Needs more Ed Hoch Mod.

Obviously, special care should be taken with any kind of head injury, and if I had a child who'd had a concussion, I'd certainly make sure he didn't practice for a while, but I'd still want my child to play football. I really think the personality growth from going out and competing in a controlled yet somewhat dangerous environment where you learn to deal with pain and difficulty and fight through is something that would be very difficult to replicate outside of contact sports.

Life's not an egg race where the goal is to just get to the other side intact. It's an experience where we hopefully learn some things about ourselves and then try to enjoy the ride before it ends and we die. There's a lot riskier behaviors out there than football, like say driving a car that we all take for granted, and I don't think teaching a child that he needs to stay in a protective bubble somewhere avoiding any kind of risk is a good life lesson.

I would say the number of people I know who live miserable lives because they don't know how to handle adversity >>> the number of people I know who have life problems because of car crashes >>> the number of people I know who have broken down bodies from playing football.

Damn you must know a lot of guys who played football in the 70's or before. My grandpa played in college, all of his surviving teammates have dimentia and/or Parkinson's. A guy who played at Auburn had seats behind us at Michigan games up until a few years ago when he died. His name was Dave Middleton, and he was a world champion with the Detroit Lions! The game in specific was in November, and I had a pair of gloves sitting next to me. Next thing I knew, Dave was wearing them. My grandma had to ask for them back and it was really embarrassing for the guy's wife and we all felt bad. What's chilling though, is the blank stare on his face throughout it all. That stuff stays with you.

Luckily my Grandpa was only on the practice squad and his Alzheimer's is still mild.

None of your post has anything to do with degenerative brain disease

My kids are ghana play baseball. Tough sport, lot of life lessons, limited brain damage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Middleton

tuma owning that egg race nonsense.

Signups are this weekend!

It seems like the more visible the concussion issue gets, the more risk the participants knowingly take on, the less culpable football teams are. They aren't shutting down a multibillion dollar industry over some head injuries

tuma w/ A+ writeup.

As he referred to, IMO the thing that has been most overlooked/unrealized by many involved in the sport(especially as you go on down the ranks) is that the constant repeated head trauma, and not the "killshots," is really the major issue at hand. Obv this is where the debate/(problem) arises because the whole game of football is one 'collision into a point of attack' play after another. Science/media has only just recently begun to grasp the full consequences of CTE.

Gladwell wrote a piece on this topic a couple years ago: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2..._fact_gladwell

He also referred to Mark Schwarz as being the "pioneer" of writing about the issue, so if people are interested for more content on the topic, I'd recommend him as a decent start point.

I had a friend get hit in the head with a baseball bat being swung during warmups and he got a concussion. Outlaw baseball imo.

I co-sign with Iggy on this one. He layed it out pretty good, there are dangers everywhere in life. If you want to play football then play football... don't be fooled into thinking you can't live a long and intelligent prosperous life just because you played the game of football because it is simply not true.

The post above.. In baseball, I've seen kids get hit in the face teeth knocked out reconstructive surgery on their jaw, beaned in the back of the head, walk into a bat get hit in the head, collide with another player at full speed head to head contact, run into the fence running after a fly ball, getting taken out sliding into second base... the list goes on.

Yeah full contact sports have dangers, and they are always working on reducing those dangers. NFL rules committee is a whole other story. Bottomline is Football is a dangerous and violent sport... but that is part of what makes it great! That's why they garner respect because they are warriors of the gridiron. Football will never be replaced and will never be shutdown. It is as big a part of American culture as the cheeseburger.

You know what was also dangerous, violent, and garnered the respect of the common man and warrior alike?



I agree the NFL will still reign supreme as long as research doesn't advance much. Otherwise football will become what boxing is.

Also: lol @ the people who say they wouldn't be who they are today if not for football...ok.

Um...what?

Needle, I meant that It'd survive in only the roughest of neighborhoods as an escape from the streets, similar to boxing. This isn't an original thought either, I'm pretty sure I stole it from Gladwell or some other deadspin contributor.

It's just lol to me to herar that football provides critical life lessons/character building that's impossible to replicate elsewhere, though I'm sure for some people it's true.

What this trickles up to in terms of the effect on the NFL, well, I'd obviously be remiss to give a forecast.

EDIT: TBQH, I'd rather my kid got into boxing than football for 10000000 different reasons.

I have no problem with professional football. It's football at high schools that needs to be removed.

Hey, this is Jack from Tenafly, just wanted to talk about these concussions in football with the head injuries. My son's 13, he plays football now, he loves it, and while I worry about the injuries, it's a tough sport and it teaches you to be a tough person. I think instead of the head injuries the problem is these guys who go for these kill shot hits and then stand over the injured player, posing, like you see in the NFL. It sends the wrong message to the kids, I always tell my son, play tough but fair, you got to recognize that it's another human being you're playing against. Thanks for taking my call, I'll hang up and listen to your thoughts, on that.

We didn't need anymore confirmation of your limited intelligence, but thanks anyway.

I think people are also underestimating the negative non-physical effects of youth sports on many kids. Sure it's fun if you're athletic, but getting picked last and riding the bench all season is a pretty bad way to spend childhood.

I think this is a non issue nowadays. In little league there are mandatory play rules. Here in Michigan when playing elementary and middle school basketball there are mandatory play requirements.

I'm sure other sports are doing similar things. Also, someone will have to be the worst player on the team no matter what. Even if the weakest kid gets motivation from getting picked last and improves to be one of the best within a year there will be a new worst kid on the team, so there's really nothing at all you can do about that.

This is a good reason why football is great. You gotta send 11 players out on the field at a time and you can hide the sucky players. An unathletic kid has no chance of seeing the floor in basketball but football has different jobs for little dudes, fat guys, etc.

Football is different in that while the worst thing that would happen in some sports in a mismatch is that you get embarrassed, in football you could get seriously hurt. I'm not worried about putting the unathletic kid on the court in a blowout in basketball, but put him on the field in football and someone might drill him.

lol I don't even know what to say to this. The worst kid on the team never gets hurt... ever. And, if your that scared of getting hurt then maybe you shouldn't be playing sports at all.

Football players gotta practice. Lots of injuries happen there.

If you are interested in the subject, wiki has some pretty good articles on it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traumat...hysical_forces

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_contrecoup_injury

Your kid isn't taking constant blows (concussive or not) in baseball, though. As more research is done, more doctors are taking the stance that a high volume repetitive, non-concussive blows is more damaging than a handful of heavy, concussive ones.

This is the scary thing about brain damage. People are still under the impression that if you've never been diagnosed with a concussion, you must be OK. If you're taking ANY damage to the skull, you're increasing risk for issues down the road.

"The post above.. In baseball, I've seen kids get hit in the face teeth knocked out reconstructive surgery on their jaw, beaned in the back of the head, walk into a bat get hit in the head, collide with another player at full speed head to head contact, run into the fence running after a fly ball, getting taken out sliding into second base... the list goes on."

You can appreciate that there's a difference between the isolated cases of bodily harm in baseball and the constant damage of a sport like football, right?

It's frustrating to read responses like "We do dangerous things all the time. Like drive a car!" You aren't taking blows to the head consistently every time you get behind the wheel.

I have no problem with people allowing their kids to play football. That's a choice that parents need to make with their kids. But goddamn, just accept the fact that contact sports are dangerous and high risk.

Your brain is so scrambled you forgot what you had posted 20 minutes earlier.