rolling American football death spiral thread

"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.

I doubt it's gonna hold up as a legal defense if that's what you're worried about

after watching a few OJ docs you can clearly see a difference in the dude's demeanor and speech between the 70's and the 90's. a think a lot of ex-NFLers have talked about CTE making them more prone to violence or "losing their mind" or whatever. obviously not *excusing* any of that but I feel like it's at least as much a factor in stuff like this as say, alcohol often is

saying cte is a contributing factor or causes aggression and impulsive behavior in sufferers is like halfway to absolving them of their crimes. otherwise why would you be mentioning it? or are you saying that they had physical conditions that lead to violent behavior but that they are nevertheless 100 percent responsible for their crimes

NA making the classic error of mistaking an explanation for an excuse.

if you don't think this is going to be turned into an excuse you're kidding yourself

man, I don't know how to answer questions like that. nobody absolves drunk people for doing things that they otherwise would never have done sober.

i am completely perplexed by your line of thinking. do you not believe in the ability for brain disorders to affect people's behaviour? are you mad at reality?

Yes, someone impaired by brain damage bears less culpability for doing a murder than someone not impaired by brain damage. I don't see the issue there. They can still be culpable enough to jail for six months until they hang themselves in their cell because every day is a waking nightmare.

I'm now retrospectively mad at my grandmother because she acted like an asshole sometimes when she had alzheimer's

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

― na (NA), Thursday, September 21, 2017 4:03 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is literally all i have to say about this, i don't know why i'm bothering with any of the rest of it. the nfl is garbage, if you watch it you're complicit, have fun, bye

otherwise why would you be mentioning it?

because it is of interest on a thread where we discuss why this sport should not continue to exist in its current form. one of the reasons being that it helps create murderers by selecting people who may already be inclined to violent aggression and then paying them to hit their heads repeatedly until they are insensate, over a course of several years.

i'm willing to give bad people a few percentage points of theoretical absolution if i can in turn pin them on the league

i can't really even watch the game anymore, I just follow some of the stories like this and occasionally check boxscores. it's mostly CTE-related but also just the culture around the entire league in this day and age seems more and more garbage.

four of the ten people in our office talk about pro football way too damn much, really hoping this whole death spiral picks up speed

There are already so many reasons to stop watching the NFL. I don't need "CTE might make 'em murder people". "CTE might make 'em commit suicide to figure out why their brain won't stop screaming" was plenty.

The couple guys who shot themselves in the chest to make sure their brains could be examined is just the most devastating detail of all this to me

The link between traumatic brain injuries and increased violence and other psychiatric disorders is pretty clear at this point.

What kind of finalized it for me was the fact that it seems that CTE is also just the result of the day-to-day low-level physical punishment incurred from playing football, just the "regular" hits, not just the ones where a guy stands up and can't remember his name for a minute.

To be completely frank, what finally did it for me was XLIX. It's good that now I can support my argument against the atrocious joke of a sport that is american football based on medical science, but tbrr the game has been bullshit for years. The vast majority of the owners in the cartel are completely uninterested in parity or winning, and have no ties to their stadium towns. It's not remotely entertaining anymore. To wit, Magary's column today:

Now, I could bitch all day at the NFL to do something about all of these problems in order to field a better product, but you and I know that’ll never happen. The NFL worked very hard to cultivate all of their entrenched, long-term woes, and they’re not going away anytime soon. What they need, then, is a cheat. They need a cheap, quick fix to help polish the turd, and I think I have just the kind of ridiculous, shortsighted answer they might require:

Legalize holding.

https://www.sbnation.com/2017/9/19/16314082/nfl-ratings-colin-kaepernick-los-angeles-rams-owners-money

url kinda covers it all huh

that's just seo. it's a pretty good piece, though it could have gone in harder. also IT MENTIONS ESPORTS HI TOMBOT

I didn't need SB Nation to tell me the NFL is boring as hell these days.

i have heard the cartel argument for a few years now. no argument.
the death spiral thread is way more active than the week three thread on a game night.

tbf tho these teams

.@criscarter80: Yes, I’m scared but football has given me everything I love.

An emotional Cris Carter on CTE in the NFL. Via @FTFonFS1 pic.twitter.com/X2d9Dkc16Y

— FOX Sports (@FOXSports) September 22, 2017