[BostonCard]

My (possibly flawed) math gets me a probability of 1.4 x 10-5.  Moreover, the 1400 team-seasons are correlated (the 1963 49ers overlap significantly with the 1964 49ers), so it is not appropriate to consider them independent seasons.

That being said, you are right that once you take into account the number of comparisons, "vanishingly small" is probably overstating it.

Still, football players do get ALS at about 4 times the rate of the general population.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?ter...S+football

CONCLUSIONS:

The neurodegenerative mortality of this cohort is 3 times higher than that of the general US population; that for 2 of the major neurodegenerative subcategories, AD and ALS, is 4 times higher. These results are consistent with recent studies that suggest an increased risk of neurodegenerative disease among football players.

So, yeah, not a coincidence.

BC

[BostonCard]

My (possibly flawed) math gets me a probability of 1.4 x 10-5.  Moreover, the 1400 team-seasons are correlated (the 1963 49ers overlap significantly with the 1964 49ers), so it is not appropriate to consider them independent seasons.

That being said, you are right that once you take into account the number of comparisons, "vanishingly small" is probably overstating it.

Still, football players do get ALS at about 4 times the rate of the general population.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?ter...S+football

CONCLUSIONS:

The neurodegenerative mortality of this cohort is 3 times higher than that of the general US population; that for 2 of the major neurodegenerative subcategories, AD and ALS, is 4 times higher. These results are consistent with recent studies that suggest an increased risk of neurodegenerative disease among football players.

So, yeah, not a coincidence.

BC