, that look like…football. All those linemen starting out every play, banging heads. Bennet’s findings, and the ones others make after him, suggest it’s these subconcussive collisions, all those regular bashes that linemen absorb in practice, twenty to thirty g’s on every play—it’s the accumulation of those hits that ends up making guys go crazy.

It could, for all anyone knows, begin at the peewee love.

It’s the game.”
posted by a fiendish thingy at 3:40 PM on January 12, 2017 [18 favorites]


One more excerpt (because this book blew my mind, and I literally keep sections of it on my phone):
"…the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research reveals its findings from the survey the NFL commissioned them to do. They find that Alzheimer’s disease, or something very similar, is being diagnosed in former NFL players nineteen times more often than in the national population among men ages thirty through forty-nine.

Nineteen times."
Those are the findings from a study commissioned by the NFL.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 3:43 PM on January 12, 2017 [25 favorites]


Fuckin' hell, I did not expect to tear up upon seeing the handwritten note.
posted by infinitewindow at 3:57 PM on January 12, 2017 [7 favorites]


Those are the findings from a study commissioned by the NFL.


Hire scientists to do science, and you run the risk that they will do science.
posted by ocschwar at 4:47 PM on January 12, 2017 [6 favorites]


there are hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of kids playing football every year. Only a small fraction of those kill themselves.

heck, only one in six games of russian roulette results in an injury! Seems pretty safe.
posted by GuyZero at 4:57 PM on January 12, 2017 [15 favorites]


But to be less sarcastic: baseball, softball, soccer, track and field, swimming, water polo, wrestling have very low concussion rates. There are plenty of other things for kids to do other than putting themselves at risk for concussions.

This is the same country where parents don't let kids bicycle to school because they think it's too dangerous.
posted by GuyZero at 5:01 PM on January 12, 2017 [24 favorites]


I question whether football is really the death sentence that people are making it out to be . . . Again, one data point means nothing, but the narrative is so overwhelming, and that has been the opposite of my experience.

This sounds like a straw-man to me. I don't really think the narrative out there is that football is a death sentence, or that one or two concussions is likely to lead to CTE or depression. I mean, we have lots of evidence to the contrary for that claim. The worry about the link between football and CTE is that the former dramatically raises the likelihood of the latter. Even if 99% of football players make it to age 75 without CTE, if it turns out that 99.99% of other athletes and the general population gets through life without CTE, then football starts to look like a really bad idea, at least as an institution in public schools.
posted by skewed at 5:20 PM on January 12, 2017 [6 favorites]


The current cultural mood towards football is so bizarre to me. I know parents who won't let their kids cross a slow street to walk to school out of fear for harm and simultaneously have them playing this brutal, dangerous game.

And it's telling to me that of those parents, many mothers want to pull their kids out and many fathers insisit they keep playing.
posted by hapaxes.legomenon at 5:38 PM on January 12, 2017 [10 favorites]


But to be less sarcastic: baseball, softball, soccer, track and field, swimming, water polo, wrestling have very low concussion rates. There are plenty of other things for kids to do other than putting themselves at risk for concussions.
Soccer absolutely does not belong on this list. Not only are concussions from two players banging heads while contesting a header relatively common, the simple act of heading the ball has been shown to have cognitive effects, and to the extent subconcussive impacts lead to CTE (as mentioned above), soccer isn't particularly safe.

(I play, but I also actively avoid heading the ball.)
posted by asterix at 6:21 PM on January 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


This is probably not going to go over well, but I question whether football is really the death sentence that people are making it out to be.

Fair enough. It's a valid question to ask. Football as a sport has huge personal meaning to lots of people, and it makes sense that people want to ask "Why would you try to take the game as I know it/play it/enjoy it away from me?"

In terms of data, though, this isn't a single data point. One of the reasons that Zac Easter said this:

I WANT MY BRAIN DONATED TO THE BRAIN BANK!! I WANT MY BRAIN DONATED TO THE SPORTS LEGACY INSTITUE A.K.A THE CONCUSSION FOUNDATION. If you go to the concussion foundation website you can see where there is a spot for donatation. I want my brain donated because I don't know what happened to me and I know the concussions had something to do with it.

...is because it can be used as data in similar cases. Brains are being collected for this reason.

And where that data comes in is in cases like the one detailed in this article, where in-game data on head trauma was collected...

