rolling American football death spiral thread

as an aside do we have the slightest idea how many head injuries actually happen in rugby? i bet we do not.

i genuinely think football will evolve into a pass-dominant touch-tackle sport

yeah I guess I can see that path as a lot more viable

it helps that it's what people like too

yeah i could see that

Football would be a lot safer if they just replaced tackling with tickling.

lol

I think some are greatly overestimating how much the average fan gives a shit. Most football fans I know rationalize it as some "they knew what they were getting into" BS. The real test will be whether the NFL can survive an ongoing parade of lawsuits, but if they do, I don't think the fanbase is going anywhere.

These stories keep leaving a really bad taste in my mouth though, I feel a shameful complicity in just having watched the game...

i remember reading once that there's drastically less head injuries in rugby because you have to learn how to tackle without using your head. in football, the helmet gives the feeling of invincibility, so the helmet itself is probably a misnomer anyway

― J0rdan S., Thursday, January 17, 2013 4:40 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In football you can play to the whistle and have 30 seconds to recover or leave the field, so in that timeframe all manner of violence can occur. Rugby has (more) sustained play so you couldn't have that kind of behavior or half the field would have injured dudes on it.

back before helmets people were getting killed in football all the time so I'm skeptical that they're a net negative

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6fejWutXCk

I've never heard about pre-helmet deaths - AFAICT only one NFL player has ever died on the field.

i think the most realistic change is something that prevents players from playing through injuries. if the NFL has to pai out multiple billions of dollars after all these suits are settled, they would have a real compelling reason to significantly strengthen their rules/regulations so that no player can talk his way out of sitting due to a concussion.

"In 1905, there was roughly one-fifth the number of college football players as there are today, yet, 18 were killed and 159 severely injured in that one year alone. "

sounds like a good way for weasel coaches to get extra timeouts

the solution is very simpe, guys: everybody should watch basketball instead

Football in 1905 didn't look much like today's game. What about 1945 or 1950?

I should think that the NFL is in no immediate danger of being litigated out of existance. After all, US courts tolerated the buying and selling of baseball players as chattel for a century. Almost 100% of modern american football players would be avid to sign away any and all rights they might have for redress of injuries, just for the chance to play in the NFL.

kind of interesting to think of all the brain damage O.J. Simpson was probably living with for the last 30 years

Football in 1905 didn't look much like today's game. What about 1945 or 1950?

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Thursday, January 17, 2013 1:00 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

football in 1905 didn't look much like today's game because the forward pass was invented to stop people from dying so much

I think the comparable sport here has to be boxing. It's not dead, but it's nowhere near as popular as it was last century, and I think football will head that way as people get turned off by the dawning understanding of the physical toll. (I'd like to see radio/tv numbers for how popular boxing has been over the last century.)

boxing was never as popular as football is right now tho

even in boxing's heyday i don't think it compares to football right now

it's hard to compare eras like that regardless

but I do think that, the two paths are either cad's high scoring touch football or wmc's game that's viewed as less family friendly and more masculine a la boxing etc. like your mom won't be organizing the super bowl party.

two other things that affect its future are going to be what happens to streaming video / cable / broadcast advertising etc and what happens to the american university system over the coming decades.

The biggest factors in the demise of boxing were first, overexposure, next widespread corruption, and lastly, unbridled greed that broke up the "world championship" titles into fragments. The NFL is flirting heavily with overexposure, but there is no hint atm that the games are fixed or the refs have been bought, and the NFL's central management is keeping conflict within the league from causing overt problems.

Aimless OTM. I don't think brutality means a thing.

MMA has picked up ground on boxing because the UFC acts as the central body with the true champs, doesn't protect up and comers to the degree of boxing, etc., despite being viscerally more brutal. (though, actually, I'd rather have my kid take up MMA than boxing - less dangerous to his or her brain).

oops, didn't edit - I don't think brutality was key in boxing's decline - that goes mostly to corruption and the way corruption screwed up the heavyweights. Plus better money in other sports and a cultural emphasis on team sports.

football in 1905 didn't look much like today's game because the forward pass was invented to stop people from dying so much

Should have been the forward kick.

Speaking of football, I wonder if they limited substitutions like in soccer, would that change on-field behavior?

Junior Seau's family is suing the NFL.

