League of Denial: The NFL's Concussion Crisis | FRONTLINE | PBS

[StillShaving]

If you are football fan you should find this documentary interesting. It was televised this week and is now available online here: League of Denial: The NFL's Concussion Crisis | FRONTLINE | PBS.

At the beginning there is a focus on the Pittsburgh Steelers, but only because of the people involved. We all know football is a brutal sport and I think reports like this will change public perception further.

 

[noahpictures]

A few years ago there was a great Esquire article that for the first made this problem public. I was shocked at the number of great NFL players in their thirties and forties that had become mentally ill or had committed suicide. There is not much done by the NFL even after Junior Seau's suicide. The only possible solution in my opinion is to change the game's rules.

 

[StillShaving]

Agree. While there have been some rule changes it looks like more needs to be done to keep the players safe. There is some promising research being done to put accelerometers in helmets to keep a running total on potential injury, to take players out before they suffer too much injury. But with lawyers and potential litigation involved, will it be effective? I realize that injury lawyers have each individual's best interest in mind, but I believe they also do harm in preventing an open and honest conversation from ever taking place in public.

The frontline documentary admitted that other factors could be involved and not enough study has been done but it was eye opening to see that some 37 out of 38 football player post-mortems showed disease due to repetitive brain trauma (can't recall exact total, but only 1 brain out of nearly 40 did not show signs of Chronic traumatic encephalopathy)

 

[AirForceMX]

I think nothing should be changed. If you want to play football you should know it is a brutal, body beating, gladiator sport. You have no right to sue the NFL for something YOU signed up for, and love! Just my opinion.

 

[StillShaving]

I agree that players should bear a lot of the responsibility, but I think it is a complicated issue. Especially when there is safety gear that is supposed to help protect against injuries and past statements made by the league to the players that there are no long term effects on mental health, when there may be evidence that they knew differently. The NFL is very profitable* or at least has a big revenue stream that is bound to attract some litigation.

*Technically the league is non-profit, but between the league and team owners there is a lot of money flowing around. I see more articles like this, which can only serve to add more public pressure: How the NFL Fleeces Taxpayers

 

[Chadao]

The NFL...or probably high schools and colleges need to educate the players...not that a 20-year-old has a sense of mortality, especially with millions of dollars staring him in the face...I don't think there is a good answer.
Nutrition, improved strength, steroids, and HGH, have caused physical ability to outpace protection.
But big bucks could solve the problem the same way the burgeoning revenue in the NFL led to improved medical procedures including the invention of arthroscopic surgery.

 

[keithmax]

I think nothing should be changed. If you want to play football you should know it is a brutal, body beating, gladiator sport. You have no right to sue the NFL for something YOU signed up for, and love! Just my opinion.

+1 I would only be surprised if they did not suffer from repeated head trauma. You don't have to be a doctor to know repeated blows to the head are not good for you, football and boxing included. Buy the ticket take the ride.

 

[rm71]

There have similar discussion here in Australia about Aussie Rules.

 

[StillShaving]

Not sure I am paying more attention to this issue, or there are more frequent news stories:

• Earliest stages of CTE impact Tony Dorsett
• Terry Bradshaw coping with memory loss, depression

 

[mdevine]

While I love football (and am watching it as I type), I can't see it being around in another twenty years. It seems there is a big liability issue at the professional level, but college, high school and Pee Wee football face financial risk as well. I don't any way to make it a "safe" enough sport to avoid risky and expensive litigation. I could see the cost of insuring against that liability affecting the youngest levels first, to where they just can't justify continuing. Combined with the fact that more and more parents of young children steering kids to safer sports, the feeder system to professional sports may wither away.

 

[5Cantonas]

This happened this past weekend.

Chances are, the keeper suffered a concussion. He argued with his medical personal, officials, his opposition and teammates who all wanted him off the pitch. He finished the last bit of the match, although clearly he was distraught and should have gone for evaluation instead of continuing on. Concussions are nothing to mess around with.

 

[inspiringK]

While I love football (and am watching it as I type), I can't see it being around in another twenty years. It seems there is a big liability issue at the professional level, but college, high school and Pee Wee football face financial risk as well. I don't any way to make it a "safe" enough sport to avoid risky and expensive litigation. I could see the cost of insuring against that liability affecting the youngest levels first, to where they just can't justify continuing. Combined with the fact that more and more parents of young children steering kids to safer sports, the feeder system to professional sports may wither away.

It is probably salvageable with some rule changes. Rugby is a pretty brutal sport too, but with no safety gear, certainly doesn't have the same concussion related later life issues that the NFL seems to produce. With slightly tweaked rules, better (self preservation) techniques in play, and a re-evaluation of how the hard "protective gear" affects player safety, there should be plenty of room for improvement.

Naturally, it may just be that Rugby hasn't caught up to the research done in the NFL, but I would be surprised.

I know the NHL has talked about actually reducing padding on shoulder and elbows, or at least making the padding softer to reduce concussions.

 

[StillShaving]

I know the NHL has talked about actually reducing padding on shoulder and elbows, or at least making the padding softer to reduce concussions.

I agree with that sentiment. If the NFL went back to leather helmets I think it would be safer. But I might be wrong.