What Happened Within This Player’s Skull:

When player No. 81 took this blow to his head several years ago, it was just one of many concussions that have occurred throughout college football and the N.F.L. But what made this one different was that this player was wearing a mouth guard with motion sensors. The information from those sensors has given researchers a more detailed and precise window into what was happening within the player’s brain in the milliseconds after the hit.

[...]

But scientists also commonly believe that this kind of brain disease is caused not only by these severe concussive hits, but also by the accumulation of more minor blows. Consider the image shown above: It is the sort of line-of-scrimmage battle that happens on almost every play in football and does not seem nearly as bad as the concussive hit sustained by the receiver that we showed you earlier. But data from a single game showed that one college offensive lineman took 62 of these smaller blows to the head.

One Game, 62 Hits to the Head.

[G-force chart appears in article]

In this chart, we show the G-force data from just 10 of the 62 hits this offensive lineman accrued in a single game. The average G-force, 25.8, is roughly equivalent to what we would see if the offensive lineman crashed his car into a wall going about 30 m.p.h.

posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:23 PM on January 12, 2017 [11 favorites]


So we could just strap nineteen-year-olds into cars and drive them into walls at 30 MPH and still get the Big Hits without having to worry about making things worse, is what I'm hearing here
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:02 PM on January 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


Devastating. I just hugged my football loving 7 year old.

There's absolutely more concussions nationwide (US) from soccer than football, owing to its popularity and the fact that kids start doing headers at age 8. I don't have a cite handy but I learned that in a medical talk on concussion.

It's not the fact that suicide is a one in 100,000 risk with CTE (as horrible as that is), it's that there are measurable cognitive effects in most kids who played high school and college football under "normal" conditions. So yeah, we see higher rates of suicide, but I think the picture that's becoming clearer is that learning disabilities, mental illness, and substance abuse are probably a common outcome of football as it is commonly played today. As I was reading this, my reaction as a father to two boys who desperately want to play football was how awful it would be for one of my sons to live with so much pain and loneliness and not be able to help them.

And yet I get what is so compelling about football. It's a magnificent sport. The pacing, the athleticism, the strategy. Knowledge of CTE hasn't diminished my natural attraction to the sport yet. I'd like to think that we'll enforce concussion protocols and design better helmets and keep what's great about the sport. But I also look at parents who sign their six year old up for Pop Warner and think "What the hell is wrong with you?"
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 7:05 PM on January 12, 2017 [7 favorites]


The subconcussive collisions may, in fact, be the real culprit. The little hits. Thousands of them ...

In the past, historians considered the idea that the fall of Rome was due in part to endemic poisoning from lead-lined pipes and lead-sweetened wine, dispersing a neurotoxin to thousands of citizens. Hundreds of years from now, historians may perhaps wonder if the fall of the American empire was precipitated by the low-level brain damage sustained by millions of young men who played football at one time or another, and their consequent poor decisionmaking. As with the lead hypothesis, this one would not quite map out, but it would be intriguing enough to pick up perennial interest at cocktail parties.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:10 PM on January 12, 2017 [21 favorites]


Wow. That was hard to read. The text messages between Easter and his girlfriend as she pleads with him to call her. That must be one of the most helpless and heartbreaking feelings.
posted by Grandysaur at 7:36 PM on January 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


That was great journalism about a brave, deeply human (thus imperfect) family and a heartbreaking situation. I can't get over how thoughtful Zac was in the face of his devastating injuries and symptoms. Headaches every day? Getting lost on the way home? Snorting whatever he could find and drinking to just be able to face the next day? And despite all those things, bright enough and dogged enough to research his condition, realise its severity, plot his escape, document his painful existence for 5 months, plan what his last wishes were, and communicate those desires effectively to his family and friends.

This is a young man whose working memory was about 3 minutes long. Telling his story was so important to Zac that he managed to write it down and make sure his family could share it despite the incredible obstacles created by his damaged brain. I can't get over that. Zac, you are my hero. No kidding. I'm so sorry playing football destroyed any hope that you could have a pain-free future or a normal life.

*
posted by Bella Donna at 7:42 PM on January 12, 2017 [40 favorites]


My dad's initials are CTE, no shit. He played high school and college football, baseball, and track; I do believe he was a 12-letter athelete twice, and my grandma filled a footlocker with clippings about his exploits.

