This analogy seems more to my tastes

My brother played OL at Carolina and played 6 seasons in Montreal. After reading this thread, I'm scared for his well being.

Does anyone have updated number on youth participation in football?

I tried googling and the results suggest they are down ~10% in the past 3 years or so (this is already a disaster in the making) but I can't find actual survey results to work with.

how about participation numbers in leagues where you're not allowed to tackle with your arms? forget what that technique's called...

After looking around for awhile, it seems that some of these participation surveys are conducted by trade associations that do not make the full results publicly available for free. Below is a link to a report from the Sports and Fitness Industry Association re: 2012 tackle football participation. Only $175 ($99 if you happen to be a member). It is referenced frequently in newspaper articles.

http://www.sfia.org/reports/46_Footb...on-Report-2012

Below is a link to the Participation data page of the National Federation of State High School Association's website. It has participation reports from 07-08 to 11-12 on just about every sport, including football. Doesn't appear to have convenient year by year comparisons already compiled, but all the data is there. It is also free.

http://www.nfhs.org/content.aspx?id=3282

Unrelated to survey data, after reading a lot about concussions and safety in football, I shake my head at how reliably people trot out the same terrible (imo) arguments in support of football over and over again. If you read one article about the decline of football in a local newspaper, you have read all of them. I especially hate the, "there is risk in everything in life and playing football is no different" argument. Offhand I can't think of many activities where youth are apt to get hit in the head thousands of times at high speed, but boys will be boys so oh well.

Are you referring to "heads up football"?

http://videos.usafootball.com/pages/headsupfootball/

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/08/09...pneumonia.html

Don't play football people.

Insane. Football is going to have to go away.

My kids will never play football.

I mean ten years ago this story is "washed up college QB BMOC gets drunk and chokes on his own puke in the woods"

I am starting to feel that at the least we are headed for a scenario where football participation will be confined largely to individuals coming from poor or disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, to the extent that isn't true already. It might take decades, but it is hard to let someone you care about play football with knowledge of what it can do to the brain.

This is what my pa said, but he let me try out so I wouldn't be a dork, and I wound up captain of the team.

me too

still didn't get laid

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/sp...w-nytimes&_r=0

cliffs: ESPN and Frontline do a documentary on NFL head injuries. ESPN is dismayed that Frontline does actual real documentary. ESPN and NFL jimmies are rustled over how mean the documentary is.

I think there are separate issues here.

First, did the NFL systematically cover up evidence that head trauma and concussions are linked to major health problems tobacco company style? If so, they should pay a really lot of money to victims and their families.

Second, what do we do from here? The mere fact that current players might be exposing themselves to future health problems is neither surprising nor a reason to take any kind of drastic action. Society permits people to take all sorts of long term health risks for immediate financial gain. So yes, make the game as safe as possible and educate players about how to best protect themselves, put aside money for lifelong health coverage for former players a la the VA and work with the union to preclude future lawsuits.

Where is the money for lifelong health coverage for college and high school players going to come from?

If your gonna play you better make sure you make it to the NFL.

Might have to force kids who play college (or even HS) to sign some waiver that increases their individual health care costs to help compensate for the known risk they're taking on; like employee health plans that penalize smokers and incentivize quitting smoking.

How about third graders?

I would think not, because the impacts involve so much less force until kids get to HS--where strength and power increase astronomically.

obama

bump for Kevin Kolb career ending concussion

http://espn.go.com/nfl/trainingcamp1...er-source-says

$765,000,000

I think a solution may be to make the helmets and shoulder pads similar to the NHL. The shoulder pads and helmets in football are used as much for weapons as they are for protection. You'd see more broken noses but way fewer head injuries.

Bling Blang Blauw, Jim mcmahon rubbing hundos on his titties -

[spoiler]if he could find them[/spoiler]