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What can we do about football? [Contact Sports and Ethics]
Heartlash
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Registered User regular
I like watching football. In fact, it's the only sport I can actually follow for the entirety of its regular season. I think it's an intriguing mix of concept and execution. You need both a well minded coach, a good team dynamic, and individual talent to be successful.
Football is, however, a brutal game. Scientific evidence is showing more and more just how brutal it really is.
The short end of it is that football, particularly for constantly physical positions like lineman, is very bad for the long term health of your head. So bad, in fact, that even the propaganda machine of the league has had to concede, and players are now taking considerably more time off before returning when they have concussions.
Now, I want to tell myself that this is something players at all levels (HS, college, NFL, etc) are aware of and are participating in by choice; but I'm too familiar with the culture of team sports to really consider that a justification. I was a rower throughout HS, and I liked it a lot, but I remember plenty of instances where people would be vomiting and get told to clean up their shit and keep moving. I imagine football can be very similar. "Pick yourself up, keep going". I've heard a number of anecdotes, some present in the above articles, regarding players finishing games without remembering half of what occurred.
Further complicating matters is the question of just how you fix the problem. I want there to be better helmets. I want to say that and think it will fix everything. But the trauma isn't really caused by the exterior of the head being hit. It's caused by the brain hitting the interior of the skull. You can't really account for that with gear. If anything, helmets lead players into situations where they're willing to take harder hits. It's a bizarre double edged sword. You protect the skull at the cost of the brain.
The practical solutions involve player education. It seems like we're moving in that direction already, but I'm still willing to bet a lot of players, pro or younger, think they can get back in the game far too soon after receiving a concussion. This problem is compounded by the fact that injury doctors feel the amount of time needed to recover from a concussion is incredibly vague. Perhaps an enforced, exaggerated minimum standard is a good idea; along the lines of a player should be out a minimum of 6-8 weeks for a concussion. I also like the idea of adding "shifts" of lineman, much like in hockey. Take those positions where people are constantly getting smacked and divide the work with more personnel until experts are satisfied that the negative byproducts of constant trauma are reduced to reasonable levels.
Outside of these solutions, though, I can't think of anything that wouldn't fundamentally change the game. If things remain as they are, I may have to conclude that I can't watch football anymore with a guilty little voice in my head every time a lineman's head gets snapped back.
What do you think, D&D? Is there a solution outside the realm of "they know what they're getting into, that's that"?
Football is, however, a brutal game. Scientific evidence is showing more and more just how brutal it really is.
...
[College lineman Greg] Hadley wants to see, in raw, microscopic detail, what could await him. All CTE victims have had some kind of head trauma, and Hadley has received four concussion diagnoses during his college days. As they examine images under a microscope, McKee tells Hadley that the brown splotches represent the dreaded tau buildup in the brain. The brains are as brown as the pigskin itself.
Hadley lets out a quiet "Jesus" and sinks in his chair. His girlfriend stares at him, looking as if her cat just died. "I had no idea it was all over the place like that," Hadley says. He glances at a picture of a normal brain next to the stained brain of a deceased player. "You look at something like that and think, This is your brain, and this is your brain on football."
One evening in August, [30 year old retired lineman] Kyle Turley was at a bar in Nashville with his wife and some friends. It was one of the countless little places in the city that play live music. He’d ordered a beer, but was just sipping it, because he was driving home. He had eaten an hour and a half earlier. Suddenly, he felt a sensation of heat. He was light-headed, and began to sweat. He had been having episodes like that with increasing frequency during the past year—headaches, nausea. One month, he had vertigo every day, bouts in which he felt as if he were stuck to a wall. But this was worse. He asked his wife if he could sit on her stool for a moment. The warmup band was still playing, and he remembers saying, “I’m just going to take a nap right here until the next band comes on.” Then he was lying on the floor, and someone was standing over him. “The guy was freaking out,” Turley recalled. “He was saying, ‘Damn, man, I couldn’t find a pulse,’ and my wife said, ‘No, no. You were breathing.’ I’m, like, ‘What? What?’ ”
The short end of it is that football, particularly for constantly physical positions like lineman, is very bad for the long term health of your head. So bad, in fact, that even the propaganda machine of the league has had to concede, and players are now taking considerably more time off before returning when they have concussions.