We kids were made to play one sport per year for the social aspects, but never once were any of the three boys signed up for football.

We played soccer (which was new in Minnesota in the 1970s), at a very low level, and we ran track, but no football -- and also no hockey despite my mom coming from a family drenched in MN hockey dreams.

Thanks, Mom & Dad!!
posted by wenestvedt at 8:27 PM on January 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


"Lawsuits. [...] Win or lose, fighting lawsuits is expensive, and most school districts in the US are strapped for cash."

So, in most states in the US, when you get your property tax bill it says "schools" and has a single rate listed, but that rate is actually the combination of around 6 to 10 separate levies into separate funds, which can't be co-mingled or used for other things. These all have different rules, different federal and state funding formulae, and are set in different ways. For example, the largest share (around 80%) is typically the "Ed Fund," which pays teacher salaries and benefits, consumable supplies, etc. That is generally set by a levy the school board votes on, and if they want to increase it more than X% per year, have to send it to a referendum. Other funds include things like "capital improvements," which pays for what it says and must go to referendum; "health/life/safety," which pays for fire code/electrical code/asbestos removal sorts of things in existing buildings and local taxpayers CAN'T vote down; and "transportation," which in my state is paid 85% by the state and only 15% by the district and is a separate fund to protect school budgets from things like gas price shocks and to ensure school buses remain at an ultra-high level of safety (they are inspected daily).

So in many states (I think the vast majority but I'm not positive), insurance premiums that pay for lawyers when a district is sued, and any resulting lawsuit payouts, are paid out of the "tort fund," which is another separate levy, and which is uncapped and non-discretionary. That is, whatever your local school district gets sued for (that isn't covered by insurance), it's required to pass those costs on to taxpayers, separately from educational funding, building maintenance, transit costs, etc., and to do so without a vote. This both protects educational budgets from lawsuits and ensures that schools can't weasel out of paying judgments or appeal to taxpayers with "but we'll have to fire all our teachers if we pay!"

The flip side is, there's not a huge amount of pressure to control the tort budget, because a) tort judgments don't show up until like three school board elections down the road, it is clearly not your problem; b) you can't vote on it or influence it so it's easy to ignore; c) it's insured, so it's the insurance company's problem (right up until they raise your rates); and d) a wildly out of control tort fund is around 3-5% of your total yearly operating costs (exclusive of capital costs), which is not a top-line number anybody is paying attention to.

Which is to say, concussion lawsuits (and sports lawsuits in general) are not NEARLY as big a driver as you might think -- and won't be, unless and until it becomes uninsurable. (The only sport that has achieved this dubious distinction is ice hockey, and only in some states, where a handful of paralysis cases has rendered public high school hockey too expensive to insure. Generally teams are "affiliated" with high schools but organized separately and children pay a fairly high fee to participate that covers the insurance cost.) Because school districts aren't strapped for cash when it comes to lawsuit payouts; that's an automatic, required, separate levy that's very easy to ignore because you can do nothing about it. If you do an absolute shit job managing your liability for twenty years, your tort fund will rise to around 4% of your total non-capital costs, and almost your entire management staff will have turned over in that time and convinced themselves they're doing an awesome job controlling tort costs.

(The big fuckin' tort payouts are civil rights violation lawsuits and child abuse (sexual and otherwise) lawsuits; sports is a somewhat significant insurance payment -- though far less than it costs to insure janitors for workers' comp -- but hardly ever results in lawsuits, and they're not all that big.)

I raised the issue of increasing football liability several times as a school board member because I think it's a real thing that is going to become increasingly expensive and increasingly difficult to insure at public high schools, but it's a plain fact that janitorial training to reduce workers' comp claims was simply a much, much, much larger budget item, and the only time I got ANY traction on the football liability was when I questioned million-dollar sports stadium revamp on the grounds that I wasn't sure we'd still be playing football by the time the bonds were paid off. But, look, $100,000/year is not that much for a stadium that combines JV and varsity football, soccer, track, cross-country, lacrosse, marching band, and cheerleading, and hosts state-required PE classes every day, and brings in funding from the park district's use of the facilities for adult rec leagues, and will cost $100,000 a year for 10 years to upgrade but has a useful life of 30 years and mostly covers its own operating costs.

(Relatedly, I don't get super-worked-up when a state passes a law that teachers can carry handguns because literally ain't nobody insuring that shit. You can only just barely get insured for actual cops to carry guns in schools, it is very expensive.)

