I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there is no circumstance where you do something that demonstrably damages your body, be it broken bones, torn muscles, or head injuries such that you can’t see straight, have constant headaches, etc., where you can claim ignorance of those consequences. Professional football players have suffered severe injuries since time immemorial. Frank Gifford missed an entire season in the prime of his career due to a concussion inflicted by Chuck Bednarik in 1960, 53 years ago. The players have known that they could be injured or crippled the whole time, they could not plausibly have thought otherwise except in the sense of “I’m immortal, it’ll never happen to me!” The knowledge of the exact nature of the injuries may have changed, but that’s not the same as the claim that it was concealed from them. How, precisely, do you conceal the consequences of a concussion, really? I’ve had a few, and at no time did I feel anything even remotely normal. When you’re injured, it’s a pretty good indication that it’s a bad thing, and just like all bad things they get worse when you continue to do them.
For that reason, I find the players’ claims implausible.
That said, I’m OK with the league doing things to minimize those injuries. They have to, simply because public opinion will not countenance these sorts of injuries for much longer. Ultimately, though, it falls on the players to protect themselves, even if it means that they sit out some games and maybe lose that fat contract. It’s their choice, they don’t have to lead with their heads, they don’t have to get pummeled week after week, they can walk away at their leisure. Football is violent. They can have (relatively) certain good health, or they can take their chances for money. Everybody makes that decision in some way when they choose their career, football players simply chose a profession that demonstrably wrecks their bodies.
That’s really not the only important factor. The fact that they are nevertheless being incentivized to outweigh that risk with a lot of money puts liability on the people doing that incentivization.
And there’s also the fact that besides the tiny number of actual professional players who are richly rewarded, there are those many, many more who never get close to those levels of reward, but suffer the same consequences.
The pathetic loser OP admitted he has no life and that the only joy he gets out of life is football and if you take that away then he has nothing and will probably kill himself.
You people are monsters for wanting to take that away from him.
No, not in all cases, just in every single case checked so far. See, the issue is that the player’s brain has to be removed and sent to Boston College and not every player’s family agrees to that. But so far, if not 100%, damn close to it of the brains they’ve examined have shown varying degrees of CTE. It’s no longer if, but when.
Ya know, if they did, there’d be no reason for the teams to not play every day.
And then I might be able to start following the game. I’m not going to waste my time on a team that I have to wait a week between opportunities to root for them.
I know nothing about gridiron, but if this issue is anything like it might be in cricket, then lowering your tackle (head or all of it) outside your box would be such a stupid idea I don’t get why they’d even need to outlaw it.
“Leading with the helmet” and “Tucking your head down in preparation for impact” aren’t exactly the same, but can appear so, and often have similar results.
Bummer, but it means that now guys necks are going to take more damage from being slung around when the non-tucked head gets whacked by a stray arm/leg/body part.
I don’t think it matters. If the runner initiates contact with the crown of his helmet, regardless of why, it’s a penalty.
What’s going to be more difficult is figuring out who to flag on helmet-to-helmet hits - defender or ballcarrier. The league did specifically allow for both players to be penalized on the same play - I think we’ll see a lot of offsetting personal fouls.