Now, I want to tell myself that this is something players at all levels (HS, college, NFL, etc) are aware of and are participating in by choice; but I'm too familiar with the culture of team sports to really consider that a justification. I was a rower throughout HS, and I liked it a lot, but I remember plenty of instances where people would be vomiting and get told to clean up their shit and keep moving. I imagine football can be very similar. "Pick yourself up, keep going". I've heard a number of anecdotes, some present in the above articles, regarding players finishing games without remembering half of what occurred.
Further complicating matters is the question of just how you fix the problem. I want there to be better helmets. I want to say that and think it will fix everything. But the trauma isn't really caused by the exterior of the head being hit. It's caused by the brain hitting the interior of the skull. You can't really account for that with gear. If anything, helmets lead players into situations where they're willing to take harder hits. It's a bizarre double edged sword. You protect the skull at the cost of the brain.
The practical solutions involve player education. It seems like we're moving in that direction already, but I'm still willing to bet a lot of players, pro or younger, think they can get back in the game far too soon after receiving a concussion. This problem is compounded by the fact that injury doctors feel the amount of time needed to recover from a concussion is incredibly vague. Perhaps an enforced, exaggerated minimum standard is a good idea; along the lines of a player should be out a minimum of 6-8 weeks for a concussion. I also like the idea of adding "shifts" of lineman, much like in hockey. Take those positions where people are constantly getting smacked and divide the work with more personnel until experts are satisfied that the negative byproducts of constant trauma are reduced to reasonable levels.
Outside of these solutions, though, I can't think of anything that wouldn't fundamentally change the game. If things remain as they are, I may have to conclude that I can't watch football anymore with a guilty little voice in my head every time a lineman's head gets snapped back.
What do you think, D&D? Is there a solution outside the realm of "they know what they're getting into, that's that"?
Heartlash on
Posts
I think this is a bigger issue. As you said, there's this mentality of "suck it up and get back in there" that's pervasive in all sports, but seems to be most prevalent in football. I think there are far too many coaches who are more interested in winning than they are in their players' health. You can have a certain acceptable leeway with the college and pro levels, considering the amount of money being spent on the programs, and as you said, there's the fact that they should know what they're getting into (at least they do now, anyway). But at the youth level? Player health has to be the number one priority.
In terms of what you can do about it, at younger levels, I would want any player who has a suspected concussion to not play for 6-8 weeks minimum or until cleared by a doctor. I got a concussion playing soccer and was back at it 2 weeks later, and I shudder to think what would have happened if I had been hit again - I came back way too soon (it was my senior year in HS, it was the playoffs, I was the leading scorer on my team... I had to come back, right?). At the collegiate / pro levels, I think they should follow the NHL policies, which is that they do a brain scan at the beginning of the season, and you can't play again until your brain gets back to what it was at the beginning of the season. They could also add in some sort of "3 strikes" policy - 3 concussions and you're out of the league - and it should carry over from college to the pros - so if you get 2 concussions in college, then you only get 1 in the pros before getting kicked out. There are plenty of reasons to not enact something like that, though.
I also wonder how many of the concussions are due to poor tackling / blocking skills, but I'm not familiar enough with that to know.
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I have never had a concussion, never had problems with my knees, never had to worry about taking HGH, steroids, or PEDs.
A lot.
Part of it is the equipment. Helmets are so advanced now that players think their heads are invulnerable, and they start using them as battering rams. If current NFL and college players are any example, "see what you tackle" is often preached and rarely coached. It used to be that defenders tried to wrap up around the waist, now the league is filled with guys launching themselves head or shoulder first into each other.
Part of it is the league and media. Every year the NFL puts out highlight reels of head-hunting hits, even illegal ones. Every week ESPN's NFL recap show has a segment featuring plays where someone got "jacked up." And if there's one type of media where kids unquestionably imitate what they see on TV, it's sports. You don't see that from the NBA or MLB - there's no "NBA's Most Awesome Flagrant Fouls!" or "Fantastic Beanballs of the Major Leagues!" highlight reels.
Part of it is just players being bigger and faster. There's nothing that can be done about that, and it's going to produce more concussions. Even if every tackle were textbook form, there'd still be an increase in whiplash concussions due to players moving at a higher speed before instant deceleration.
He brags about it. I don't think he's being properly educated at all.
Or maybe he is, and just forgets.
