There is no amount of damage that is good for a brain, especially a developing brain.
The human brain has not evolved beyond the ability to sustain any impact greater than falling to the ground while running, and this is quite rare among lower-level primates (i.e., running full speed and falling, except in a fight-versus-flight scenario). Any collision with another person or object while running, or being struck while standing still, can result in some degree of brain damage.
All collision sports have an inherent risk of injury, including injury to the brain. Some sports have “accidental” collisions (baseball, basketball) while others have “allowed” collisions (ice hockey, football).
Adults can make informed decisions about the level of risk they are willing to accept, but while being 18 or older (and thus, an adult) may allow one to make this decision, is an 18-year-old capable of appreciating the implications of their actions or decisions on their future abilities?
Should the NFL simply state “there are inherent risks of injury to our players, and each player has been informed of these risks and has signed an indemnification agreement” and move on? They have already been sued, settled, and are now protected against brain-trauma-related legal action, so why not just stop with the rule changes and allow players to play/target/etc?
Do you not see an ethical issue in offering lots of tempting money to encourage people to participate in a dangerous action for your entertainment? How about encouraging high school and middle school kids to play when they are not old enough to weigh the risks?
So can anyone provide a statement from 1. Their state’s high school sports governing authority. 2. The NCAA and 3. The NFL stating this risks which are given to all football players as well as posted publicly?
Yes, and some sports, like boxing, have “planned” collisions, designed to achieve the object of the sport, which is to concuss your opponent and render him unconscious. Yet, boxing seems to get less grief than football.
Rule changes that curb unnecessary violence are good because they preserve the player and his career, and they protect the investment of ownership. Intentionally injuring your opponent is not a necessary part of the game and actually hurts the quality of the product by sidelining talented players.
No, I don’t because, first of all, football has been around long enough for people to know all about the dangers associated with the sport and, second of all, they don’t have to do it unless they want to do it.
From the standpoint of brain trauma, I disagree with your first point.
As discussed upthread, the issues with CTE and brain damage have not been well-known (or, frankly, known at all) until fairly recently, and the science is still emerging. Concussions among players have historically not been taken terribly seriously, and players have traditionally been rushed back onto the field, or allowed to keep playing after “getting their bells rung.” And, until quite recently, the NFL was in active denial about the brain trauma issue, and clearly trying to cover up or ignore evidence to the contrary.
Football is going to die from below. Youth enrollment is down 5% over the last decade. High schools have actually begun shutting down their varsity football programs due to lack of interest. In our area, it is already transitioning to a sport largely dominated by the poor. Parents just don’t want their kids dealing with that anymore and it’s going to get worse. I think that you’ll see rich private schools and small publics disbanding their teams first and then it’ll filter to the larger publics.
Football isn’t going to “die”. It’s far too big, popular, and lucrative for that to happen. It’s a huge part of American culture and one of the biggest things in certain parts of the country. Nothing short of an apocalyptic event is going to end it.
What might and probably will happen is that it’ll change. Just look at how dramatically the sport changed through the 20th century. They didn’t even have passing at first. Something will change, either incrementally or dramatically, but if the talent pool decreases enough to hurt the viability of the product they’ll adjust. It’s too big of a deal for it not to, or do you think those multimillionaires are just going to shrug, give up, and do something else?
Transitioning to a sport dominated by the poor? Somehow I’m skeptical that the current NFL playerbase came from wealthy upbringing.
The current public perception (which will likely be sustained, and grow stronger) will almost certainly shut down many youth and high school programs for rich, privileged white kids, but I’m not sure that would effect the NFL in the slightest. That’s not their player demographic.
I don’t disagree, at least in the near term. I think the question becomes: if a significant number of public middle schools and high schools (particularly in the south and California) eventually stop fielding football teams, what impact will that have on the NFL (and, for that matter, the big college programs)?
Looking at major league baseball, 29% of their players are now from outside of the U.S. (and, TBH, I would have expected that number to have been even higher). But, the fact that baseball is a popular sport in a lot of Latin America, as well as parts of eastern Asia, gives MLB other countries from which to draw players. Play of American football is pretty tiny outside of the U.S.
I don’t know, but the top 2 high school football teams in the nation are in Southern CA, and they are private schools with, presumably, well-heeled families supporting them. I understand families in the L.A. area with football prospects shop around to ensure their young star not only plays on an elite team, but gets plenty of playing time so the college scouts see them. This does not sound like a situation where these kind of schools are going to stop fielding football teams any time soon.
IMHO the typical suburban high school with a non-competitive football team and non-existent feeder program (e.g. pee-wees or Pop Warner) will be more likely to abandon their football program in the near future, and there are a lot more of those than the elite programs. But, bottom line is - at least in populous states like CA and TX, there will always be a lot of players to choose from, and college football is such a racket I cannot see that ending anytime soon, either (and it feeds the NFL).
The socio-economic background is actually pretty diverse. There is certainly a higher than average proportion of poor black kids than everyday society, but upper/middle class backgrounds are far from rare. Most QBs come from upper middle class backgrounds and then there are real outliers. Lots of kids (usually white kids, of course) come through expensive football academies.
Sports and entertainment are always going to be over-represented by low income folks since it’s one of the few ways out that don’t require access to lots of education.
Let’s be clear – CTE is a newly-discovered type of injury that’s qualitatively different from sprains, tears and broken bones. It unmakes you as a person.
And CTE is not a risk of football. It’s a consequence. It is the cumulative effect of the way almost every ends – with a tackle or downing – and most line play (blocking). It’s caused by the brain striking the inside of the skull when exposed to sudden stops. It appears to be all but universal in players: in a study where a few percent would have been alarming, the incidence was over 99%.
The only plausible reason for football continuing to be legal is that it’s entrenched and change is hard – not a very plausible reason for tolerating other practices that cause serious harm. Try telling parents it’s okay for an unnamed church’s priests to keep molesting their kids because it’s big, popular and lucrative, or traditional, or social.
IMHO, the future of football is being developed in laboratories. Haptic feedback devices and remote-controlled robots are the way to go. Once we are able to build those, we can test athletes for speed, strength, reflexes, and so forth, then customize a remote avatar to reflect that player’s physical assets while the player himself (herself?) controls the interface. Let the machines collide, spare the brains.
…I think that analogy is way too off. Football is a multi-billion dollar industry, many thousands of athletes aspire to it, the ones who get onto a coveted NFL roster spot may earn millions of dollars, every NFL player is a legal adult, every NFL player willingly signs that contract, and knows full well what the sport entails.
I am totally in favor of making football safer, but it is simply far off from underage victims getting abused against their will, not knowing what they were in for, not doing so with huge monetary gain or fame on their minds or in their future prospects, and not having voluntarily vied to join the Catholic ranks or signed up for altar-boy duty.
At first they thought it was just concussions. Then Junior Seau killed himself and they discovered HE had CTE. He had never had a concussion. They now know it’s not just concussions. It’s the every day hits, the blocks and tackles that happen on every play, that cause CTE.
It’s not going away. But will it’s popularity hold up? I don’t know. I know that I am having a tough time enjoying college football. I can’t help but think how many of these guys are going to have serious neurological problems in the their early 50s.