 

[hawgsquatch]

We are being emasculated daily. If you don't want the risk, don't play the sport. Don't cash those big checks. Don't get out of bed in the morning. Better yet wear a helmet whilst you sleep. Some day we may be forced to fight an enemy that did not coddle every child, did not villify combat sports, and doesn't care how we "feel " about everything. What will we do then.

 

[infotech]

I think nothing should be changed. If you want to play football you should know it is a brutal, body beating, gladiator sport. You have no right to sue the NFL for something YOU signed up for, and love! Just my opinion.

I'm sure the Romans said the same thing about actual gladiators... The thing that is most troubling about it is the men that chose to become pro football players started out as kids in peewee league.

I don't think big changes are coming to the NFL anytime soon, but tight regulations to the leagues kids play in. It may take a generation or so, but the results will have huge effects on the NFL.

 

[Cricket1]

I agree that football as we know it will either not exist in 20-30 years, or will be very different from what it is now. Watching the Frontline episode is eye opening, shocking and saddening. I am a huge football fan, but now... I don't know how I feel about it.

As one clip said about Roger Godell's conversation with the original doctor who first broke the CTE story with research into Mike Webster- If mothers stop their boys from ever playing pee wee football, we (the NFL) are done." I predict it will happen. Its not just the big hits/ concussions that are the problem, it also appears to be all the tiny hits that add up over a career of football. Some very young players with no history of a concussion were studied and they showed early signs of CTE. (21 yr old suicide)

 

[StillShaving]

Agree with @Cricket1 and some other posters. Football is a great spectator sport on many different levels, but will have many pressures to change.

I have also read reports of soccer players (the other football) getting concussions from headers. Soccer is almost a size-neutral and gender-neutral sport, but if there are not changes there I suspect many suburbanites will not want their daughters or sons playing that sport either.

 

[inspiringK]

I have also read reports of soccer players (the other football) getting concussions from headers. Soccer is almost a size-neutral and gender-neutral sport, but if there are not changes there I suspect many suburbanites will not want their daughters or sons playing that sport either.

Well, I know when my kids get to the stage where we have to decide which sport to pressure them into, it's going to be one of three sports without all this concussion concern; Ultimate Fighting, Golf, or Bull Fighting.

 

[SalvadorMontenegro]

When I was a kid, I was in a pretty serious accident and was concussed. I don't know the severity of the concussion, but it was bad enough that I have no recollection of the events that immediately followed. I remember waking up in the intensive care unit of the hospital. Everything prior to that, I don't remember. I had tests done when I was in my early 20's to determine if there was any brain damage and the results were that I did not. However, that was 10 years ago, so who knows?

I have a number of psychological issues and I often wonder if they are the result of the concussion. Some of them may be hereditary, but it seems that the problems did not manifest themselves until after the accident. The accident occurred when I was young, so it may be that the issues would not have shown up until I was a teenager, or adult, regardless of whether or not the accident happened.

I take issue with the mindset that, "It's football! This is what these guys signed up for!" No, it isn't. Of course they knew they ran the risk of breaking bones and having joint pain later in life. I highly doubt that most of the players in the 80's had any idea of the possible neurological damage that can come from playing football. Jim McMahon has said that there are times when he doesn't recognize his wife when she comes downstairs. Brett Favre recently confessed that he didn't remember that his daughter played sports one summer. I've read accounts of guys having to take a picture of their hotel, so that they know what it looks like when they want to come back to it.

We're looking at this from 2013, a time in which medicine is very advanced and a lot has been discovered about the brain and how it works. Now that WE know all these things and have known them for some time, it's easy to assume that the guys that played in the 80's and 90's should have known this, too. We know now that if you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, there's a great chance you're going to die of lung cancer. Men and women 100 years ago were not as privy to this information.

I love football. I don't have the answer. What I want is that the NFL investigate this thoroughly and release all information to the public, so that young men can make an informed decision before they pursue this way of life.

Not about football, but a good article about neurological conditions in the sports world:

http://deadspin.com/the-end-of-georges-st-pierre-1466179060

 

[hillbilly pick]

I had a bike accident right before my 7th birthday and was concussed, have blank spots about the incident but used to have flashes of it in dreams. Not only was I concussed, I also had a fracture, and due to the way my body heals fast, the fracture remodeled in 2 weeks with a knot of calcium build up. Def a knot head here.

i also played football from 7th grade until my sophomore year in college. I remember two more concussions in that time as well as a few broken fingers, nose, and a few ligaments (MCL and LCL, and all in my feet.). They take great pains to prevent these injuries and many advancements have been made in the gear the players wear. That said, the pads allow the players to hit harder with less impact sustained to the body. However, the brain being a floating jello mold must follow Newtons laws. So the advancements in shoulder pads coupled with highly tuned body's had made hits faster and harder. There is little that can be done to pad the brain from these impacts, they are protecting the head but the brain is not meant to take these impacts.

The neck is supposed to help cousin impacts but this too has been reinforced with padding because neck injuries are bad too. It is a violent sport and injuries will be had. I live football but maybe the best response to the issue is to reduce the padding that allows for the harder impacts and maybe these guys will think twice about flying blocks, spearing, etc.

just a few cents on it.

Oh, almost forgot... I'm 33 now and am still pretty sharp and stabile with only a few anger issues but that could be the result of other things like, fathering two girls and now have three bosses at home.