Quote:
Originally Posted by brandoncla
The 2 most at risk positions imo for repeated hard contact are the RB and LB. The NFL doesn't seem interested in protecting these players because they do not know how without changing the game. Which they've already done a good amount of.
I'm pretty sure o-line is actually the position that has the highest incidence of CTE. You very rarely see o-line take hard helmet to helmet hits but virtually every single play there is some sort of head on collision and these repeated minor collisions seem likely to be more damaging than the less regular harder hit.
No matter how you change the game I can't imagine a situation where the lines aren't going to be colliding in a similar way every single play. If the research does get to a stage where it can say pretty conclusively that that sort of repeated collision has a very high probability of causing brain damage then I can definitely see football dying off. It's not something that will happen quickly, and it's probably a heavy favourite for there still to be a huge professional league in 30-40 years time but as it starts to have a much lower uptake at lower levels the effects will be felt at the top.