RIP to the dirty dirty

[Diomedes]

thanks honey

[stalker]

Enlightening article. Scares the shtein out of me. I have had quite a few concussions.

[Diomedes]

There's another article about the same subject in today's NYTimes sports section. 

[ice grillin you]

dr sanja gupta had a big story about sports head injuries on cnn this morning as well

they had ted johnson on there who self claims to have had over 100 concussions in his career

[Seabiscuit36]

I've had 3 concussions, they are fun

[reese125]

especially on 3 ambien and a bottle of shiraz..I hear ya

[Rome]

Are you sure you're not a chick?

[PoopyfaceMcGee]

I've had 3 concussions

This explains a lot.

[reese125]

I was referring to Seabiscuit Rome-hes Ambien and wine boy

[Eagaholic]

There may be evidence that playing in the NFL can cause brain injury, but the whole idea that this caused Andre Waters to commit suicide doesn't make sense. If this kind of brain damage is so common in the NFL and it causes suicide, then how come there aren't all kinds of players killing themselves? There was a player named Shane Dronett who just committed suicide but other than that I can't think of any others (although TO's tragically failed attempt would have bolstered the numbers).  I doubt suicide rates in the NFL are as high as the normal population so the argument doesn't make sense.

[Diomedes]

Terry Long killed himself by drinking antifreeze.
Justin Strzelczyk effectively killed himself by driving his speeding truck into a semi.

both of these guys brains were studied and found to have CTE

a quick search for NFL suicides doesn't turn up more names, but I'm sure they're out there, just not as famous or as recent.  Humans kill themselves all the time, it's one of our more commendable proclivities.

also, a little piece of data I picked up along the way...average life span for an NFL player?  55 years.

[Eagaholic]

No doubt the pounding that football players take can damage the brain. And if there are players who kill themselves and are found to have had CTE, that draws an association but doesn't necessarily say anything about causality. It's like drinking water doesn't cause people to become murders even though > 99.9% of all convicted murders have drunk water during their lives.

And no doubt human beings kill themselves all the time, it's one of the more common causes of death. My question is if NFL players off themselves more often than the rest of the country at large. To medically determine that CTE would cause suicide, like that doctor commenting on Andre Waters' case suggested, they would first have to determine that there are significantly more suicides among NFL players (and probably hockey players, boxers etc. that have CTE) than the random population. Even then they would still have to somehow control for other factors like the mega-dose steroids they used back then, the conditioned aggression, and such.

I'm all for the NFL investigating these kinds of things but at this point players should have a sense of what they are getting into. I read that Runyan just built a new house and had an elevator put in.

[ice grillin you]

overpaid athletes

[Diomedes]

shut up, bitchmade

It's now certain that in the next ten or twenty years there will be a lot of research put into CTE in athletes who participate in sports that subjugate the skull to violent trauma.  Soccer, boxing, hockey, football.  We'll see what it shows.  I wouldn't be surprised if the conclusions point to an extremely high rate of CTE.  I'm also pretty sure the sanctioning bodies of these sports will have nothing to do with funding this research, and will resist and contest all findings that demonstrate a link between their sport and brain damage.  PR campaigns to discredit the science will be effective in causing sports fans to disbelieve the science, and life will go on pretty much the same.  People want to believe what they want to believe.

[Eagaholic]

Could we be looking at the end of an era in football? It was a different game in the old days when players could clothesline a WR and Deacon Jones would headslap OTs into submisson. Now you can get a flag for looking at a quaterback's knees. Probably in the future all hits leading with the helmet will be outlawed (a la the McGahee hit) but I'm not sure what they do beyond that to protect people. They have that new car technology that beeps just before collision and expands airbags, maybe they put that in the RBs helmets.

Ultimately the NFL and the union will probably have to decide between neutering the game or letting the players keep it hard hitting, caveat emptor.