George Will on Football Injuries

The irony here is rich.

I agree, and the actual numbers matter. If football makes people twice as likely to develop dementia or other problems, that's bad, but given the probabilities are so low to begin with, it seems overly paternalistic to me to tell willing adults that they can't do it. Now, if 25% of former NFL players developed dementia, that kind of paternalism might be reasonable.
Just knowing that football makes it more likely that bad things will happen isn't enough. Driving cars makes us more likely to die prematurely, but should we stop doing that altogether?

I think you need to read the article more carefully or, more likely, realize that there are more than two options (those two options being, a) something is ok, or b) if it's not ok, we must have the government fix it).

Will is saying that football is dangerous. Will is strongly implying that sensible people should feel queasy watching football because of the danger.

Will is not saying that the government should step in and outlaw or regulate it.

I had another paragraph here, but because of politics being verboten on the board, I'll not go there. I'm just pointing out that Will is close to the last person in the media who wants a government nanny state, and just because he thinks something is not the best, does not at all mean he wants the government to fix it.

Not to mention leaving your house and walking down the street...life is full of risks.  Some are more with taking than others, the big difference between smoking and football being that smoking does you zero good, while football brings joy and happiness to all it touches.

The goal should be to try and make football safer, not lump it in with smoking.

If that does happen, it will be a very long time. Football is amazingly popular in this country, it's hard to imagine people losing interest in college football and the NFL.

where football is seen as a sport and not a pathway to upward mobility this may be the case in the long term.

to change how the game is played is this scenario.

That the best sport on earth will see a quality decline because of this. I would have zero, absolutely zero, concern over letting my (hypothetical) son play. Of course I didn't put a helmet on my (actual) daughter's tricycle riding either, so maybe I'm callous. While I don't begrudge any parent making the choices for their own children, that is their right, I don't understand it at all and believe it is way overprotective. Yep, a kid can get hurt. but it is not the job of the parent IMO to protect a child from all possible injury. Now if my child got a bad concussion, I would re-think letting him play, because there is some evidence about that furthering the potential for more concussions. But otherwise, if he wanted to play, he plays. And I'd hurt for him if he got an injury, but as long as he wanted to continue, absolutely he can.

I understand the analogy but boxing and football are so far apart I don't think they're comparable.  Boxing is a sport whose stated objective is to punch a person until they're unable to get to their feet.  Football is rough but is also a team sport played from middle school through high school and in backyard pickup games and 2-3 person catches.  Yes more and more kids will stay out of organized football but the interest will not fade quickly like it did with boxing.

So far, only the NFL is being sued. What happens when an autopsy is performed on someone who only played college football and shows signficiant neurogical deficit and the university gets sued?  At this juncture, with the NFL's health issues out in the open, you can impute knowledge to universities.

The risks one takes in life may then have some different and potentially huge implications.

My take is that the "game" is going to have to change and changes won't be for the better.

and I played real football into our mid-20s. Then someone was ending up in the ED after every game. Teeth were getting damaged, bones broken, joints dislocated and the risk just became to great. But we had fun and at the end of the day we were almost too sore to get a beer fom the keg. Life is risky. As adults we make our choices. The problem with George Will's argument is that kids don't have the life experience to make those choices. And minors are being put in a position by their uneducated decision (and that of their parents) to be potentially seriously injured. That's different than smoking.

But it really was only worth posting once.

It is impossible for a human to be unbiased. Our life's experiences will always, no matter how hard we try,  color our judgments and opinions. Scientists are the best at minimizing bias but even they fall victim from time to time.

Will is a baseball slappy. His words on football matter little to me because he hasn't a clue of what he is talking about. That he won awards for baseball and political writing is irrelevant to a discussion about football and health. 

has been to *reduce* the padding and/or helmet usage, including anything from removing facemasks to removing helmets entirely. The theory behind that argument is that improved safety equipment has changed the physics of the game and the risk calculations of the players, and that guys wouldn't launch themselves headfirst (or lead with the helmet so often) if they didn't think their padding would protect them from injury. Not sure if I agree, but it's an interesting thesis. Rugby and Aussie rules football, lacking such extensive padding, might provide an interesting data set for comparison.

Degrees and reading/writing books and papers are not practical experience.