ESPN’s Danny Kanell says there’s a ‘war on football’ over concussions

The Washington Post ^ | December 8, 2015 | Cindy Boren

[blackdog]

"chronic traumatic encephalopathy in the brains of deceased football players"

Has anyone studied any connection with steroid use and "chronic traumatic encephalopathy in the brains of deceased football players"?

I'm not denying the concussion issue, but there needs to be a whole lot more medical study which would include medical analysis of current players and body chemistry and brain activity. The players do not want to be tested for steroid use and HGH in their active playing years.

HGH and PED being taken and then the body's natural healing response to concussions may greatly change the after effects of said concussions.

[bigdaddy45]

I think without helmets, concussions would drop considerably.

[blackdog]

I had a severe head injury back in 1977. I spent a month in the hospital on constant Dilantin pushes into my IV's every four hours. There are things that happened around that time period I still cannot process to this day. I saw a movie that week before the accident and I can watch it a hundred times thirty years later and cannot tell you anything about it after each time I see it again.? I travelled to a horse show in Belgium the month before, and have been there two more times but I cannot remember any details whatsoever.

The brain is a very strange processor. A very bad horse jumping accident damaged mine.

A traumatic brain injury lasts a lifetime. Your brain rewires some things over time, but some things don't come back or recover.

[boop]

Strangely enough I saw a kid of about 16 in my clinic recently. His parents brought him in for an unrelated problem, but I needed to look at his torso.

Big, muscular kid.

He had the worst "bacne" on his lower back I'd ever seen.

I asked if he played football, and of course he did.

The parents asked what it was, and I told them classic acne, but not in the "usual places" I see. His face was clear.

I didn't think about it until later that the kid might have been juicing.

Acne in a 16 year old plenty normal. "Bacne" sure, could be normal, but I also see it in people using PEDs.

Do kids use/obtain PEDs in high school?

I guess I've not seen it enough to conclude anything, but it's very possible.

[kiryandil]

When I was growing up, batting helmets were just for Little League-major leaguers would never wear them.

Tony Conigliaro:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Conigliaro

[Ransomed]

I think it is simply repeated blows to the brain over the course of a career of football. Doesn’t have to be a concussion, although that makes it worse. By the time someone is in the pros they have played a lot of football, and that invariably means repeated jarring of the brain. I think some folks take it a lot better, just like in boxing, where some become zombies and others don’t.

Freegards

[headstamp 2]

Tackling is becoming a joke. Very few wrap up anymore. It’s running full speed at another player and relying on the impact alone to knock him down. The head is used as a missile warhead.

[boop]

Yes. The history of batting helmets is very interesting. IIRC Bob Montgomery(?) of the Red Sox was the last player to go to bat with just his field cap.

Players in the league before 1979 were allowed to wear flapless helmets.

Now everyone MUST have an earflap on the sides.

MLB allows someone to have the flap over one ear if they only bat from one side of the plate.

I've heard the story of Tony Conigliaro.

Very sad.

[hanamizu]

Even after they started wearing batting helmets’ there was a lot of resistance to the idea of of the ear flap. In the case of baseball, the helmets are purely defensive in nature against the speed of a pitched ball. Hard to argue against their use and I’m sure a lot of careers (and maybe lives) have been saved because of them.

Football is a bit different. The protection they wear is both defensive and offensive in nature. If they were wearing the old leather helmets would they be quite as willing to hit head on head?

Watching rugby players essentially play what amounts to football, but wearing soccer uniforms just makes me wonder.

[The Antiyuppie]

“Not so much a problem for kids, but at the college and NFL level, the players are vastly stronger, bigger and faster than 50 years ago.”

Totally agree here, with emphasis on the “vastly”. If you look at the physics, it isn’t very surprising that this is happening now - and I have no idea what kind of helmet can be designed to help. It isn’t just the size or weight, position for position, I’d bet that every single player is much faster than they were 50 years ago. Some of it has to do with the science put into skeletal mechanics/strength/speed training The MRI’s don’t lie.

