Modern NFL Deathwatch thread

[yinan]

Also, when they inevitably get injured, they don't get paid. Srsly, if you are a die hard football fan and you don't think there is something really wrong with how players are treated, you are an ignorant, sadistic piece of human garbage.

How are they treated badly? Anyone knows that if you run full speed into another large object, you are going to get hurt.

They get paid very well. League minimum is $375,000 for a first year player for 2011.

If they do not like it they can quit and get another job. No one is forcing them to play like in the Roman gladiator times. They are making the conscious decision to pursue their WILLINGLY chosen profession.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

How are they treated badly? Anyone knows that if you run full speed into another large object, you are going to get hurt.

They get paid very well. League minimum is $375,000 for a first year player for 2011.

If they do not like it they can quit and get another job. No one is forcing them to play like in the Roman gladiator times. They are making the conscious decision to pursue their WILLINGLY chosen profession.

Wait, wait, let's go back to gladiators for a second. What if people willingly wanted to hack each other to pieces for the chance at fame and fortune. Would that be a sport you would expect to see on TV and what if your kid wanted to go out for the high school varsity gladiator team? Would you approve?

 

[momeNt]

I don't think it's on deathwatch. I think there are plenty of people out there willing to take on the risk still, and people will still watch it even when they know it can mess up their brain and turn them into vegetables.

 

[preslove]

How are they treated badly? Anyone knows that if you run full speed into another large object, you are going to get hurt.

They get paid very well. League minimum is $375,000 for a first year player for 2011.

If they do not like it they can quit and get another job. No one is forcing them to play like in the Roman gladiator times. They are making the conscious decision to pursue their WILLINGLY chosen profession.

They don't make that minimum if they're injured. Which is why you see so many players playing injured. Which leads so many to destroy their bodies. And, it's not like they make the decision to go down the football career path while they're adults.

High School and younger football (with current rules) should cease to exist. I'm ok with 18 year olds who haven't ever played football making informed decisions on playing, perhaps after several classes detailing exactly how terrible a life in the nfl can be for their bodies and minds. I'm not ok with kids playing since pop warner, spending countless hours getting good enough in hs to get scouted by college teams, spending most of their time at college preparing for the nfl, and then getting to a league that treats them as replaceable meat bags that usually get chewed up and discarded within 3 years.

At least give them guaranteed contracts, like the other big leagues, and medical coverage for life.

 

[yinan]

Wait, wait, let's go back to gladiators for a second. What if people willingly wanted to hack each other to pieces for the chance at fame and fortune. Would that be a sport you would expect to see on TV and what if your kid wanted to go out for the high school varsity gladiator team? Would you approve?

If he was good, and had the opportunity to make himself, and his family set for life, yes.

How is it any different than the military, except that you make exponentially more?

 

[momeNt]

If he was good, and had the opportunity to make himself, and his family set for life, yes.

How is it any different than the military, except that you make exponentially more?

Military is different because we fight for freedom when we go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The NFL players fight for fame and glory.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

If he was good, and had the opportunity to make himself, and his family set for life, yes.

How is it any different than the military, except that you make exponentially more?

ROFL!!! Manti Te'o alert, nobody is buying that line of crap. You'd give your kid a sword at age 14 and say "go out and make us rich if you survive"? Sorry, even on ATOT nobody could possibly be THAT stupid.

 

[preslove]

If he was good, and had the opportunity to make himself, and his family set for life, yes.

How is it any different than the military, except that you make exponentially more?

You are an idiot with no moral compass.

The military is necessary to protect our nation and national interests. Entertainment that destroys its performers is not necessary, you mouth breathing piece of human garbage.

 

[Pheran]

It looks like they didn't have a control group. So we don't know how often "CTE" occurs in people who don't have chronic head trauma. But now maybe we can find out.

It looks more like you didn't bother to read even the opening summary of the study:

Five retired National Football League players (age range: 45 to 73 years) with histories of mood and cognitive symptoms ... were compared with those of five male controls of comparable age, education, and body mass index.

 

[diesbudt]

The future of the NFL. From the funny pictures thread...

sad thing is? something like this would not stop concussions. See the player in blue. he is being knocked down at X speed, and when the bubble hits the ground the body comes screeching to a stop. Yes physical impact is lessened, by the brain is still be forced via inertia into the inner cranium, which is what causes a concussion.

 

[preslove]

sad thing is? something like this would not stop concussions. See the player in blue. he is being knocked down at X speed, and when the bubble hits the ground the body comes screeching to a stop. Yes physical impact is lessened, by the brain is still be forced via inertia into the inner cranium, which is what causes a concussion.

Concussions aren't the problem...

 

[diesbudt]

Concussions aren't the problem...

You realize a concussion is just a blow to the head from the inside (causes more permanent damage than external blows)

 

[momeNt]

The problem is just repeated blows to the head, not necessarily concussions.