"But to be less sarcastic: baseball, softball, soccer, track and field, swimming, water polo, wrestling have very low concussion rates."

Yeah, yo, high-school soccer is hella concussion-tastic. (It's football, hockey, girls' soccer, boys' lacrosse, girls' lacrosse, boys' soccer, wrestling, and then basketball.) Also I am not sure I'd let my kids participate in wrestling, that's where teenaged boys go to acquire eating disorders and WOW does wrestling result in a disproportionate quantity of lawsuits for hazing.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:52 PM on January 12, 2017 [24 favorites]


.

I'm not a football fan, or even really knowledgeable about the sport, but I went to an NFL game once a handful of years ago and the one thing that really struck me was just how incredibly loud the clacking together of helmets was. I remembered reading about Junior Seau's suicide months earlier and the idea of years of football-playing causing permanent brain injury became real to me at that moment. I never considered that it could be the same for high school players too. I found it particularly tragic that it's almost like the degree of severity of Zac's CTE was because of how much he wanted to please his dad and make up for the athleticism his brother had, but he lacked -- almost as if his suffering were preventable except for his selfless desire to be a good son and live up to his family's expectations.

From his journals:

I won't lie I look back now and always felt like I had something to prove to my dad and trying to fill my older brothers football shoes.... I was tired of teachers and even Principal Monroe comparing me to my brother and asking me why I wasn't as good of a student as my older brother. I guess I got to the point then where I just didn't care and realized the only way to fill adequate to fill the Easter family shoes was to play football.... I feel like all my concussions were for him in the first place because I just wanted to impress him and feel tough. I regret all that now and wish I never even played sports.


Heartbreaking.
posted by sevenofspades at 9:55 PM on January 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


.

This was hard to read for so many reasons. It seems miraculous nobody was hurt in all that time Zac was driving when he clearly should not have been. The disregard for others' lives was so casual as to be unremarked on, with nobody even suggesting stopping him from driving unless he'd been drinking.

It's not the focus of this story and shouldn't be, but this could easily have been a story about another kind of death.
posted by asperity at 10:57 PM on January 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


Soccer seems like an easier fix - ban heading the ball. It's already baked into soccer that certain parts of your body can't touch the ball. It'll change the game somewhat, but american football seems to require much deeper changes, judging by people's concerns about the line of scrimmage, etc.

I'm not especially knowledgeable about the upper levels of either sport though, so I could be wrong.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 11:09 PM on January 12, 2017


This is maddening because it's completely preventable. As so many injuries and deaths are preventable if only we cared enough to prevent them. (Challenger, for one quick example.)

All my life I have despised football -- as a thing in and of itself -- and the toxic culture that surrounds it. Why is assault applauded on the gridiron when it is correctly punished everywhere else? Isn't there something positive that young men with too much testosterone could be doing instead? Building homes with Habitat for Humanity, perhaps?

That toxic culture isn't just the strangers who pay to see mayhem; it's deep in families such as Zac's, as seen in the portion of the story sevenofspades quoted. Generations of males in families suit up and do this dangerous, inane thing in the hope of gaining the respect of relatives who aren't worth it. There are so many more stories like this that will be told in the coming years.

I do agree with Bella Donna: I am astonished at the strength Zac showed even at his lowest. If only that determination and tenacity could have been channeled into less lethal pursuits.
posted by bryon at 11:17 PM on January 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


I forgot to talk about the article. I literally almost vomited. Ankeny vs. Indianola, Menard's, it's all too close. I know exactly how satisfying it'd be to be from Indianola and beat the shit out of Ankeny.

I love football, but I can still just barely watch pro football (they are paid a lot and they know what their job entails and adults can make that choice) and I can't watch college any longer, with its unpaid teenagers taking hits. I love football, I think it's a beautiful game, but I didn't watch a single college game this season and I saw maybe two pro games. I'm a person who likes to relax every Sunday and have the games on while I cook, internet surf, etc. But it's just over. I just can't. I just can't.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 12:17 AM on January 13, 2017 [11 favorites]


Starting 2 years ago the northern Virginia youth soccer leagues now stop play on a header. Coaches are instructed to not teach kids how to head the ball. I don't think it's introduced to the youth game until the kids are in HS.
posted by askmehow at 4:45 AM on January 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


There's absolutely more concussions nationwide (US) from soccer than football, owing to its popularity and the fact that kids start doing headers at age 8. I don't have a cite handy but I learned that in a medical talk on concussion.

