rolling American football death spiral thread

I fucking hate this sport so much

I didn't even bother to link the latest on Deadspin about the Redskins firing their GM for "drinking" when it's obvious the rest of their organization's upper echelon is a minimum of two sheets on any given Monday

I apologize to all other organizations for using that noun to describe the thing that Dan Snyder owns

http://deadspin.com/the-amount-of-toradol-nfl-players-use-is-scary-as-fuck-1793173870

http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/18955466/san-francisco-49ers-legend-dwight-clark-diagnosed-als

Clark said he doesn't know if playing football caused the disease but he suspects that is the case. ALS has in recent years been linked to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, the degenerative brain disease that studies have linked to athletes and others with a history of repetitive brain trauma, including concussions.

"I've been asked if playing football caused this," Clark wrote. "I don't know for sure. But I certainly suspect it did. And I encourage the NFLPA and the NFL to continue working together in their efforts to make the game of football safer, especially as it relates to head trauma."

oh and now Gale Sayers has announced he's battling dementia, and so on ad infinitum

http://www.sbnation.com/a/future-of-football

good read, thanks. none of that is going to happen, though.

idk if we're in a talent drought in 5 years b/c nobody wants their kids to play high school football, the NFL might try all sorts of goofy shit

either way if you feel guilty for watching football too much may I suggest making basketbal your main sport. the playoffs are on right now and they're really dope

it seems like the NHL playoffs are pretty exciting too, but punctuated by some dude trying to murder sid crosby and concussing the shit out of him =|

High school football is about as popular right now as it has ever been among non-school-aged adults. The breathless local media attention it gets is a big pull for impressionable teenagers, who all dream of fame and greatness.

so you're saying certain portions of oregon are into high school football? i'm gonna have to check that with frederik

https://www.theplayerstribune.com/jermichael-finley-packers-injury-retirement/

sadly parts of this are all-too-familiar

Then one day, I went out to my truck to go for a drive, and I had to go back inside because I forgot my keys. That started happening a lot. It got to the point where sometimes I’d have to go back inside two or three times because I had forgotten my keys, then my phone, then my wallet. Some days, when I’d go to pick my kids up from school, I’d get halfway to their school and have to turn around because I forgot to put the car seat in the car, even after Courtney had reminded me.

One night, we went out to dinner, and after I paid the bill and walked out of the restaurant, Courtney came up behind me with my wallet in her hand, waving it at me. I guess I had left it on the table.

“This is the third time I’ve had to pick up after you today,” she said. “What’s going on?”

Tough read

Also unfortunate that to stimulate his brain he had to get into coaching... football... to kids, including his own. Have a lot of sympathy for the guy, but by introducing kids to football as it is today, this will only continue.

It's more than likely football will continue in *some* form.

Yeah, especially since boxing still exists, albeit far from its mainstream glory days.

Not only does boxing still exist, MMA/UFC has been more-or-less mainstreamed and it's 10x as brutal.

I wonder if America could ever get on board with flag football as a spectator sport. obviously certain types of guys would no longer have careers but the NFL is becoming more of a passing league every year anyway and you'd still be able to preserve most of the fun of that part of the game (ie. Beckham catches, Aaron Rodgers bombs).

Insensitivity to *other people* being brutalized is a known human trait.

Also unfortunate that to stimulate his brain he had to get into coaching... football... to kids, including his own. Have a lot of sympathy for the guy, but by introducing kids to football as it is today, this will only continue.

yeah this was kinda my thought too. ultimately this always seems to be the case doesn't it? love for football trumps everything.

also I was wondering - does this sort of therapy produce long-term results or does it just delay the inevitable? would be great if they could actually get to stopping the progression or reversing the damage but I'm a little skeptical if that's possible.

Man, these comments from Warren Sapp will stick with you https://t.co/LjAgNxGius pic.twitter.com/fHMfM25sJY

— Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) June 21, 2017

fuckin sad

click through and watch the video, though, because Warren Sapp is still wonderful

https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football

yeah, i loved that

Tim Tebow CFL Chronicles was better imho

Sophomore jinx

Tom Cotton is the next President.

big fan of jon bois, glad we have at least one avant garde sportswriter out there

yeah this is bar none the strangest football article I've ever read

TTCFLC is more traditional, linear, first person storytelling; this new one feels like interactive fiction on rails to me, if that makes any sense

https://www.sbnation.com/2014/8/18/5998715/the-tim-tebow-cfl-chronicles

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/25/sports/football/nfl-cte.html

"A neuropathologist has examined the brains of 111 N.F.L. players — and 110 were found to have C.T.E., the degenerative disease linked to repeated blows to the head."

So the other guy was a kicker I assume?

^ post of the day

maybe one of Brett Favre's backups

Presumably, yeah. The 100 include one punter and one placekicker. 44 linemen, 7 QBs.

*110

http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/20170808/baltimore-ravens-offensive-lineman-john-urschel-retires-abruptly

must have been a really tough choice, luckily it sounds like he has plenty to fall back on.

In January, Urschel told HBO's "Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel" that his passion for playing football outweighs the risks of suffering head trauma.

http://deadspin.com/super-bowl-winning-qb-jim-plunkett-my-life-sucks-1797547445

tbf, i suspect a lot of 69-year-olds need a painkiller to play golf. life expectancy for american men was 64.4 when plunkett was born

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/highschools/the-leading-edge-of-a-much-larger-iceberg-new-jersey-high-school-disbands-football-team/2017/08/22/e13b6516-836e-11e7-82a4-920da1aeb507_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories-2_ams-newjersey500am-1%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.702efbabf4cc

New Jersey, eh? When the trend reaches high schools in Texas, we will know that American football is in its final death throes.

FWIW, the stat/graph with the article indicates that Texas's percentage change is barely there (as opposed to growing or dropping notably).

New Jersey, eh? When the trend reaches high schools in Texas, we will know that American football is in its final death throes.

― A is for (Aimless), Wednesday, August 23, 2017 4:26 PM (forty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sure, but I think the map lends at least some support to the idea that youth football is becoming a more regional thing, as predicted upthread

Obviously a wealthy, heavily-Asian- and Indian-American town in New Jersey isn't home to your median high school football team though.

it's not, but every trend begins with outliers

hang on while I think of another pithy post that is yet more obvious and dumb

"we must impeach to save the union"

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/sports/espn-ed-cunningham-football-concussions.html

“We come back from the break and that guy with the broken leg is gone, and it’s just third-and-8”

And changes to substantially soften the exterior of football helmets, into something more like memory foam, to reduce the weight and its utility as a weapon.

I used to half-joke they should go back to leather helmets. Personally, at this point, I'd be fine with reduced contact. Body sensors, something closer to flag football. Bigger emphasis on speed and offense, but a knee down ends a play. More pushing; less hitting.

can a britisher tell me if rugby cats have the same concussion issues? the "less padding, less contact" argument is likely to be brought up more seriously again in the next year or two.