[yvonne]

Former Chargers and SC linebacker Junior Seau, who committed suicide last year, was just diagnosed with a degenerative brain condition caused by multiple hits to the head.

[yvonne]

Former Chargers and SC linebacker Junior Seau, who committed suicide last year, was just diagnosed with a degenerative brain condition caused by multiple hits to the head.

[FarmBoy]

I must admit, I often feel like quite the hypocrite enjoying football as much as I do. I would never encourage my own sons to play and will likely support my wife in putting up barriers to it, based on all the publicly known info. I often shake my head when a guy like Owen Marecic, who expressed interest in becoming a physician, was knocking heads so hard that he cracked helmets open.

[FarmBoy]

I must admit, I often feel like quite the hypocrite enjoying football as much as I do. I would never encourage my own sons to play and will likely support my wife in putting up barriers to it, based on all the publicly known info. I often shake my head when a guy like Owen Marecic, who expressed interest in becoming a physician, was knocking heads so hard that he cracked helmets open.

[3card]

I suffered my first concussion 3 weeks ago while skiing.  Cracked my helmet and lost about a 1/2 hour of memory.  Definitely changed my point of view on concussions.  I had a hard time even watching football for the first few days after (involuntary shudder with every hard hit).  Definitely discouraging my boys from playing when they get in high school and not a chance before that.

[3card]

I suffered my first concussion 3 weeks ago while skiing.  Cracked my helmet and lost about a 1/2 hour of memory.  Definitely changed my point of view on concussions.  I had a hard time even watching football for the first few days after (involuntary shudder with every hard hit).  Definitely discouraging my boys from playing when they get in high school and not a chance before that.

[Renaissance Man]

I love watching football at all levels, and have coached high school football for years.  That being said, I completely discouraged my son from playing, and, when I take time to think about it, I am always amazed that the game continues to be associated with high schools.  Everything that happens in a game is contrary to all school rules, and a game that results in devastating, life-altering injuries, and a significant number of deaths every year being promoted by the schools seems like something that will be looked back at with amazement at some point in the future.  I truly believe that there will be a landmark lawsuit, probably sooner, rather than later, that will result in football being disassociated from public schools.

[Renaissance Man]

I love watching football at all levels, and have coached high school football for years.  That being said, I completely discouraged my son from playing, and, when I take time to think about it, I am always amazed that the game continues to be associated with high schools.  Everything that happens in a game is contrary to all school rules, and a game that results in devastating, life-altering injuries, and a significant number of deaths every year being promoted by the schools seems like something that will be looked back at with amazement at some point in the future.  I truly believe that there will be a landmark lawsuit, probably sooner, rather than later, that will result in football being disassociated from public schools.

[Oasis]

...of a D3 college player I worry about concussions and other injuries.  The NYT or WSJ ran an article earlier this year about improvements in equipment, especially helmets.  The conclusion was that equipment is getting better but the greater protection the improvements provide may encourage more violent collisions, which in turn increase the likelihood of injury.

My definition of victory for my son's team is that he walks of the field after the game and knows which side of the field to exit. So far, all the games have been wins.

I wonder how football for most players at the HS and college levels compares in terms of injuries with driving a car.

[Oasis]

...of a D3 college player I worry about concussions and other injuries.  The NYT or WSJ ran an article earlier this year about improvements in equipment, especially helmets.  The conclusion was that equipment is getting better but the greater protection the improvements provide may encourage more violent collisions, which in turn increase the likelihood of injury.

My definition of victory for my son's team is that he walks of the field after the game and knows which side of the field to exit. So far, all the games have been wins.

I wonder how football for most players at the HS and college levels compares in terms of injuries with driving a car.

[82 Card]

At my other school, two football payers have committed suicide since 2005:

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/co...cide_x.htm

http://m.espn.go.com/ncf/story?storyId=5569329

Owen Thomas was the leader of the team. After his death he was found to have CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy).

I quit high school football after a play where I planted the ball carrier on his back, head on. The coach was all excited. "Doesn't that feel good?" All I wanted to do was puke.

Yet I still watch football, at least when Stanford is playing.

[82 Card]

At my other school, two football payers have committed suicide since 2005:

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/co...cide_x.htm

http://m.espn.go.com/ncf/story?storyId=5569329

Owen Thomas was the leader of the team. After his death he was found to have CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy).

I quit high school football after a play where I planted the ball carrier on his back, head on. The coach was all excited. "Doesn't that feel good?" All I wanted to do was puke.

Yet I still watch football, at least when Stanford is playing.

[jacketree]

How many of you drive cars on a regular basis?

[Edit: Which I guess is exactly what Oasis is asking. D'oh!]

P.S.  My son played four years of football in high school, plays Sprint Football at the Academy, and wants to be a Marine.  I'm still more worried when he gets in a car.

[jacketree]

How many of you drive cars on a regular basis?

[Edit: Which I guess is exactly what Oasis is asking. D'oh!]

