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Football-related Brain Injuries

sactoking

sactoking

Diamond Member
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...-concussions-ben-utecht-battling-memory-loss/

I know we have lots of threads when it's announced that some has died prematurely, but I thought maybe this topic warranted a separate discussion.

I think we've kinda grown accepting of the fact that collegiate and professional football players will have physical health issues such as congenital knee/ankle/hip issues and heart issues (especially for overweight linemen). I don't know that we've become accepting of the mental issues that may accompany football.

There is obviously a growing concern with concussions and head safety, even though the Steelers' players don't like it and try to minimize the impact. Retired NFL players are more often reporting dementia and other mental illness in their 50s and 60s. We've seen some retirees go so far as to donate their brains to science for study.

Now today Ben Utecht, a retired NFL tight end, discloses that at age THIRTY he has recurring memory loss as a result of 5 career concussions (2 collegiate, 3 pro).

I believe a lot of the neuroscience research is showing that not only are head injuries a problem but that head injuries to minors are worse than for adults and that the cumulative effect of many small (routine) hits outweighs the effect of one or two major, concussion-causing hits.

I like the NFL, it's my favorite professional sport to watch. My son loves football, he is rapt whenever it's on and insists on wearing his helmet. I played some football when I was younger. My brother in law plays football now. I have to wonder if my son will want to play when he gets older. If so, what do I tell him? I know it's his life to live but as a parent don't I have a duty to protect him?

I can only imagine by the time he's 12, 13, or 14 what horror stories we'll have heard about mental degeneration in both professional and amateur football players. Can helmet technology make sufficient advancements? If the NFL refuses to lead by example, can the collegiate, high school, and pee wee leagues force advancement on their own?

Maybe it's alarmist propaganda and we're all being "a bunch of pussies" compared to "back in the day", but the parent in me seriously has to wonder whether I want my kid to have memory loss when he's thirty and possibly be dead in his forties...
 
 
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Patranus said:
Yawn.

They are more than compensated for any injury they may sustain on the job.
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The high school kids? I know of many who were crippled up bad. A friend of my brother lost a kidney due to a hit or a stomp.
I am a big guy, so I was recruited heavily. I always had the same answer for them: I'm not big enough 😀
 
angminas said:
No amount of money can compensate for a dementia-filled early death, especially for those who didn't see it coming.
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With all of the readily available info out there these days, you need to already have dementia to not see it coming.
 
Apex said:
With all of the readily available info out there these days, you need to already have dementia to not see it coming.
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The real picture WRT head injuries and long-term consequences has really only come into view in the last 10 years - arguably only in the last 5 years.

Your claim works for smoking... but not for sports head injuries.
 
They get into the career knowing the risks, I have read and heard these news too, some of them by the time they retire are already 60 70 or 80 years old mentally. So are professional wrestlers. Its a career they choose. Reminds me of the dialogue from Any Given Sunday

I'm going to consult with a player? What are you talking about? I know his answer! They couldn't take a piss in the morning, without the pills. You want to play innocent? Fuck your innocence! You don't want to hear the answer, don't ask the question. I didn't have to ask him, because I knew the answer. These men are football players, they are gladiators. They will not live with shame, like you. And long ago, they made that choice. And I'm not going to take responsibility to stand between them...
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sactoking said:
I like the NFL, it's my favorite professional sport to watch. My son loves football, he is rapt whenever it's on and insists on wearing his helmet. I played some football when I was younger. My brother in law plays football now. I have to wonder if my son will want to play when he gets older. If so, what do I tell him? I know it's his life to live but as a parent don't I have a duty to protect him?

I can only imagine by the time he's 12, 13, or 14 what horror stories we'll have heard about mental degeneration in both professional and amateur football players. Can helmet technology make sufficient advancements? If the NFL refuses to lead by example, can the collegiate, high school, and pee wee leagues force advancement on their own?

Maybe it's alarmist propaganda and we're all being "a bunch of pussies" compared to "back in the day", but the parent in me seriously has to wonder whether I want my kid to have memory loss when he's thirty and possibly be dead in his forties...
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My plan is to tell my kids that they can't play football on an organized level until they're 16. Not because the concussion risk goes down at that point (it doesn't), but because at that point they will be old enough to know what concussions are have some understanding of the risks involved.
 
Put'em all back in leather helmets. That will cut down on the injuries I bet. They feel too protected with the helmets. Anyone have any data on rugby players, wonder if they have less injuries because the players are more careful with less protection.
 