It isn’t that crazy that they go back to leather helmets. That way, no one will use their heads as a battering ram/weapon. However, when a 220 pound QB gets sacked and floored by a 380 pound guy...don’t know what to do here. Maybe more protection for certain positions. I know that most will say that it will “kill’ the sport. I’m thinking that something must be done if it is to be played at all 25 years from now. I work with people who flat won’t let their kids play football in HS, period. That’s got to be ringing alarm bells in the NFL.

[Ransomed]

Any abrupt change in direction causes a blow to the brain. You don’t have to hit your head, you can get a concussion falling down and not even necessarily hitting the skull.

Not that the big helmets don’t contribute to the problem. But probably not as much as how big, strong, and fast the players today are. There’s so much money in the sport now I wonder if leather helmets would ultimately matter. Also the ability to heal injury and extreme workout regimens during the course of a season through modern chemistry.

Freegards

[blackdog]

If my calculations are correct, the impact force on the human body between two people running @ 20mph weighing 225 pounds, colliding straight on, each comes to 1,375 pounds of impact force.

Ouchey! That may be for only less than a millisecond, but ouchey, still.

[Leaning Right]

It promotes the military and our veterans.

Just a side note, but it turns out that the Defense Department was paying the NFL millions of dollars to honor soldiers. That story broke earlier this year.

And here I thought that the NFL was simply trying to do the right thing.

Do a Google search for "army paid nfl" if you want the details. There are many articles on the subject.

[aresmars]

I agree with Danny Kanell, because take note how the media ignores concussions in Soccer,Hockey,Boxing,MMA,Wrestling(the fake and real kind), Volleyball and even Cheer-leading(which BTW Cheer-leading(Cheer-leading is the number one cause of traumatic injuries for high school and college females.) and even the Military has issues with concussions.

My theory is that since football is a male dominated sport and male dominated in terms of viewership and it’s decidedly American(take not how every world cup they try to push soccer and complain about how Americans don’t embrace it like the rest of the world). Soccer is pretty high up there when it comes to concussions, but I think it’s ignored for the aforementioned reason(trying to make Soccer America’s sport and Soccer is more “gender equal”)

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Just an idea, but if football were played with rugby equipment, would serious injuries go up or down?

Probably down.

But I want things like knee and leg braces taken out too.

They are encouraging these guys to get too big. It is bad for their health and bad for the game.

I have no problem with helmets because there have been too many guys taken out by the pitcher throwing the ball at their head.

Of course, we can make a small rule change and get rid of the helmets. If some jerk throws a ball at a player and causes injury they are out of the game twice as long as the player they hit.

I am flat disgusted with these thugs trying to injure each other. It is a freaking game. Not war.

[spel_grammer_an_punct_polise]

I am sure that concussions do occur.

However, there was a former offensive lineman who became a professional wrestler after football. He had never had a concussion in football but received an injury in wrestling.

What did he do? The hypocrite is the one who started all of the concussion humbug in the NFL.

[boop]

True about the size/speed.

I was looking at a link to some old 1960s AFL football cards.

They had 235lb. 6'0 CENTERS.

Good grief.

I'm sure they were "tough guys" at the time, but a 1965 235lb. center would be broken in half in 2015 in about two seconds.

Hell, that's "small" by high school standards today.

Don't forget "Fridge" Perry on the 1985 Bears.

He weighed the incredible, unbelievable 300lbs.

And Ditka told him to "slim down".

[Washi]

There is a war on football and anything else masculine and uniquely American.

Concussions are just the BS tool they are using with which to wage that war.

[Joe Boucher]

There is a war on football but concussions is only the tool liberals are using to try to destroy the game.
Libs see football as militaristic and aggressive.
They think football makes American boys aggressive.
Gots to get rid of this don’t ya know?

[tbw2]

The movie with Will Smith coming out where he plays a doctor discovering this issue will probably be the watershed event, the trigger for the social rebuke of football.