P.S.  My son played four years of football in high school, plays Sprint Football at the Academy, and wants to be a Marine.  I'm still more worried when he gets in a car.

[Redrum]

Stanford dropped football and played rugby for a couple of decades early in the last century. (Gawd it feels odd writing that early in the last century.)  And even back then, before football became a multi-billion $$ industry, the rugby solution fizzled.  The evidence against football is more compelling today,  but America will not hear it.  We tolerate carnage on highways because car culture's  benefits suit us beyond pure economic utility.  We tolerate mind-pulverizing/ mind-deadening cultural media because, face it, we like it.  And we will ignore the costs or eventually try to palliate football's terrible costs to players with substantial payments...but we won't stop playing it because we like it.

I, too, am disturbed by the underlying cost of playing football as we play it today.  It raises questions, but I love it so. So I guess I follow in a great philosophic/religious tradition.  I am with St. Augustine when he prayed to God:  "Make me chaste and celibate...but not yet."

[Redrum]

Stanford dropped football and played rugby for a couple of decades early in the last century. (Gawd it feels odd writing that early in the last century.)  And even back then, before football became a multi-billion $$ industry, the rugby solution fizzled.  The evidence against football is more compelling today,  but America will not hear it.  We tolerate carnage on highways because car culture's  benefits suit us beyond pure economic utility.  We tolerate mind-pulverizing/ mind-deadening cultural media because, face it, we like it.  And we will ignore the costs or eventually try to palliate football's terrible costs to players with substantial payments...but we won't stop playing it because we like it.

I, too, am disturbed by the underlying cost of playing football as we play it today.  It raises questions, but I love it so. So I guess I follow in a great philosophic/religious tradition.  I am with St. Augustine when he prayed to God:  "Make me chaste and celibate...but not yet."

[Farm93]

How many of you drive cars on a regular basis?
[Edit: Which I guess is exactly what Oasis is asking. D'oh!]

Sure cars are dangerous, but they improve a society's mobility, productivity, etc.
Armed Forces, one could argue, defend nation-states, prevent or discourage invasions, terrorism, etc.

Football is a game.  Therefore it is not exactly delivering the same personal or societal benefits.  The saving grace, IMO, is that people can pursue it voluntarily.  If you want to play the game and roll the dice it is your choice.  Yet for me even that argument is not quite ideal.  People that smoke claim they enjoy it (at least at first), but their health care costs hit everyone.  Football is probably in the same place.

Football advocates could also claim an odd set of system benefits much like the tobacco industry used to claim.  By performing thousands of knee operations on young & fit teenagers, the quality of the operation has been vastly improved for older types with age related knee injuries.

The idea that football is so heavily promoted by HS and colleges is rather ironic really.  And I have definitely wondered how much longer D2 & D3 schools will play the game.  I am sure a D3 player gets a network of friends for life, but it seems like such an unnecessary risk with very little upside.  Ultimate Frisbee, rowing, sailing, tennis or golf teams seem like much better D3 pursuits.  FWIW though - soccer also has some pretty solid evidence that a lifetime full of headers is not exactly good for the brain.

I definitely see football as a fun game, but I had absolutely no problem with the idea that my wife did not want my boys to play the game, even though I am pretty sure my 9 year-old could ultimately make a very good HS Safety.

The sad thing about the Seau situation is that by the time the family started noticing symptoms, it was already way too late.

[Farm93]

How many of you drive cars on a regular basis?
[Edit: Which I guess is exactly what Oasis is asking. D'oh!]

Sure cars are dangerous, but they improve a society's mobility, productivity, etc.
Armed Forces, one could argue, defend nation-states, prevent or discourage invasions, terrorism, etc.

Football is a game.  Therefore it is not exactly delivering the same personal or societal benefits.  The saving grace, IMO, is that people can pursue it voluntarily.  If you want to play the game and roll the dice it is your choice.  Yet for me even that argument is not quite ideal.  People that smoke claim they enjoy it (at least at first), but their health care costs hit everyone.  Football is probably in the same place.

Football advocates could also claim an odd set of system benefits much like the tobacco industry used to claim.  By performing thousands of knee operations on young & fit teenagers, the quality of the operation has been vastly improved for older types with age related knee injuries.

The idea that football is so heavily promoted by HS and colleges is rather ironic really.  And I have definitely wondered how much longer D2 & D3 schools will play the game.  I am sure a D3 player gets a network of friends for life, but it seems like such an unnecessary risk with very little upside.  Ultimate Frisbee, rowing, sailing, tennis or golf teams seem like much better D3 pursuits.  FWIW though - soccer also has some pretty solid evidence that a lifetime full of headers is not exactly good for the brain.

I definitely see football as a fun game, but I had absolutely no problem with the idea that my wife did not want my boys to play the game, even though I am pretty sure my 9 year-old could ultimately make a very good HS Safety.

The sad thing about the Seau situation is that by the time the family started noticing symptoms, it was already way too late.

[needle]

I wonder what will be truly knowable about CTE.