Also, for those who keep complaining that changing the rules of football to prevent concussions will "ruin the game" look at 1906. In 1905, there were 18 deaths and nearly 200 "serious injuries" from football--leading many to advocate it's ban. Several rules were changed in in 1906 to make the game safer, including the introduction of the forward pass. Some of the others have since changed: players were allowed to block with extended arms again starting in 1978, for example, but many of them stuck. Are you going to argue that football today is intrinsically worse than football of 110 years ago?

Real rules changes are coming, they will significantly change the way football is played. We'll complain about it for a decade, then get over it.
 
Ok so I see you called out Steelers fans. Here is my beef. I'm all for helping the players but currently the penalties are not being distributed evenly through out the NFL. One min the ref is throwing a flag the next min he is not. The refs don't seem to know what a penalty is and what is not. Why is it that when quarterbacks and receivers get helmet to helmet hits they throw flags but not for running backs?

You want less injuries how about they improve the equipment. What has been done for that? You mean to tell me they can't come up with new and better equipment in this day and age. Instead of Roger Goodell fining and spending players for playing football how about he get behind a program to finding some new technology. Oh no we can't do that because that would take away $$$ from peoples pockets.
 
Jeffg010 said:
Ok so I see you called out Steelers fans. Here is my beef. I'm all for helping the players but currently the penalties are not being distributed evenly through out the NFL. One min the ref is throwing a flag the next min he is not. The refs don't seem to know what a penalty is and what is not. Why is it that when quarterbacks and receivers get helmet to helmet hits they throw flags but not for running backs?

You want less injuries how about they improve the equipment. What has been done for that? You mean to tell me they can't come up with new and better equipment in this day and age. Instead of Roger Goodell fining and spending players for playing football how about he get behind a program to finding some new technology. Oh no we can't do that because that would take away $$$ from peoples pockets.
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I didn't; I called out the Steelers organization. What James Harrison has said and done speaks for itself. Troy Polamalu has also said that head injuries are not an issue. At least one player has strongly intimated that the Steelers, and especially Harrison, act they way they do because the team encourages it. Mike Tomlin has publicly stated that he coaches his players to play that way. The organization refuses to comply with the concussion procedures, often referring to obvious concussions as "concussion-like symptoms" in order to keep players on the sidelines and available to re-enter the game.
 
They spend a LOT of money at our high school toward this kind of thing. We have a computer lab set up where they do baseline tests throughout the year, and when there is an injury they take the concussion test immediately afterwards. The equipment (helmets) are constantly being updated also. It's become a very serious subject, albeit a very expensive one.
 
LookBehindYou said:
Put'em all back in leather helmets. That will cut down on the injuries I bet. They feel too protected with the helmets. Anyone have any data on rugby players, wonder if they have less injuries because the players are more careful with less protection.
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They don't feel protected by helmets.

They are trained to use the helmet as a deadly weapon.

If you want to see a skill game, you take most of the equipment off, and you make the players responsible for their hits. This would mean you have a responsibility to the player you are hitting, to stop their progress in a controlled way.

If everyone wants to continue smash-mouth retard-football, even knowing the consequences for the players, well, those consequences aren't going to change.
 
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/michael_mccann/08/19/concussion.lawsuit/index.html

Did the National Football League hide from its players the long-term neurological dangers of playing NFL football? Did it train its players to tackle with their heads, knowing that players would then become more susceptible to neurological injury?

These and related questions form the basis of the first class action lawsuit to be brought against the NFL for concussions and other head injuries.

Earlier this week, six retired players, including two-time Super Bowl champion Jim McMahon, filed a complaint in a Philadelphia federal court.

Last month, 75 retired players filed a similar complaint in a California trial court. While both lawsuits assert the same core claims, the one filed in Philadelphia is potentially more threatening: If certified as a class, the lawsuit could eventually include as plaintiffs thousands of retired NFL players who maintain they have suffered from neurological injury as a result of playing in the league.

The potential damages in such a suit could rise to the hundreds of millions of dollars and primarily reflect health care costs unpaid by the league and the pain and suffering caused by neurological injuries.

If the players succeed in court, their spouses and children could file additional lawsuits for the impact of their husbands/fathers' injuries on family relations.

According to these lawsuits, the NFL knew as early as the 1920s of the dangers posed by concussions and yet chose to not adequately warn players until last year.

