rolling American football death spiral thread

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.

this is off topic but I sort of love this quote from Cunningham's former broadcast partner in that nyt article

“The sport is at a crossroads. I love football — college football, pro football, any kind of football. It’s a wonderful sport. But now that I realize what it can do to people, that it can turn 40-, 50-year-old men into walking vegetables, how do you stay silent? Ed was in the vanguard of this. I give him all the credit in the world. And I’m going to be outspoken on it, in part because he led me to that drinking hole.”

vanguard of walking vegetables at a crossroads - to the drinking hole!

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.

― Chocolate-covered gummy bears? Not ruling those lil' guys out. (ulysses), Thursday, 31 August 2017 15:43 (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's becoming more and more of a thing, along with discussion of spinal/neck injuries caused in fucks, scrums

Uh..rucks

forkslysses, I think the argument goes more like "less padding, less velocity;" the amount of contact is probably about the same I think. Rugby union (here and elsewhere) has also been explicitly and openly concerned about concussion protocols & proper tackling technique for much, much longer than American football.

addressing / minimizing neck injuries in scrums has been an issue in rugby for like, decades, I thought

Seems to be more direct action advocated recently, partic at underage level etc

when in reference to "fucks, scrums", i certainly hope so!

Ah the nineties

Baez: #AaronHernandez had one of the most severe cases of CTE that BU researchers had seen for someone his age.

— Bob McGovern (@BobMcGovernJr) September 21, 2017

looking forward to hearing the NFL's awesome plans to move a team to London when they can't even get butts in seats in Los Angeles