Looking forward to that suit being tossed ASAP. Frivolous.

• Esquire on football injuries
• Franco Harris: 'I'm hoping that if I eat my blueberries every day and do my memory exercises, I'll be okay.'
• Dave Duerson
• CTE found in living ex-NFL players

thanks for the links mookie

The NFL's Response to Brain Trauma: A Brief History

2002 - Hall of Fame Pittsburgh Steeler center Mike Webster dies. Towards the end of his life Webster was living out a pick-up truck, using a Taser to ease back pain, and applying Super Glue to his teeth.

Obama not sure he'd allow a son to play football

sure have been a lot of /www.nflevolution.com/ commercials during the super bowl

is this really the only ongoing super bowl discussion thread? (i have noticed that my twitter feed is more brit-twitter being confused than american-twitter being enthused.)

no, the other thread is on I love the nfl

it's not super active tho

IT'S SUPER BOWL XLVII: HARBAUGHWL (aka harbl?)

yeah, my 'this' is a link to that thread! (which i can't really see myself, i guess i should change stylesheet.)

lol i don't have that board on SNA so i didn't see that. thanks.

that ta-nehisi coates article is horrifying. and the comments are actually quite informative.

watching "Head Games" on Netflix thanks to the comments on that article now, checking it out

Coates article also links to this re Mike Webb, although turns out he's just the beginning (taser for back pain?!)
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/research-finds-football-lead-brain-injury/story?id=8838451&page=3

Cumulative effects of subconcussive hits

How does this measure up to Aus Rugby League and AFL, where no one wears any kind of head protection? I know there's been League players here in the news for similar concussive cumulative injuries but I would have thought yr helmets prevented all this? (wusses ;P)

Actually I'm being a little spurious: some players do wear small leather headgear things.

as far as i'm aware, Aus rugby league, AFL & rugby players all know how to tackle properly, ie not just using their head as a battering ram (tbh, i say this without knowing much about AFL and Aus rugby, but i'm guessing it's more like rugby than Am. football). that probably reduces the chances of concussions.

On a postcard-perfect Southern California morning, George Visger is pissing blood. This comes as a relief. For me, mostly. But also for him. Things could be worse. He could be having a seizure. Or slipping into a coma. Which means I could be jamming a one-inch butterfly needle into a thumbnail-sized hole in the side of his skull, trying to siphon off excess spinal fluid while avoiding what Visger calls "the white stuff."

The white stuff being brain tissue.

http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/page/George-Visger/george-visger-damage-done

a+ lede

i have started to think tho that the "parents will stop their kids from playing football" thing is a bit overplayed.

I can see that. What about liability-scurred schools stopping them, though? Any parents sued schools yet for football injuries? I guess the real problems don't show up until years later tho ...

my understanding is that a lawsuit would have to show that the defendant knew of the dangers and concealed them? i don't think a high school would be in that position and it will be hard to prove the nfl was.

anyone playing in the NFL who isn't kicking is entering a lottery where they're putting up their bodies in exchange for the opportunity to be rich through their forties. seem like the chance of generational wealth is roughly equivalent with dying in your forties.

hit to the chest/heart has killed a few cricket players too

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

Another reason to deny football any viewership and to agitate against it, if even in conversation.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/05/us/damar-hamlin-prayers-football-religion.html

Football remains king.

NFL made up 82 of the top 100 most-watched U.S. TV broadcasts in 2022.

(📊 @LevAkabas/@sportico) pic.twitter.com/9QiyKItUJj

— Mark J. Burns (@markjburns88) January 6, 2023

I mean, we live in a depraved and broken country.

surprised the season finale of squid game didn't make it on there

wait for the reality remake

Bigger sham: NIL collectives not coordinating with athletics departments or Super PACs not coordinating with candidates

For those of you who, like me, have purposefully avoided NFL news, this is a useful summary: https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2023/2/6/23583787/the-uncomfortable-messy-truth-of-watching-the-nfl

If those ugly headlines won’t force a moral reckoning, what will?

Possibly a player who is popular enough to be known by non-fans being decapitated on-air during a game. If his parents protest. Possibly.

Holy shit @ the cost of the NFL Sunday Ticket package via Youtube TV - $350+$70/mo or $450 and only Sunday day games no Thursday/Sunday/Monday night.

