ESPN: UNC's Larry Fedora says the game of football is 'under attack'

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Gophers_4life said:
I'm only with you to the extant that I want tackle football to survive, and more importantly, I want participation numbers to stay high. And so, I think mothers pulling their sons out of the game is troublesome.

However, if you're arguing that nothing at all needs to be done to lessen blows to the head, then I'm not with you. They add nothing to game itself, and can only possibly be a potential harm for players (even if the science isn't ready yet). Likewise, even if science couldn't prove that it causes any disease, you wouldn't have your son smoke a pack before each practice and game. Adds nothing, and can only possibly be a potential harm.
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I’m in full support of the anti targeting rules and believe it can and should go even further (runners being speared while running out of bounds, etc).

The problem is the typical media response of a terrible headline that doesn’t reflect the actual study and the caveats even the biggest proponents of CTE include in their studies; and a seemingly basic lack of knowledge of the scientific method, sampling statistics...

Many activities, foods, chemicals are dangerous with enough exposure. Nobody should or could ever say football is safe. The question is do the positives outweigh the negatives?
 



There are definite values to be learned from participating in competitive sports. I would not say that football falls into some special quality. Each sport can teach lessons on teamwork, discipline, etc.

At the same time, I've seen the impact of head injuries on young people. I've seen kids sit out for months while recovering from concussions. I knew one girl who got a concussion her sophomore year in basketball. She never played again. Every time she was close to passing the tests to return, she started having headaches and light sensitivity again. so, it's a real issue. CTE - I'm no doctor or scientist, but I suspect more study is needed.

Now, to the point. (it takes me a while to get there). I think some parents are holding out kids from football due to valid concerns. But, I also think some kids are using head injuries as an excuse not to play, because they just don't want to work that hard. At one local school I cover, the school hasn't had a winning season in years, and kids don't go out because they don't want to be part of a losing program. So, there are multiple reasons why participation numbers are dropping. (along with specialization).

so, no - I do not think football is doomed. The sport will be with us for a long time. there may be rule changes, and the game might look different in 20 or 30 years, but it will still be here. (hey - look at a game from the 30's or 40's, and compare it to the modern game. Looks different - but still the same basic game.)
 

Face The Facts said:
The neuropathologist who this article references also wrote papers on how it's plausible real zombies might exist on earth.

As well as a fictional book about Zombies living among us.
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Certain psychiatric conditions can certainly imitate zombies...

He wrote a fictional novel about Zombies. So what? Michael Crichton was an MD that wrote fictional novels about all sorts of things. I suppose he was a nutcase as well. Many scientific people have interest in science and fiction. I fail to see any reason to dismiss his reasonable opinions.
 


Positional weight limits are used in youth football. Wonder if that will expand? The bigger, stronger, faster, better nutrition is a big part of this. A 350 lb man capable of running a sub-5.0 40 is a bad recipe. Yes, the idea maybe sounds absurd - and of course the PC crowd would go insane- but it could be a part of a pathway to keep the game alive and recognizable.
 

Face The Facts said:
The neuropathologist who this article references also wrote papers on how it's plausible real zombies might exist on earth.

As well as a fictional book about Zombies living among us.
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I've worked in customer service related jobs for much of my life and I can tell you with certainty that zombies are real and they live among us.
 

GoodasGold said:
That would be basketball.
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The risk of sudden cardiac death is about 1 in 15000 (military population). Some have pre-existing but undetected cardiac issues, many do not. SCD can occur with increased dose and duration to any intense exercise and seems to be far more prevalent than clinical CTE.

I doubt many would argue that the benefits of exercise are offset by the risk of SCD and we should all stop exercising. Football has benefits of physical, mental, sociological value.



.
 





alchemy2u said:
That is one of the strangest “black helicopter” conspiracy theories that I have ever heard. Face the truth, of the sports that can subject players to repetitive head injuries, football stands out. Butting a ball with your head or getting checked into the boards doesn’t install the same fear into a parents eyes as running at full speed and then putting you head down into a pile of players or tackling players at full impact with your head. It is also humorous to hear some people describe football as the only sport that can teach toughness or teamwork.


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the easy solution to this is use proper technique.
 

Here's an interesting discussion on it from FS1. Only wish they had a medical expert on brain trauma, so, you're just hearing from former football players, but I still enjoyed the conversation. Sorry if you also get stuck with a 3 minute ad that you can't skip.