The retired players also assert that the NFL purposefully obscured the underlying dangers. For instance, the league sponsored internal studies that -- in the players' view -- were knowingly based on junk science and fraudulently downplayed or contradicted the seriousness of concussions and their relationship to cognitive degeneration.

In a way, the retired players portray the NFL and its teams as tobacco companies were portrayed in 1990s: willfully misleading persons who were exposed to a serious health risk into believing that the risk was either nonexistent or unproven.

The NFL can counter these claims in three basic ways.

1. Assumption of Risk

The most obvious defense is that NFL players assumed the risk of head injuries, among many other types of injuries, by playing in the NFL.

It does not take a degree in physics to realize that NFL players are very large, fast men who collide with each other on virtually every play, and that even the best equipment cannot fully absorb the collision's impact.

Similarly, NFL players are taught the basics of tackling long before they enter the NFL, so to the extent the game of football is designed to risk injury, NFL players knew of that risk years before they entered the league.

Bolstering the assumption of risk defense, the NFL can point out that medical literature on concussions has been available for as long as the NFL has existed, and players and their union could have availed themselves of it. In essence, the NFL's message would be, "If you choose to play in the NFL, you knowingly accept that you may suffer serious and lasting injuries and you should not later complain when those known risks materialize."

Retired players would likely respond by distinguishing between self-evident dangers of playing in the NFL with arguably concealed dangers.

More specifically, while there is no mystery that playing in the NFL poses the risk of serious and lasting injury, the long-term neurological consequences of those injuries may be less conspicuous.

Furthermore, the players would maintain, the league knew of those more subtle consequences and yet, through potentially-biased internal studies and preservation of game rules that exacerbated head-to-head impact, misled players into believing that they were unlikely to develop long-term neurological problems.

2. Lack of Causation

The league can also defend itself by raising doubts as to whether playing in the NFL caused a player's neurological injury.

The vast majority of NFL players began playing football at a young age, and then participated in thousands of plays -- and thus thousands of collisions -- in high school and college games and practices long before they entered the league.

If a retired NFL player in his 40s or 50s suffers from neurological problems, what's to say it was his time in the NFL that caused those problems?

In response, retired players would likely introduce studies which point to retired NFL players suffering neurological problems at higher rates than both the general population and the population of football players who never made it to the NFL.

While it may be difficult for retired players to prove causation for any individual player, broader trends found in the health of thousands of retired players may persuade a court to conclude there is sufficient causation.

3. Claims Barred by Collective Bargaining Agreement

The NFL also can defend itself by emphasizing that since 1968, the league has been governed by collective bargaining agreements, which require ratification by both owners and players.

Since the NFLPA represents both current and former players, players could have sought greater protections for current players and enhanced benefits for retired players.

In that same vein, the NFL can detail how league safety precautions and a system of disability payments have evolved, with various modifications to the games and practices made in response to new information about player safety.

Thus, the NFL can maintain that concussion-related claims against the league should be barred because the CBA covers disability and pension systems (and provisions for workers' comp), among other provisions that address benefits for retired and disabled players.

To counter the NFL's likely defense of collective bargaining, retired players could maintain that the NFL misled the NFLPA by not revealing everything it knew about NFL collisions, concussions and cognitive degeneration.

Therefore, the players would argue, the NFL should not gain legal protection from the collective bargaining process, or from any legal waivers contained in collective bargaining agreements, if they engaged in fraud.

Where Things Go From Here

The NFL will try to convince trial judges to dismiss the lawsuits as frivolous and without merit.

Should the NFL fail to do so, the cases would be scheduled for trial.

In that scenario, retired players could use the pretrial discovery process to obtain potentially damaging documents from the league and also to depose top league officials under oath.

Therefore, even if the NFL believes it would defeat these claims in a trial, the league may not want to go through the discovery process.

To avoid discovery, the league could settle the claims out-of-court with the players.

A settlement in a class action, however, would likely command a very large dollar number that NFL owners -- who would be footing the bill -- may not find acceptable.
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a few thoughts

people bringing up leather helmets - get real - people died all the time when they played that way - the suggestion is a joke.

Steeler fans crying about the officiating is laughable at best - teach your damn players how to tackle. Leading with your head is wrong, period. Tackle people instead of just hitting them and it won't happen as much - will still happen, but the technique is the problem, not the rule. Yes, there are some very questionable 'roughing' penalties, and I think they will clean those up to be more consistent, but I'd rather they err on the side of caution.