Good.

haha, of fucking course. there goes my plan to surprise mom with Giants games.

idk i might still do it.

Tired of the tropes in this article. This guy is in complete denial that he’s aiding and abetting the untimely and early deaths of people in his community, not helping them “find a way out.”

Free article here

Slightly unexpected, in that this is illustrated by David Squires -- normally doing (the other kind of) football, this is his first specific one about the American version I can think of:

https://www.theguardian.com/football/ng-interactive/2023/sep/06/david-squires-on-eric-smith-and-the-nfls-toll-on-one-players-mind-and-body

Completely wrecked by this feature.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/16/us/cte-youth-football.html

wow

that was tough to get through

One thing that happens in that video happens to me, tho obviously I don't have a son, nor one that plays football—

but whenever I pass by a football field, and see all these young men and boys tackling each other, I am overwhelmed with sadness and anger. Just seems so senseless.

i *almost* played football in high school. several of the PE coaches saw me running track and tried to recruit me to play wide receiver, which in retrospect feels more like recruiting a kid for the military. i actually really enjoyed playing football casually at local parks, where my friends and i were definitely tackling each other, but we were also not beating the hell out of each other. but HS football was a different trip. i didn't want to get hit head-on while catching a pass, to get a limb snapped during a tackle, it just generally seemed like a bad idea. i'd seen enough clips of gritty chicago bears wideout tom waddle getting assassinated in the red zone by opposing safeties to know i didn't want that to happen to me.

I played in high school and have heard the comparisons to the military before, twice by teammates who wound up enlisting. I guess its mostly in the way they really do try to break you down and convince you that the only virtue is to give more than your body can handle, and that anything less is not only shameful but also an act of cowardice that lets down your teammates. Well they don't quite say it in those words but still. I played basketball too and it definitely was not like that. But football is a very different sport, I mean if you play you will get hurt, simple as that.

I don't think I was really ever at 100%, but especially after 5 games or so, you get one side of your body hurt, so you overcompensate and get the other side hurt as well, and there's a certain point where after the 2nd quarter you just want it to be over. That kind of made me wince when they decided to extend the NFL schedule by a game, I mean it's those last few that really suck for these guys. I played about half at tight end, which made you susceptible to some really big hits, and after a couple of those you just really really did not want the ball to come your way. I also played on the OL which gets you hurt in a different, more mundane sort of way. The soreness I felt the morning after some of those games...yeesh. Sometimes I'd be lined up against a guy who not only had 30-40 pounds on me but was faster than me as well. Those games were hell, especially since the only reason I was in that position is because my school was small, so we just kinda had who we had. There wasn't really anyone who could help. I think one game I basically held on every single play, because if I didn't the QB was gonna get killed, and we were already on our 3rd one. I'm proud to say I only got flagged twice but only because even holding didn't slow the guy down much.

That said I'm still glad I played, I mean some of it really was fun and I think the bonds you make really are something special. But yeah at the end of every season I just thought "fuck this, I'm not playing next year", and then I'd kinda get pressured into doing it anyway, not that it would take much. I guess I'm lucky nothing serious ever happened.

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/39212869/kirby-smart-laments-fsu-opt-outs-georgia-orange-bowl-rout

College football coaches are the worst people on Earth. Can’t believe these shithead kids didn’t risk their futures on a meaningless game!

College bowl games have very rapidly lost their whole reason for existence. The possible exceptions might be for a few of the smaller Division I college teams from the off brand conferences - most of whose players will never sniff an NFL contract, so that a trip to some place like Chattanooga or Gainesville to play a game in mid-winter sounds like a fun break. The truly small college divisions already get to have a meaningful playoffs.

Smart was mostly being a gracious winner in those comments. He isn't calling out the players. He's pointing out how the bowl system is broken and that FSU was a good team this year, whatever the meaningless bowl score.

We might also treat non-playoff bowl games similar to a pre-season scrimmage. Some fans will still be interestwd. So long as people don't treat the scoreboard as unweighted data about who was actually good this year, it's fine.

narrator: people continued to treat the scoreboard as unweighted data about who was actually good this year

A similar story to the NYT one above about young injuries - the detail about the NFL player (Dave Duerson, mentioned above) who specifically shot himself in the heart so that his brain could be studied wrecked me.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/cte-impact-young-football-players-1234804580/