There was a study done in Indiana on high school students and the largest cognitive loss was by those NOT sidelined by concussions, concussions actually saved their head from the amount of hits that non-concussed players received.

But like I said, if parents are aware of the risks and let their kids play in high school, that's fine, and adults obviously can make their own decisions.

Maybe we should ban football for minors, but don't forget to also ban rollercoasters and many theme park attractions too. Otherwise we wouldn't be consistent in our treatment of the issue.

 

[diesbudt]

The problem is just repeated blows to the head, not necessarily concussions.

There was a study done in Indiana on high school students and the largest cognitive loss was by those NOT sidelined by concussions, concussions actually saved their head from the amount of hits that non-concussed players received.

But like I said, if parents are aware of the risks and let their kids play in high school, that's fine, and adults obviously can make their own decisions.

Maybe we should ban football for minors, but don't forget to also ban rollercoasters and many theme park attractions too. Otherwise we wouldn't be consistent in our treatment of the issue.

Oh yea. Because all those pro players with external blows to the head were checked right after it happened and not now 10+ years afterwards? (high schools checked just a short period afterward. The NFL plaeyrs have been retired for some time or have played 10+ years already) Check out players who have had multiple concussions 10+ years later. They are as bad or worse off.

 

[SP33Demon]

I don't think it's on deathwatch. I think there are plenty of people out there willing to take on the risk still, and people will still watch it even when they know it can mess up their brain and turn them into vegetables.

Is boxing on Deathwatch? Is it a popular high school sport? Everyone knew about the dangers of it; football, not until now.

 

[momeNt]

Oh yea. Because all those pro players with external blows to the head were checked right after it happened and not now 10+ years afterwards? (high schools checked just a short period afterward. The NFL plaeyrs have been retired for some time or have played 10+ years already) Check out players who have had multiple concussions 10+ years later. They are as bad or worse off.

First of all, you don't know what a concussion is.

Second of all, a concussion involves a blow to the head, but not all blows to the head result in concussions.

Concussions ARE bad, what I was saying was that repeated blows to the head that don't result in a diagnosis of a concussion have a cumulative effect and result in decreased cognitive ability AS WELL.

 

[preslove]

You realize a concussion is just a blow to the head from the inside (causes more permanent damage than external blows)

A 'concussion' has pretty distinct symptoms http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001802/

And multiple sub-concussive blows to the head are the real problem with CTE. This is a MUCH bigger problem for the nfl than concussions.

 

[momeNt]

Is boxing on Deathwatch? Is it a popular high school sport? Everyone knew about the dangers of it; football, not until now.

I'm not entirely sure what your point is, but I'll respond as best as I can.

Boxing is heavily reliant on superstars and doesn't have teams that persist longer than a single person's career nor giving fans the ability to identify with a city. They have completely different fans in that regard, and the NFL has a clear advantage.

There are a lot of other factors that removed boxing from the mainstream as well, PPV, Vegas, round limits and the increasing reliance on judges scorecards...

 

[preslove]

I'm not entirely sure what your point is, but I'll respond as best as I can.

Boxing is heavily reliant on superstars and doesn't have teams that persist longer than a single person's career nor giving fans the ability to identify with a city. They have completely different fans in that regard, and the NFL has a clear advantage.

There are a lot of other factors that removed boxing from the mainstream as well, PPV, Vegas, round limits and the increasing reliance on judges scorecards...

Your points are even less clear.

Boxing does not rely on huge amounts of public money in the form of local support for pop warner programs, Middle & high school programs, a college football industry, and public financing/support of nfl stadiums.

There are plenty of singular sports like track & field, wrestling, and swimming, that are well represented in high school and college. AFAIK there are no public highschool or college boxing programs. This is for a good reason. And it's the same reason why there should be no football (in its current form) highschool or college football programs.

 

[diesbudt]

Dependng how far you want to diagnose a concussion. Junior seau had near 5-6 big ones and 1000+ small ones.

So if you want to go on pretending concussions is not part of the same issue described here, go ahead. But its lasting effects are worse than blows to the head, though they do not happen as often.

So all I am saying is somethign silly like that device of a bubble wouldn't fix the problem, as part of the problem as a whole is concussions. So unless a solution can fix that also, it isn't viable, even as a joke.

 

[momeNt]

Your points are even less clear.

Boxing does not rely on huge amounts of public money in the form of local support for pop warner programs, Middle & high school programs, a college football industry, and public financing/support of nfl stadiums.

There are plenty of singular sports like track & field, wrestling, and swimming, that are well represented in high school and college. AFAIK there are no public highschool or college boxing programs. This is for a good reason. And it's the same reason why there should be no football (in its current form) highschool or college football programs.

Okay then I misunderstood what he was saying, I suspected as much.