 

Wow, that is maybe the most reasonable, well-spoken round table discussion/debate I’ve ever heard on not only a sports show, but any news show. Who knew Stink could be so eloquent.

(Standing ovation)
 



Pompous Elitist said:
Why are you here, then? Serious question.
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Because he can like football without being completely ****ing insane about it?

OP's post there claimed that there is a nebulous cloud of people intentionally attacking everything he thinks is masculine. Talk about brain damage.

Anyway, I am of the opinion that some contact sports are started far too early, and that it will take time to make the proper adjustments to protect the health of the players. That doesn't mean that the sport is under attack. People used to die playing football and then they added helmets. It didn't kill the game.

Maybe they need better helmets, maybe they need to change certain plays, or maybe they need to switch to 7-on-7 flag football until high school. None of those things would kill football.

The one thing that I don't buy is that form tackling is going to completely fix the problem. I'm sure that it will help, but until it is properly mandated and enforced, noticing that "they hit too high", isn't fixing the problem.
 

And that’s fine, that’s a perfectly rational take. The issue is the absolutely over the top sky is falling hysteria of football = neuropsychiatric disease. The reality is almost certainly far different. The human body can take a lot of abuse and function normally. It appears to be a very rare condition.
 

Pompous Elitist said:
Your argument was...brilliant. Yes, it’s just like shooting heroin, or smoking, or eating raw sewage. Keep the excellent arguments coming.
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Awesome! You followed your ad hominem with a straw man! You have a gift for logical fallacies!

I was making fun of the “the science is not settled” point and only that. That was a common argument against accepting the dangers of smoking. And when someone says “the science is not settled,” or “science is never settled,” my BS detector goes off. I was just having fun with the reference to heroin and the consumption of raw sewage. (But on the other hand, the germ theory of disease did face resistance.)

To the subject at hand, like you, I am impressed with the caution of the scientists studying CTE and sports. For example, the fact that of 111 deceased NFL player’s brains subject to examination, 110 were found to have evidence of CTE is caveated with the fact that selection bias was certainly possible if not likely.

I hope that the current approach of baselining and concussion protocols, along with targeting and other rule changes, will allow reduce the level of risk to players without compromising the nature of the game. Eventually science will deliver the goods and we will have a more complete understanding. In the meantime, we need to take prudent actions based on the best of our knowledge.
 

MrC said:
Awesome! You followed your ad hominem with a straw man! You have a gift for logical fallacies!

I was making fun of the “the science is not settled” point and only that. That was a common argument against accepting the dangers of smoking. And when someone says “the science is not settled,” or “science is never settled,” my BS detector goes off. I was just having fun with the reference to heroin and the consumption of raw sewage. (But on the other hand, the germ theory of disease did face resistance.)

To the subject at hand, like you, I am impressed with the caution of the scientists studying CTE and sports. For example, the fact that of 111 deceased NFL player’s brains subject to examination, 110 were found to have evidence of CTE is caveated with the fact that selection bias was certainly possible if not likely.

I hope that the current approach of baselining and concussion protocols, along with targeting and other rule changes, will allow reduce the level of risk to players without compromising the nature of the game. Eventually science will deliver the goods and we will have a more complete understanding. In the meantime, we need to take prudent actions based on the best of our knowledge.
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I’d avoid ridiculing my logic, considering your posts in this thread.

Regarding the bolded, all of the deceased had diagnosed or suspected neurodegenerative disease. The brains were donated by their families to a neurodegenerative disease research team soliciting such donations. There were ZERO controls. When a person has a diagnosed heart attack or stroke or cancer, would one suspect to find evidence of these at autopsy?
 

Pompous Elitist said:
And that’s fine, that’s a perfectly rational take. The issue is the absolutely over the top sky is falling hysteria of football = neuropsychiatric disease. The reality is almost certainly far different. The human body can take a lot of abuse and function normally. It appears to be a very rare condition.
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Typical, you claim others are stating some exaggeration conclusion and then follow up about how it is exaggerated. You can’t make this **** up, well I guess you can.


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alchemy2u said:
Typical, you claim others are stating some exaggeration conclusion and then follow up about how it is exaggerated. You can’t make this **** up, well I guess you can.


