I completely disagree. Not only are your numbers exaggerated to the max, but old injuries hurt all former athletes ranging across all sports as they age.

Here's the Kris Dielman concussion: http://pepperonsports.tumblr.com/pos...fter-suffering

Edit: I'm sorry for saying "pathetic human beings," I wasn't talking about anyone in this thread, and despite my claims I think there's still a lot of room for good discussion on both sides of the issue, especially from those who played the game. I'm looking forward to reading stories of the hardships that football players and other athletes have seen and faced, concussion related or not.

And, of all the players that have died during conditioning drills? ... or do we only care about the ones that are known to hit their head?

I don't understand why this is even an argument that repeated helmet to helmet contact is not a good thing for your brain. My argument, is that we have already known this for a very long time! lol it is common sense, like a kid banging their head against the wall. Football is a dangerous sport, permanent bodily harm is one of the dangers involved. Momentary lapses in form can end with devastating consequences. We've known this and have always known this. The NFL is taking steps to change the style of play to minimize it. Fundamentals need to be taught and emphasized at the highest level. Safety innovation is already underway. They want to make it safer because it is a great sport. And, surely a big part of American culture. Not a dumb !@#$ing game, and yes you cannot duplicate it.

Dielman was obviously concussed. This was obvious the way he wavered around. One of his teammates should have guided him to the sideline.

You can see his teammates kinda befuddled making sure he was okay. There isn't really much time for a player to assess that though with offense moving and all.

Also, SD was out of healthy lineman. Also kind of interesting the history of their head physician. I don't know his name off hand but its almost conspiracy-like as to why he still has a job.

The refs clearly saw it.

I played in high school, so my experience is limited. I know that everyone is taught to not use their helmet. But that's not how it works in practice. Lineman take shots to the head almost every play.

I can get brain damage with getting hit in the head or getting hit hard? I'm telling you that I could have played with wet paint on the front of my helmet and not gotten any on anyone.

Are we talking about whether it's dangerous to play in the NFL or if my dad is a scumbag for letting me play football as a kid? I don't think you can extrapolate NFL football to youth or high school football. The differences between high school and NFL football are legion:

-The players in the NFL are much bigger and stronger. I was a 210lb left tackle and the second biggest player on the team. There was a 300lb guy in our conference but he was a perfect sphere and fun to knock over.

-NFL players play much more aggressively and recklessly (a word?). The combination of these first two factors mean much more violent collisions.

-NFL players accumulate a lot more collisions. They play 16 games per year, high school kids play 8. They also play years longer than a high school kid. An NFL player might play 4 years of high school, 4 years of major college, and 10 years in the NFL. A typical high school player plays 2-3 years of varsity football. Nobody is getting injured in 6th grade games where 120lb kids run around on their tip toes, hug each other, and then fall down.

-NFL offenses are geared to more power on power. The I formation is common, where force at the point of attack is the basis of the running game. Youth and high school offensive linemen are much less likely to be able to block DLs or even LBs by force so the offense needs to be based on deception and angles with wing T, wishbone, spread offenses being common (can you tell I'm a coach's son?)

So if you're saying I shouldn't let my son play youth football because it's super dangerous I'm not buying it. Yes, I know that little Billy Jenkins committed suicide in Bums****, Maryland after scoring 4 touchdowns in a game and when the doctor autopsied his brain he thought it was from a 110 year old Alzheimer's having merchant marine who drank turpentine daily for 60 years but I think those are rather the exceptions and not the rules.

A kid I went to high school with (my left guard) was paralysed mountain biking in college; another classmate, actually my high school's alltime leading scorer in basketball died in a snowmobiling accident. Two of my uncles were college scholarship pitchers. Both have needed shoulder surgeries and one can't lift his hand above his shoulder to say, scratch his ear. The other is the varsity baseball coach at my old high school. He had former MLB pitcher Mike Marshall tell him he's a sadistic **** for forcing kids to pitch baseballs. I don't think that locking up all the bikes, footballs, baseballs and snowmobiles is gonna lead to a healthier society.

If you're saying I shouldn't let my kid play youth football cuz he might be super awesome and make it to the NFL I'm not convinced by that either. Hopefully, we'll have lots more information about the risks of playing football for a living and as a grown-ass man he can decide if he wants to play or go do something else. Presumably being good at football wouldn't have closed any other doors.

Good post, I pretty much agree wholeheartedly.

By the way, I was usually the smallest guy on the field, so I was usually taking the worst of it in collisions. I know the risks involved, they are non-zero. Would I encourage my kid to have a 10 year career in the NFL? No, probably not, you're pretty much inviting an early death that way. But I would say yes to high school football in a heartbeat.

Posts from vast majority of football players are pretty atrocious - if there's a coherent pro-football case to be made here they aren't making it well. Idiotic straw men like "PEOPLE IN EVERY SPORT GET INJURED" (ldo but the implied equivalency isn't remotely close to an accurate representation of the situation) are not helping the cases. Nor is a callous, head-in-the-sand statement like that "Billy Jenkins" gem, re: which - pretty despicable to trivialize the actual tragedies that have occurred, even if you still think football's worth it on balance.

I played high school and college soccer so I can sympathize with the love you guys have for your sport. I just think it's worthwhile to try and detach a little bit and see if you would still feel this way if the topic was something you were less invested in/defensive of. I think it's very relevant that the non-football players advancing their case are much much more engaged with the actual evidence and scientific literature, whereas the pro-footballers are far more reliant on equivocation and anecdote in response.