Not so absolutely:
When the denominator was hours of participation, the injury rate in football (5.08 /10 000 hours) was almost twice as high as that for basketball (2.69 /10 000 hours) and soccer (2.69 /10 000 hours).
Also:
Football accounted for more than half of all concussions, and it had the highest incidence rate (0.60). Girls' soccer had the most concussions among the girls' sports and the second-highest incidence rate of all 12 sports (0.35).
That medical talk seems to have misled you.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:57 AM on January 13, 2017 [3 favorites]



I found this super hard to read about and had to leave and come back to it a few times. Last year I fell at work and landed on the side of my head. This wasn't the first concussion I've ever had but it was the scariest. There is nothing more terrifying then having your brain suddenly not work right and know that it is happening. I experienced many of the symptoms he talked about. Short-term memory loss, just suddenly forgetting how to do something, the inability to process information, and the random lack of ability to do the most basic of tasks one day to being fine the next. At least I knew that I was more likely then going to get better. Knowing that this is it? That it's only to get worse? Just no.

I can see and feel why he made some of the choices he did trying to cope with it. And mad respect for doing what he did in order to get his story out.

.
posted by Jalliah at 7:59 AM on January 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


What are the rules for football at the middle and high school level with regards to using your head? Can your team be penalized if you charge in head down? Given what sevenofspades wrote about the clacking of helmets, could rules penalizing players (out of the game if you put your head down and smash someone?) or teams (penalties, etc.) help fix this? I know there are things about "how to tackle properly" that tell you to keep your head up, could they simply not count the tackles that were done improperly? (Start at the new line, do not change the down number) I realize that there's going to be a lot of space for people to use the rules improperly, but if crashing heads together is what causes this, why not start by banning that?
posted by Hactar at 8:36 AM on January 13, 2017


It's all tackles. I am no football expert but it's very difficult to conceive of football with tackling. Well, flag football i suppose, but per what was mentioned upthread, no one cares about that they way they care about football with tacking. Linesmen get it the worst but the same damage happens when a quarterback gets sacked - it just happens to linesmen a lot more often.
posted by GuyZero at 8:54 AM on January 13, 2017


God, this young man and his story.

I went to a high school in Florida that was -- and still is -- known for being highly competitive in football despite its small size, and his story echoes what I recall of several young men who did the same things he did to chase their dreams. I wonder where some of them are now.

Also reading his story, I can't help but wonder if the behaviors we used to call "roid rage" are really signs of incipient CTE.

.
posted by lord_wolf at 8:59 AM on January 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


Linesmen get it the worst but the same damage happens when a quarterback gets sacked - it just happens to linesmen a lot more often.

That's the blocking more than the tackling. The initial impacts among OTs/OGs/DTs/DEs/Centers/Nose Tackles that happen on 99-plus percent of plays are now being cited as just as dangerous as the "big hit" concussions, because they happen over and over again in quick succession.
posted by Etrigan at 9:01 AM on January 13, 2017 [4 favorites]


Jesus, makes me think of the Lou Reed song, "Kill Your Sons."
posted by e1c at 10:13 AM on January 13, 2017


A number of sports have problems with concussions, like soccer and ice hockey, but football is fairly unique in that repeatedly slamming your head against things is part of daily *practice*. And most sports have the option to remove the greatest contributing factors; soccer wouldn't change *that* much if you banned the header, and while pro ice hockey fans would whine hard about removing the body-check, it's not actually integral to the game and has been banned in various times and levels of the sport.
posted by tavella at 10:27 AM on January 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


I'm from Texas and I grew up here and I went to high school here. I never have liked football, mostly because it's boring and they can take 30 minutes to play the last 30 seconds of the game, which would often cut into whatever I wanted to watch next on TV. There is nothing to make you feel more like an alien fallen to earth than not liking football in Texas.

Which is all to say that I just can't understand people who still let their kids -- especially their *really little* kids -- play football. The evidence is there and has been there for far too long that even a couple bumps on the head is really bad for you, let alone hundreds. But on the other hand, I can't visualize this culture without it. I don't see people giving up the game even if it ruins the lives of its players. Just like you can still buy cigarettes and smoke yourself to death. But letting -- encouraging, even -- kids play just makes my mind boggle. It's not healthy behavior to model. But how do you get good enough to play pro if you don't play young?

