Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy [CTE]

Started by Diomedes, May 02, 2011, 09:57:35 PM

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rjs246

Right. If the game can adapt (through better equipment or rule changes or whatever) it will survive. If it can't, or won't, there will eventually be a tipping point.
Is rjs gonna have to choke a bitch?

Let them eat bootstraps.

ice grillin you

no there really wont

of course it will evolve...its evolved quite a bit already over the last 20 years....but there will never be a "tipping point" and there will never be a time where there isnt football

people are losing their minds because a popular player just died but in the end this is the bird flu or y2k....people flipping out predicting the end of the world for no reason
i can take a phrase thats rarely heard...flip it....now its a daily word

igy gettin it done like warrick

im the board pharmacist....always one step above yous

rjs246

We don't like watching our heroes disintegrate into tragic helpless invalids and there are enough people with an axe to grind to basically guarantee that things will change drastically.

Like I said. it's easy for us to dismiss that side of the argument because we all love the sport and the violence that comes with it.
Is rjs gonna have to choke a bitch?

Let them eat bootstraps.

ice grillin you

i dislike the violence and what it does to people probably more than anyone...id be one of the last people to ever turn a blind eye....but im also the not going to flip out and predict the death of the entire sport

nfl players have been turning into zombies in their post playing days for 50 years....its just now we are in a 24/7 twitter blog universe where everything seems like the biggest thing thats ever happened...so when you get a seau dying you are going to have hysteria
i can take a phrase thats rarely heard...flip it....now its a daily word

igy gettin it done like warrick

im the board pharmacist....always one step above yous

PhillyPhanInDC

Quote from: ice grillin you on May 03, 2012, 09:15:46 AM
no there really wont

of course it will evolve...its evolved quite a bit already over the last 20 years....but there will never be a "tipping point" and there will never be a time where there isnt football

people are losing their minds because a popular player just died but in the end this is the bird flu or y2k....people flipping out predicting the end of the world for no reason

IGY, this type of thing is not without precedent. From the article I posted in the Dead thread:

Quote
Football faced a version of this question a hundred years ago, after a series of ugly incidents. In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt called an emergency summit at the White House, alarmed, as the historian John Sayle Watterson writes, "that the brutality of the prize ring had invaded college football and might end up destroying it." Columbia University dropped the sport entirely. A professor at the University of Chicago called it a "boy-killing, man-mutilating, money-making, education-prostituting, gladiatorial sport." In December of 1905, the presidents of twelve prominent colleges met in New York and came within one vote of abolishing the game. But the main objection at the time was to a style of play—densely and dangerously packed offensive strategies—that, it turns out, could be largely corrected with rule changes, like the legalization of the forward pass and the doubling of the first-down distance from five yards to ten. Today, when we consider subtler and more insidious forms of injury, it's far from clear whether the problem is the style of play or the play itself.

If there becomes enough of a focus, there could be dramatic impacts to the game. I don't think that the NFL will cease to exist overnight, but you can bet that one of the repercussions is that high schools and colleges begin to shy away from it (over a long period of time) because of insurance costs and the like. Obviously, that would erode the bedrock of the professional league.

I agree with you about the hysteria. It's there, and largely irrational, but it can surely be a catalyst for, as RJS put it, people with axes to grind to find an issue to latch on to and courageously and righteously ensure the safety of everyone, whether they like it or not.
"The very existence of flamethrowers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, "You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.""  R.I.P George.

ice grillin you

high school and even college is not an issue....

im sure theres an example or two somewhere in the country of this not being the case but the kinds of life threatening and life debilitating injuries we are talking about happen in people who play in the nfl for extended periods of time

i can take a phrase thats rarely heard...flip it....now its a daily word

igy gettin it done like warrick

im the board pharmacist....always one step above yous

PhillyPhanInDC

Quote from: ice grillin you on May 03, 2012, 09:45:55 AM
high school and even college is not an issue....

im sure theres an example or two somewhere in the country of this not being the case but the kinds of life threatening and life debilitating injuries we are talking about happen in people who play in the nfl for extended periods of time

Not so. There's a lot of evidence to suggest that people that don't ever make to the NFL have these injuries. Kids who play only a couple of years of high school football can have serious damage. Again, it should be noted this creates a degenerative condition. The damaged may be cause when the person is 17, but you may not become symptomatic for decades.
"The very existence of flamethrowers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, "You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.""  R.I.P George.

ice grillin you

i can take a phrase thats rarely heard...flip it....now its a daily word

igy gettin it done like warrick

im the board pharmacist....always one step above yous

PhillyPhanInDC

At this point, people are beginning to do more homework. These people were generally just thought to have dementia or early onset Alzheimer's, but now that people are becoming aware of C.T.E, and how to find it (unfortunately almost always postmortem), they are likely to continue to attribute this to football and other contact-related sports. Basically, the medical community will begin to accept the fact that they had been misdiagnosing the problem for decades.
"The very existence of flamethrowers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, "You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.""  R.I.P George.

Diomedes

There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists." - Yosemite Park Ranger

phattymatty

i will save them time.

playing football and smashing you head into shtein fargs up your brain.

enjoy your millions.

ice grillin you

i can take a phrase thats rarely heard...flip it....now its a daily word

igy gettin it done like warrick

im the board pharmacist....always one step above yous

MMH

Rules aren't going to be enough.
If this problem can't be solved with engineering, it's going to spell trouble for the league.

Diomedes

Well, define "rules."

How about this rule: no more helmets.
There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists." - Yosemite Park Ranger

Eagaholic

#29
OK, we don't have to shut down the NFL anymore

QuoteThe NFL is telling retirees about a medical study that says former players live longer than men in the general population according to the Associated Press.

While player safety issues related to brain trauma and other football-related injuries dominate the headlines, the study by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) found 334 deceased men in a sampling of 3,439 former NFL players. Estimates for the general population anticipated 625 deaths.

Players in the study participated in the NFL for at least five seasons from 1959 through 1988, and were observed by NIOSH through 2007.

The study is a follow-up to a 1994 report the institute did at the request of the players' union to, "investigate concerns that players were dying prematurely." The latest findings, which contradict that idea, were published earlier this year in the American Journal of Cardiology and on NIOSH's blog. The NFL sent a newsletter from NIOSH about the study's finding to about 3,200 pre-1993 retired players on Tuesday.

Your brain might be farged, but at least you'll live longer to enjoy pissing your pants while walking around your front yard looking for your house.