I think part of the problem the pro-footballers have (myself included) is the potential costs are easy to quantify (concussions, brain damage, etc.), while the benefits are extremely difficult to quantify (or haven't been studied). I would love to see a study on friends made, earnings potential, willingness to rebound from adversity, etc. of football players vs. non-football playing athletes vs. non-athletes, though conducting a study like this would be difficult to say the least. So all we have to appeal to is our experience, which is overwhelmingly positive, and is by definition anecdotal.

And I definitely would not feel this way if it were a topic I were less invested in. Because I wouldn't have that anecdotal experience to draw from.

Yeah, I'd definitely agree with you there, it's an extremely tough comparison to make in any systematic way. There have just been a ton of posts that deny/trivialize/misunderstand the evidence that is available (see: the frequency of posts that reference the fact that you can get injured doing non-football activities, as though that in some way affected the risks of playing football.) I certainly suspect it's a topic we'll come to learn much more about in the next 10 years. I could definitely see it getting to a point where the evidence is just too much to ignore, and it certainly seems to be building in ominous ways (the growing evidence that it is the less (un?)preventable repeated traumas that do the real damage rather than a couple hard hits).

I'm on the pro football side and would love to engage in this thread but I haven't been hit in the head enough or had enough repeated non-head contact violent deceleration injuries to my brain to wish to subject myself to the ad hominems coming from the pussies concerned posters in this thread.

I keed, I keed. I am brain damaged enough to do this.

Football is a sport that is accessible to kids of all shapes, sizes and socio-economic backgrounds. It provides stability, character growth, camaraderie, and a host of other positive influences on children who participate - something that many of them have little chance of getting anywhere else. Appropriate socialization and positive male role models are in short supply for far too many kids in the USA.

Football isn't perfect - it is violent. Recent studies show that football has the potential to cause permenant brain injury. Here in California, the state legislature passed a law requiring any official who suspects a concussion in a youth/high school game to remove the player from the game. That player cannot come back in that game, and must get a doctor's release to resume practice or other physical activity with the team. I think it is a step in the right direction to address the concerns for the children in our charge.

Outright banning youth football would be tragic, and a net negative for children and society.

This post is very much off base. Obviously the NFL is worse for your brain. But the science says that it is not the major blows that are the problem. The problem is the massive amount of sub concussion hits that players take during practice and game. This happens at high school and college.

The science is still very new on this subject. The people who are getting Alzheimers at a young age may not be the exception to the rule. If you put your son in football over another sport that will teach him the same thing then you're risking long term brain damage and a shortened life span for the same of a game. Pretty horrible if you ask me.

That is completely false. Football is very expensive. A lot of schools spend tons of money on putting together a football program. Some schools still do it even though they barely have the money to provide competent resources.

Why would it be tragic? Why can't they just play a sport that does not risk long term brain damage?

JayTeeMe like other ex football guys, tries to point out random fluke accidents in life as to why little kids should play football.

It's getting old. Realize why the argument sucks.

The schools put the money in to it. The league subsidizes some schools. The league and the schools subsidize the student athletes, usually 100%. It is the cost to the student athlete and his family that I am referring to. The leagues are actually pretty good at making sure the underfunded programs get the money they need to field teams. It is also not money that gets taken away from educational programs. Programs are supported by ticket sales, fundraisers, boosters clubs and their league.

Name a sport where a child of mediocre athletic ability can get significant and meaningful playing time in a team sport with no or very little out of pocket expense to his family.

Again, their are mandatory play rules in basketball/baseball. The total cost you need to spend on playing them as a youngster is under $100 on each. I am personally gonna splurge when my kids are old enough to play and buy them everything but for a family tight on money it's definitely do able.

Glove/Cletes for baseball and Basketball shoes for basketball is all you need.

So, it is expensive as hell then. Helmets+Field+Practice Field+Pads+Injuries+practice equipment+tons of other stuff = hella expensive.

Huh? Why does out of pocket expense matter when the local schools are footing the comparatively massive bill? It's still an expensive sport. Also, I don't know why the athletic ability of the kid matters. You still have to be athletic to get onto the field on a competitive squad.

Mandatory play rules are the opposite of significant and meaningful.

Football has room for 22 starting position players plus special teams. Baseball has about 13-14. The marginal player with meaningful playing time in football need not be as talented as his baseball counterpart.

Baseball and basketball are not expensive sports. Play them in the spring and winter imo.

Mandatory play rules for little leagues, not high schools. When you have to mandatory play the terrible kid in baseball you stick him out in right field and hope nobody hits the ball that direction. When someone does, he ****s it up, it's obvious to everyone, he's out there on an island, and all his teammates hate him. Then he goes up there and strikes out every inning killing your rallies. In football you can put him at DE or FS or something and nobody will even know he's there or that he sucks. Basically, as a kid I remember getting pissed all the time at the terrible kids in baseball and basketball but never in football.

In a gross generalization sense, the need for development of self esteem, appropriate socialization and positive role models in any one child is inversely proportional to the child's ability to afford extra curricular activities.

Addressed above.

Ticket sales tho.

My high school charges $6/head to get into the football games and draws like 4k people per game.

Seriously dude, keep posting. With each post you make less and less sense. Wouldn't be suprised at all if you're in the early stages of CTE.

No, that's just some weird crap you made up. That also has nothing to do with football causing early onset Alzheimers. You can get those things in other sports or extra curricular activities that don't destroy a person's brain.

Cool story bro? Does that make it okay to risk early onset Alzheimers in high school kids

Uhhhhh, no. Just no. I guess you can think that if it makes you feel better. But it is just not true.