The reason I ask is that Rugby, played properly, does not involve getting hit in the head, and I'm wondering how much of that is down to the game itself and how much is down to the fact that the most head protection worn was traditionally a scrum cap to keep your ears from getting ripped off, and these days is restricted to thin, soft padding and only worn by a minority of players.
I think the "they know what they're getting into" argument does have some merit IF 1. they actually know what they're getting into (we should make every reasonable attempt to make the most accurate information available to players) and 2. if they're adults and professionals.
This means, IMO, that pop warner and high school football have to undergo significant changes and become something more like flag football, that's a simulation of full-contact football rather than a smaller, younger version of it. It doesn't mean they have to literally use flags but I don't see how a parent (or a school or youth team) could in good conscience put a child at the kind of physical risk full-contact football puts them at.
College football IMO should be replaced by professional football with an age limit (18 or above and no older than say 22) and the players in this league should be given a college credit whereby after they're done with football (which, if they're not good enough to make the NFL - and the bulk of them won't be - they'll have tuition paid for whatever college they can get admitted to) they'll have access to an education. This is doubly important because as it is college football players are much more likely to neglect their studies than non-athletes. In fact, neglecting your studies may give a player (or a program) a competitive advantage as it means more time for football. That's an incentive that colleges should certainly avoid if they consider themselves academic institutions.
There are certain positions which tend to get them more than others. Quarterbacks get the most attention, but I'd imagine linebackers and running backs have to get them too as they lean into their hits a lot with their heads. I see a lot of QBs getting drilled and their head hitting the ground. Probably has a lot to do with QBs standing still while getting hit by a 300lb lineman who can run a 4.7 40.
Really what I'm asking is, if every player (hypothetically) played within the rules, and every player contact, tackle, etc. was straight out of the textbook, would players still get hit in the head?
I'm trying to get a handle on whether it's fundamental to the game or if it's to do with the way the game is played/the rules are enforced.
IMO yes they would (though more strictly enforced rules would reduce the frequency). But some of it is unavoidable. Helmet to helmet contact happens to some degree on a large percentage of tackles. Furthermore, the presence of blocking (which as far as I know doesn't really exist in Rugby) means that there are at least 5-6 collisions of some kind on the field on every play, and probably more on the average running play. Linemen, for instance, are almost never involved in tackles and yet I believe they have among the highest rates of accumulated head injury. (and it would be exceedingly hard for the referees to police that much simultaneous, generally chaotic activity)
Another problem we have discussing this issue as a 'football watching public' is that many people only think of the big hits when they think of concussions (QBs getting drilled or wide receivers going over the middle). Some of the research mentioned in the articles in the OP may indicate that those big hits aren't actually as dangerous as the repeated, less-intense hits that lineman take on every play.
One of the solutions I've seen mentioned (pretty sure this was in Tuesday Morning Quarterback), in terms of an attempt to change the game to reduce the violence, is to widen the field. Way back when you could fold your helmet in half and Harvard-Yale was the biggest game (like, Teddy Roosevelt was involved here), football was almost banned because it was too dangerous. They thought about widening the field to give players more space and reduce the big/constant hits, but renovating the college stadiums would've been expensive, so they legalized the forward pass to spread the field in a different way.
I also like the idea of 'shift work' for lineman, but it's hard to see that easily going into effect with the ironman standard currently in place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_football_helmet
a fading melody - my indie platformer for the xbox 360
Players got hit in the head back in the leather helmet days. What they didn't do back then, and what they don't do in rugby, was lead with the head. Some hits to the head will always occur. Even if you're aiming for the belly, if the other guy crouches all of a sudden his head is level with yours and there's no time to react. But those incidents go up when guys are leading with their helmets.
Improving the helmets might end up backfiring, it could make players feel more invulnerable.
A while back the British Medical Council and a lot of the big shots in Rugby Union were discussing that one problem going on right now, is that we're trending towards bigger bastards which has lead to an increase in long term damage, and numbe of injuries occuring.
So what we need is a way for it to hurt more but damage less.
a fading melody - my indie platformer for the xbox 360
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/13/60minutes/main941102.shtml?tag=mncol;lst;4
Electroshock helmets.
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I'm not familiar on the differences but isn't boxing in the Olympics much safer than boxing in Vegas? I know they wear headgear but the rules changed somehow, too.
Yeah, the scoring is different.
that and a win in the olympics is a win
in professional boxing, the financial incentive to win by KO is much higher