Is there real science that will someday say what level of violence/impact is unlikely to cause CTE?

Is there at least going to be a good study linking number of concussions to CTE?

The suspect the answers to even these simple questions are very, very far away, if they are coming at all.

Conscience is going to be our main guide until then.

[needle]

I wonder what will be truly knowable about CTE.

Is there real science that will someday say what level of violence/impact is unlikely to cause CTE?

Is there at least going to be a good study linking number of concussions to CTE?

The suspect the answers to even these simple questions are very, very far away, if they are coming at all.

Conscience is going to be our main guide until then.

[M T]

My brother wrecked a leg playing football in 8th grade a half century ago.  I was a good bit younger, so never really desired to play it, and had already started in sports with fewer chances of being maimed.

My niece was a starter on her high school soccer team, but a string of concussions from headers ended that sport in her junior year.  It also impacted her performance on SATs 6 months later.  She's an exceptional student and a very smart person, but, perhaps partly because she was not fully mature, she continued to do headers when she knew she shouldn't.

WBB wouldn't seem likely to be a sport for concussions, but Jamie Carey suffered them.  I've forgotten the details of Toni Kokenis's concussion two years ago (which probably influenced her being rested after getting an elbow in the head recently).

And, of course, baseball has its problems with thrown balls and even sometimes the batted ball.

(I just Googled and found at least one study that found no signs of neurological effect of 50 3-meter springboard dives on a set of NCAA D1 divers.  That's good to know.)

Imagine if the people of the US decided to ban some sport for minors.  Most likely that would be done state by state, and so may be applied unequally.  Athletes & their families would likely move to particular states where the sport was still played, which might be perceived as a money-making opportunity by a state (like gambling and prostitution are allowed differently in different states), meaning some states would likely hold out for a long time.  Colleges, on the other hand, being high-minded, would offer scholarships in bulk to foreign students just because they had 6+ years of experience in the sport before coming on campus.  Next thing you know, the professional sports leagues will be complaining that they can't get enough green cards for the foreign athletes they want to bring in, since the colleges aren't producing them from US citizens in sufficient quantity & skill level.

(Contrary to what you might think, I've never poked a stick at a hornet's nest just to see how many hornets I could stir up!)

Some colleges already import their teams to some extent: 1/3 of Hawaii & ASU Women water polo teams are from continents other than the Americas; I thought that number was 50% two years ago (for ASU?), but that is unconfirmed.  (ASU foreign students are just under 10% of all students; Hawaii, is somewhere around 8%)

[M T]

My brother wrecked a leg playing football in 8th grade a half century ago.  I was a good bit younger, so never really desired to play it, and had already started in sports with fewer chances of being maimed.

My niece was a starter on her high school soccer team, but a string of concussions from headers ended that sport in her junior year.  It also impacted her performance on SATs 6 months later.  She's an exceptional student and a very smart person, but, perhaps partly because she was not fully mature, she continued to do headers when she knew she shouldn't.

WBB wouldn't seem likely to be a sport for concussions, but Jamie Carey suffered them.  I've forgotten the details of Toni Kokenis's concussion two years ago (which probably influenced her being rested after getting an elbow in the head recently).

And, of course, baseball has its problems with thrown balls and even sometimes the batted ball.

(I just Googled and found at least one study that found no signs of neurological effect of 50 3-meter springboard dives on a set of NCAA D1 divers.  That's good to know.)

Imagine if the people of the US decided to ban some sport for minors.  Most likely that would be done state by state, and so may be applied unequally.  Athletes & their families would likely move to particular states where the sport was still played, which might be perceived as a money-making opportunity by a state (like gambling and prostitution are allowed differently in different states), meaning some states would likely hold out for a long time.  Colleges, on the other hand, being high-minded, would offer scholarships in bulk to foreign students just because they had 6+ years of experience in the sport before coming on campus.  Next thing you know, the professional sports leagues will be complaining that they can't get enough green cards for the foreign athletes they want to bring in, since the colleges aren't producing them from US citizens in sufficient quantity & skill level.

(Contrary to what you might think, I've never poked a stick at a hornet's nest just to see how many hornets I could stir up!)

Some colleges already import their teams to some extent: 1/3 of Hawaii & ASU Women water polo teams are from continents other than the Americas; I thought that number was 50% two years ago (for ASU?), but that is unconfirmed.  (ASU foreign students are just under 10% of all students; Hawaii, is somewhere around 8%)

[JohnR34231]

My father was a football coach and he used to say that he would rather have kids playing football after school than riding around on motorcycles.

If my kids were good enough to make it in the NFL (unfortunately they weren't) I would have counseled them to play a couple of years and then get out.

10-15 years in the NFL I definitely agree could be hazardous to your health.

[JohnR34231]

My father was a football coach and he used to say that he would rather have kids playing football after school than riding around on motorcycles.

If my kids were good enough to make it in the NFL (unfortunately they weren't) I would have counseled them to play a couple of years and then get out.

10-15 years in the NFL I definitely agree could be hazardous to your health.