Maybe there SHOULD be no football in its current form. Once a minor reaches the age of consent though anything is game unless there is some government action against it, so if parents all collectively refused or government disallowed children from playing in football and pop warner and high school football was killed tomorrow, colleges would have 4 years to prepare athletic young adults to play football without any previous training. I think it can be done.

So maybe your answer would be to ban the ability to consent to football entirely? Regardless of adult or minor?

 

[SP33Demon]

I'm not entirely sure what your point is, but I'll respond as best as I can.

Boxing is heavily reliant on superstars and doesn't have teams that persist longer than a single person's career nor giving fans the ability to identify with a city. They have completely different fans in that regard, and the NFL has a clear advantage.

There are a lot of other factors that removed boxing from the mainstream as well, PPV, Vegas, round limits and the increasing reliance on judges scorecards...

The injuries are similar in boxing as football, i.e. CTE, only severity is different. Boxing used to be popular during the post WWII era but eventually faded as more and more boxers died from head injuries. Today, boxing is pretty much dead aside from a few big names.

It will soon be discovered via real-time CTE testing that half the football team (i.e. both lines), will be testing positive due to repeated subconcussive hits. It will be dropped from most high school sports programs and go the way of the boxer. It may even be worse, since you need an entire GROUP of individuals to collectively agree to get brain damage, whereas boxing is simply one person. Poor little Johnny in the suburbs will now have to travel to the city to get his brain damage, or even a different state to find a league where parents are all collectively dumb enough to agree to have their kids' heads bashed in. This will effectively kill football from the ground up.

 

[momeNt]

The injuries are similar in boxing as football, i.e. CTE, only severity is different. Boxing used to be popular during the post WWII era but eventually faded as more and more boxers died from head injuries. Today, boxing is pretty much dead aside from a few big names.

It will soon be discovered via real-time CTE testing that half the football team (i.e. both lines), will be testing positive due to repeated subconcussive hits. It will be dropped from most high school sports programs and go the way of the boxer. It may even be worse, since you need an entire GROUP of individuals to collectively agree to get brain damage, whereas boxing is simply one person. Poor little Johnny in the suburbs will now have to travel to the city to get his brain damage, or even a different state to find a league where parents are all collectively dumb enough to agree to have their kids' heads bashed in. This will effectively kill football from the ground up.

Correlation is not causation. There are many factors besides seeing boxers become punch drunk that has caused boxing's decline. I'm not even sure that dementia pugilistica is even a factor in boxing's popularity at all to be honest.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

The injuries are similar in boxing as football, i.e. CTE, only severity is different. Boxing used to be popular during the post WWII era but eventually faded as more and more boxers died from head injuries. Today, boxing is pretty much dead aside from a few big names.

It's a real stretch to pin the problems in boxing on CTE or the health plights of former boxers. Boxing croaked primarily due to lack of exposure. It went from free TV to basic cable to pretty much invisible except PPV events. Toss in too many weight classes, belts changing hands in court rather than the ring, an alphabet soup of competing federations with unique paper champs, the stench of big promoters limiting matchups and fixing fights, "big" fights that don't live up to the hype and a complete inability for the average fan to follow the sport and it's a recipe for disaster. Boxing was on its death bed long before CTE/concussions and past champs with brain damage became an issue.

Boxing used to have THREE champions of the world, lightweight, middleweight and heavyweight and even casual fans knew who they were. How many boxers today are "world champions"? 50, maybe 60? Can anyone except a real expert name more than 2 or 3 and which belts they hold? Hell, a couple of years ago one of the lightweight divisions four different champions and every single one of them was named Diaz. That's not a joke, four different men with the last name Diaz were "Champion of the World!" in the same weight class. And nobody knew who any of them were. THAT is what killed boxing.

At this time there are THIRTEEN world champs in Heavyweight, Junior Heavyweight and Light heavyweight classes alone. THIRTEEN. Name one except one of the Klitschko brothers.

Ooops, I have to correct myself, it's not 50 or 60 world champions, it's 82.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_world_boxing_champions

 

[rasczak]

http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_...igns-cte-living-former-nfl-players-first-time

Now that med technology has caught up, R.I.P. football as we know it. I predicted a slow and dying death with a 20~ year duration but this could chop the head off of football as we know it today. Being able to detect CTE in living people is Goodell's worst nightmare come true.

Welcome to sumo wrestling/flag football hybrid, coming soon to a stadium near you.

Edit1:Now the Seau family has filed a wrongful death suit.

Even as players are informed of the potential risks from playing the game, many will still continue to play. NFL players are paid millions to play a game they love very much and realize the risks involved. Seau would have continued to play had this information been available back in his playing days. Should the NFL be held liable for withholding information that could allow the players to make a more informed decision, by all means, if they had the information, yes. But to say that the players did not know they were damaging their brains by playing this game is ridiculous.