rolling American football death spiral thread

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

wasn't there a thing about how OJ Simpson was showing a lot of symptoms of cognitive decline and dementia before the murders?

really not eager for all the shitty things these guys have done to be pinned on their CTE

indeed

well they are also assholes of course but the CTE contributes

does it

Doesn't excuse him, but does having severe brain damage cause people to make bad decisions? Probably.

ok guess i'll get ready for literally every single ex-football player ever to start beating women and murdering people

do you have advanced cte my man?

it's p much the medical consensus that it causes aggression and impulsive behaviour in sufferers. might this contribute to them committing violent crime? all signs point to yes. would it necessarily lead to violent crime, especially in pleasant people who haven't had a pattern of behaviour of physically harming others? no.

I'm not sure where this is going but it seems ridiculous and CF-ish. nobody is absolving anyone of their fucking crimes

Don't think anyone is saying CTE always causes people to do violent things, but it's hard not to see it as a contributing factor in a case like this.