The rugby comment is interesting - I played some Rugby - and college football for that matter - and while Rugby is certainly physical, there are very few Rugby players with the size/speed/strength of major college football, let alone NFL, players - I'm not saying there aren't any - just not very many. Also - while it's true that without headgear the tackling in Rugby is much different - you would fundamentally change the NFL without it, which I don't think anyone wants.

I completely agree on the issue of helmet technology. Players don't want to look silly with a Don-Bebee helmet, but at some point they are just going to have to suck it up - or make helmets with more padding that don't look silly.

Concussions are scary stuff - I had one in the fall of my Sr year in HS - then two more the following fall my freshman year of college - all playing football. The first one - I got lit up - Harrison style - never saw the guy coming, threw a pass, then lights out. 2nd and 3rd ones - not nearly as big hits, and no loss of consciousness (sp?), but the feeling was very similar - had headache issues for several years afterwards that none of my doctors could explain. I can only imagine the beating that some guys who played a lot more than me, college and pro, have taken.

Finally - it's complete and utter neglect that the Browns response is "we didn't test for a concussion because our trainers didn't see the play" - shame on every single person on that sideline and in that organization - 2 seconds after that play anyone who saw it knew, at the very least, that he likely had a concussion - no one thought of mentioning that to the trainers? It's not like he's Joe Montana and it's a Super-Bowl winning drive underway, and the Browns needed to be in 'screw it, we need Colt back on the field' mode. Shameful.
 
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The NFL is now requiring a certified athletic trainer to be in the press box for all games to watch for potential medical issues such as the Colt McCoy concussion:

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/7271888/nfl-site-observers-now-help-spot-concussions-press-box

http://wap.nfl.com/news/09000d5d825...ce-trainers-at-games-to-look-for-concussions/

LEAGUE WILL PLACE TRAINERS AT GAMES TO LOOK FOR CONCUSSIONS

By: Jason La Canfora | NFL Network
Published: December 20, 2011 at 8:26 PM
The NFL planned to send a memo to all teams Tuesday, alerting them that certified athletic trainers will be stationed at games effective immediately to monitor players for possible concussions.

The memo has yet to be sent, but it will explain the new protocol of a trainer, who is paid by the league, to be stationed at every stadium. The trainer likely will be placed somewhere in the press box of each stadium to monitor the game and assist the medical staff of both teams.

The proposition has been on the table for some time, but the plan was expedited by the Cleveland Browns ' handling of the concussion sustained by quarterback Colt McCoy during a Dec. 8 game against the Pittsburgh Steelers . McCoy suffered the concussion after an illegal hit by Steelers linebacker James Harrison, but he was sent back into the game after two plays.

Browns president Mike Holmgren said McCoy didn't display symptoms of a concussion on the field and the team's medical staff didn't test him because they didn't see Harrison's vicious hit. The situation prompted representatives from the league and NFL Players Association to meet with the team last week to discuss its protocol in handling the injury.

McCoy has yet to be cleared to practice with the Browns, 12 days after the concussion.

The league also informed teams that phone communication of a certain type now would be permitted between team medical personnel and the league-appointed trainer, according to the memo. The communication will be allowed for medical information only, as team medical staff aren't permitted to share other competitive information through phones.

Players, coaches and all non-medical team staff will continue to be prohibited from using any electronic devices in controlled areas on game day.
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NeoV said:
Finally - it's complete and utter neglect that the Browns response is "we didn't test for a concussion because our trainers didn't see the play" - shame on every single person on that sideline and in that organization - 2 seconds after that play anyone who saw it knew, at the very least, that he likely had a concussion - no one thought of mentioning that to the trainers? It's not like he's Joe Montana and it's a Super-Bowl winning drive underway, and the Browns needed to be in 'screw it, we need Colt back on the field' mode. Shameful.
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This. I saw that hit and immediately thought, "he's out cold." 5 minutes later, he wobbles back into the game and I'm wondering what the hell he's doing in there. Even if you (somehow) didn't see him lying still on the ground, he was so obviously dazed afterward that you had to know he had a concussion.

One of the problems is that the rules make it so that the team victimized by the helmet-to-helmet hit currently pays a bigger price (a lost player) than the team that causes the hit (15 yard penalty). One option would be an "eye-for-an-eye" clause that states that if you injure a player on a personal foul, you stay out until they can come back in. My worry is that we might see minor players faking/exaggerating injuries so as to keep players on the other team out.
 
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