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That is a great example of a straw man argument. It is easy to be right when you argue against make-believe.
 

Pompous Elitist said:
I’d avoid ridiculing my logic, considering your posts in this thread.

Regarding the bolded, all of the deceased had diagnosed or suspected neurodegenerative disease. The brains were donated by their families to a neurodegenerative disease research team soliciting such donations. There were ZERO controls. When a person has a diagnosed heart attack or stroke or cancer, would one suspect to find evidence of these at autopsy?
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Please, if you see logical fallacies or errors in my posts, just point them out. I like to learn, and am very good at being wrong given my vast experience at being wrong. Since almost every post I made was taking issue with your logic, it is kind of weird to reference them as if they might be a reason to not take issues with your logic. If I think about it too long, I may find myself in an endless loop.

And you expand upon the point I made (that you bolded) as if you are taking issue with it? Yes, there are indications of selection bias. That does not negate the evidence of CTE, but it certainly raises questions.
 

MrC said:
Please, if you see logical fallacies or errors in my posts, just point them out. I like to learn, and am very good at being wrong given my vast experience at being wrong. Since almost every post I made was taking issue with your logic, it is kind of weird to reference them as if they might be a reason to not take issues with your logic. If I think about it too long, I may find myself in an endless loop.

And you expand upon the point I made (that you bolded) as if you are taking issue with it? Yes, there are indications of selection bias. That does not negate the evidence of CTE, but it certainly raises questions.
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The bolded is an issue precisely because of the ignorance of selection bias.

Calling you a “professor” was because of your terrible analogy of CTE skeptics to the smoking/lung cancer skeptics, or of encouraging kids to shoot heroin, or eat raw sewage.

If your perception is I made strawman arguments regarding your ridiculous post it is because of your hyperbole, lack of precision, and comparison to events that have no bearing on the CTE discussion. I could, for example easily analogize you as taking an anti-vaxxer position but that’s lazy.

Let’s talk about the incidence and prevalence of clinical CTE in the millions of players that have players football. Game?
 

Pompous Elitist said:
The bolded is an issue precisely because of the ignorance of selection bias.

Calling you a “professor” was because of your terrible analogy of CTE skeptics to the smoking/lung cancer skeptics, or of encouraging kids to shoot heroin, or eat raw sewage.

If your perception is I made strawman arguments regarding your ridiculous post it is because of your hyperbole, lack of precision, and comparison to events that have no bearing on the CTE discussion. I could, for example easily analogize you as taking an anti-vaxxer position but that’s lazy.

Let’s talk about the incidence and prevalence of clinical CTE in the millions of players that have players football. Game?
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Have you ever admitted that you may not know everything about everything?

A clean and precise experiment of this type of injury is very difficult to conduct. It is like trying to determine what color of clothing reduces pedestrians from getting hit by a car. You would not get very many volunteers to wear various color clothes and jaywalk into traffic. You have to extrapolate other data about visibility of colors, historically collected data, etc...(I do not claim to be an expert in collecting these types of data). The same is true with football and CTE. We are just beginning to gathering data. These first data points are really proving that football players can develop CTE. But it doesn’t take a genius to extrapolate information about head trauma, the fragile state of the brain and the frequency of violent collisions in football. Remember, concussions don’t only come from direct blows to the head. Also, improvements in helmets only dissipate the force of impact they do very little to decrease the momentum of the sudden stop. The brain floats in a fluid and impacts the inside of the skull based upon the changes in momentum and not about how much cushy foam is strapped to the outside of the head. Here is a link explaining how fragile the brain is:
https://youtu.be/55u5Ivx31og



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Pompous Elitist said:
The bolded is an issue precisely because of the ignorance of selection bias.

Calling you a “professor” was because of your terrible analogy of CTE skeptics to the smoking/lung cancer skeptics, or of encouraging kids to shoot heroin, or eat raw sewage.
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I must admit to a being confused by your responses. On the topic of selection bias, why do you insist on arguing about something we appear to largely agree about? Just reflex?

And now I apparently have made an argument about someone (me?) encouraging kids to shoot heroin or eat raw sewage!?! That is an impressive straw man, even by your lofty standards.

Time will tell whether comparing CTE doubters to smoking risk doubters is fair. I am pretty sure that heroin and raw sewage enthusiasts are in a class of their own. A really really small class, most likely in Iowa.
 