I actively avoid it now, because knowing what I know about CTE and concussions makes the "game" too sad and frustrating.

(Also, read League of Denial, it's fantastic.)
posted by fiercecupcake at 12:05 PM on January 13, 2017


I took up boxing after this jerk on the football team started picking on me.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 12:20 PM on January 13, 2017


Even as a guy who used to get picked on by jocks in school, this was a tough read, especially because of Zac's desperation in trying to deal with his problems and failing, even well after he quit playing ball. It was especially maddening that the National Guard was considering sending him to Ranger school, given all the problems he was having and the military having their own problems with people with traumatic brain injury. And the whole thing with his dad reminded me a lot of Chris Farley's story and how many of his problems paralleled those of his dad's.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:35 PM on January 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


But on the other hand, I can't visualize this culture without it. I don't see people giving up the game even if it ruins the lives of its players. Just like you can still buy cigarettes and smoke yourself to death.

Oh you can still get cigarettes but smoking is nothing like it used to be. If football became like cigarettes there'd be only a couple of kids in the school dicking around with it in the dark corners. Everyone would give you the side eye. You'd feel dirty about being involved with it. You wouldn't talk about it. Lets get the surgeon general on it right away. We can have the same nasty billboards and everything.

Really, I'm surprised there weren't more MeFites out with torches over the fucking disgusting culture football breeds from ship to stern; men, their roles, women, their roles and our roles? I mean, how many enlightened people who fell into their first US high school football rally would not lose their shit. "You mean, you have your teenaged girls underdress and dance for guys who hit each other while eveyone yells? What do you do for the mathaletes?"

Sadly there aren't enough victims for us to care about. There are plenty of people who get out A-0K and plenty of more who suffer at a level of deplorableness for us to feel mildly bad. If we all knew a Zac we'd feel more badly about it but Zac -- or at least his reporting -- makes him an outlier.

You're right though, its never gonna change. DK had us thirty years ago and nothing's changed:
The star quarterback lies injured
Unconscious on the football field
Looks like his neck's been broken
Seems to happen somewhere every year

His mom and dad clutch themselves and cry
Their favorite son will never walk again
Coach says, "That boy gave a hundred percent
What spirit
What a man"

But who cares?
Games over-Let's go get wasted man
--The Dead Kennedys, Jock-o-Rama
posted by Ogre Lawless at 5:05 PM on January 13, 2017 [4 favorites]


We could allow people to play football only once they turn 18, which is what Omalu has proposed. (And what happens when 18-year-old athletic phenoms—freight trains who have never learned to tackle properly—are suddenly turned loose on one another? Is that BETTER?)


Well, now the author is just being deliberately disingenuous. There's no reason you can't *start* learning to tackle at 18 as well as at 5. He's acting like there would be no other way to do it besides just throwing them in the deep end.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:52 PM on January 13, 2017


The only sport that has achieved this dubious distinction is ice hockey, and only in some states, where a handful of paralysis cases has rendered public high school hockey too expensive to insure. Generally teams are "affiliated" with high schools but organized separately and children pay a fairly high fee to participate that covers the insurance cost.

Interesting.

The other day at the gym, there was a commercial or PR segment on one of the regional sports channels about the LA Kings sponsoring a local high school league that happened to catch my attention . I thought, "Aww. That's nice of the Kings to sponsor a hockey league and try to bring a little more interest and diversity to the sport. I guess."

It also crossed my mind that it's probably a bit tougher to organize high school hockey leagues from the ground up in Southern California. Still, it struck me as odd that it appeared the teams were associated with high schools but were not high school leagues. And you know me. I'll never turn down a chance to be a little more cynical.

Thanks for unturning that stone, Eyebrows McGee.
posted by bunbury at 7:10 PM on January 13, 2017


Australian Rules Football has similar problems, although I don't know whether they're as severe. There are a lot more restrictions on tackling, and the only protection usually worn is shoes, shorts, a shirt, and maybe a ... shmouthguard. Here's the AFL guidelines for community (non-professional, usually school-level) football, but at the professional level it seems to be left up to club doctors - I think that's potentially cause for concern.
posted by Joe in Australia at 8:20 PM on January 14, 2017


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