MrC said:
I must admit to a being confused by your responses. On the topic of selection bias, why do you insist on arguing about something we appear to largely agree about? Just reflex?

And now I apparently have made an argument about someone (me?) encouraging kids to shoot heroin or eat raw sewage!?! That is an impressive straw man, even by your lofty standards.

Time will tell whether comparing CTE doubters to smoking risk doubters is fair. I am pretty sure that heroin and raw sewage enthusiasts are in a class of their own. A really really small class, most likely in Iowa.
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I never said we disagreed. I was expounding on the widespread ignorance of this fact. You did imply it was “likely” when in fact it is the textbook definition.

I never stated you argued kids should do those things. Here is what you wrote as you have apparently forgotten:

“The science isn’t settled.” That is why we should all tell our children to keep an open mind about smoking. And shooting heroin. And eating raw sewage.
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It is wildly irresponsible to claim the millions of people that have played football (or suffered all levels of concussion via any sort of injury) are destined for CTE. Or, even a certain percentage. We know the epidemiology of smokers. We don’t have any idea regarding CTE. It appears to be rare, mostly in long-term pro athletes. Attributing every suicide of a teen or 20something to CTE is absurd. It’s simply not likely.

If a emergency room physician were to tell the parents of a mild TBI patient he is destined for CTE in 8-10 years they are committing not only an unethical act but causing those parents and patient undue psychological harm.
 

alchemy2u said:
Have you ever admitted that you may not know everything about everything?

A clean and precise experiment of this type of injury is very difficult to conduct. It is like trying to determine what color of clothing reduces pedestrians from getting hit by a car. You would not get very many volunteers to wear various color clothes and jaywalk into traffic. You have to extrapolate other data about visibility of colors, historically collected data, etc...(I do not claim to be an expert in collecting these types of data). The same is true with football and CTE. We are just beginning to gathering data. These first data points are really proving that football players can develop CTE. But it doesn’t take a genius to extrapolate information about head trauma, the fragile state of the brain and the frequency of violent collisions in football. Remember, concussions don’t only come from direct blows to the head. Also, improvements in helmets only dissipate the force of impact they do very little to decrease the momentum of the sudden stop. The brain floats in a fluid and impacts the inside of the skull based upon the changes in momentum and not about how much cushy foam is strapped to the outside of the head. Here is a link explaining how fragile the brain is:
https://youtu.be/55u5Ivx31og



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Yes...go on. Injury is bad. There are markers of past injury oftentimes. What is the prevalence of CTE in former players, concussion sufferers? Until you can answer that you’re barking at the moon.
 

Pompous Elitist said:
Attributing every suicide of a teen or 20something to CTE is absurd.
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Who is “Attributing every suicide of a teen or 20 something” to CTE? Who? That would mean first names and last names. Lots of them from professional sources if it actually worth discussing. And yes, it is an absurd opinon. So absurd that I bet that it is held by very few if any professionals. But it is so easy create an unreasonable opponent when you put words in their mouth or wildly exaggerate their position.

Yes there are those who believe that playing football leads to a higher suicide rate due to CTE. And I suspect they are drawing conclusions that are too strong for the evidence at hand. While that may be a problem, it is miles away from attributing every suicide to CTE.
 

Pompous Elitist said:
If a emergency room physician were to tell the parents of a mild TBI patient he is destined for CTE in 8-10 years they are committing not only an unethical act but causing those parents and patient undue psychological harm.
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How often has this actually happened?
 

Pompous Elitist said:
It is wildly irresponsible to claim the millions of people that have played football (or suffered all levels of concussion via any sort of injury) are destined for CTE.
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Who is actually taking that position? That everyone who played football or suffered any kind of concussion is destined for CTE?
 


If we submit this thread for analysis, I suspect a couple of posters might wind up getting evaluated for CTE.......

Seriously, there is a middle ground here. You can take steps to improve awareness, improve diagnosis and treatment of head injuries and concussions, improve equipment, and still maintain the essence of football as a sport.

It's not an either/or situation - football or safety. You can still play football and do everything you can to make the game as safe as possible. (understanding that any contact sport is going to have a risk of injury. ACL, anyone?)

What this situation needs is information - not fear-mongering or hyperbole on either side.
 

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