One problem with the "football too dangerous" meme: no evidence--WSJ

In another study, Virginia Tech actually did a study of linear and rotational acceleration involved in impacts in youth football (7 and 8 year olds in the study) and compared it to high school and college level play. 

STUDY LINK
 

The second to last sentence of the abstract, which you can see in detail in the data:

"Although less frequent, youth football can produce high head accelerations in the range of concussion causing impacts measured in adults."

They actually did this utilizing data from the HIT system installed in the helmets of youth football players, so it is intriguing to see the impact characterized like this. The youth football impacts were skewed towards the low end, but linear acceleration in particular was similar to the median acceleratrion of hits experienced even by college players (but not  nearly as hard at the extreme end obviously). 

It's definitely worth a look. 

While the reasons for their respective declines were different I do think it's enlightening to look at the year 1950 and what sports were "most popular" that year as measured by live attendance and TV viewership.  They were:

1. Baseball

2. Boxing

3. Horse Racing

Today I believe (and I dont have a direct source so I accept that I may be proven incorrect) that the top three are:

1. Football

2. Basketball

3. NASCAR

If you asked a person back in 1950 if they could ever imagine both football and basketball eclipsing baseball in popularity I'm sure they would think you were insane.  So could the future hold a spot without footall as we know it today?

History would say it's not only possible -it's probable.

But a de-evolution of the game might be necessary.
The game has changed drastically in the last 50 years and I'd be shocked if we do not see a sharp change in the way the game is in the next 20-30 years.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-06-01/sports/ct-spt-0602-mitchel...

that there's a misreading of the lay of the land. Proving that football is dangerous will not be necessary or even likely tried. Citing evidence that it isn't (assuming such evidence exists) will have little effect in the court of public opinion. One NFL player questioning it is enough to overshadow any clinical study. But more importantly, nobody's ever going to file criminal charges against a football organization claiming some sort of negligence that must be proven beyond reasonable doubt.

The legal precedent will be in civil court, where the argument will be that the NFL knew about the potential danger/risk and did not A. inform players who could make a decision based on that information and B. did not act on its information to make the game safer for its employees. This will be in front of a jury where players and their wives can tell the story, and while we may not be immediately sympathetic to millionaires, the jury only has to be more sympathetic to them than to the billionaires being sued.

A couple of cases won, and insuring football programs below the revenue level of the NFL will likely become prohibitive. Game over if some NCAA players successfully sue their alma mater. And long-term, the game might be over as parents and kids decide against football. I know a young man who did the research himself and decided not to sign up for football (no parental pressure). He's sticking with soccer and basketball.

These are from Purdue's site, not the actual journal articles, so bear that in mind. You can find the journals if you want.

http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/research/2010/101007NaumanFootball.html

http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/research/2012/120202NaumanFootball.html

The studies were done on high school players in Lafayette, and they suggest a far greater role of "sub-concussive" contacts in brain impact. As a parent, this is more concerning, especially as players are using their heads in contact in all sorts of ways that I don't think they used to do. Just imagine how many times the head of a lineman gets contact in a game. 

Is this conclusive? Not yet, but it is suggestive and concerning.

I'm sometimes thankful that my son is now in high school and never expressed interest in playing football - not a decision I had to worry about.

this article from about 2 years ago:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/sports/football/26tackling.html?emc=et...

I'm going to echo Sopwith's point: if you look at old college or NFL films from the 50s and focus on the tackling, the difference between the game then and today is huge. Virtually nobody leads with their head, and virtually nobody tries to take a ball-carrier down with just a "kill shot"—it's boring, old-fashioned form tackling whose purpose is simply to pull the ball-carrier to the ground, not disable him for the rest of the season.

I'm not naively suggesting that there were never any blows to the head or that football wasn't a violent collision sport back then, but the films don't lie—it's a different game now.

So the author of the article thinks that football is only dangerous on a professional level?

So somehow the sport is magically safe because of the wizard spells youth football, high school, and college coaches cast on their players?

CTE is caused by repeated trauma to the brain. If you play football from the time you are 6 through high school, odds are you've done a bit of damage to your noggin, regardless of whether it was enough damage to cause any major cognitive disorders. 

It's not like professional football players were birthed from pods and suddenly started playing football at the age of 22.

1.  Kids in elementary and middle schools usually can't generate enough force to give each other concussions.

2.  There was no mandatory weightlifting in the NFL until Vince Lombardi won championships with it, and debunked the prevailing "wisdom" that weightlifting would make a player "slow" and "musclebound."

3.  Maybe the fact that helmets were "less advanced" was a good thing,  It didn't provide the illusion of impunity and couldn't be used as a weapon.

We can all agree to leave bickering about the WSJ and NYT on the FNC and MSNBC message boards from now on.

The article is just another piece of evidence in what is sure to be a long and heated debate. I, for one, would let my kids play football or any other mainstream sport--including rugby, which is far more dangerous--knowing the risks. I think we are missing the point of life if we keep ourselves from doing anything risky. Climbing, skydiving, snowmobiling, etc are all more dangerous than football, and I don't think they should be off limits either. I understand and support those who don't want their kids to play football, just don't take it away from the rest of us.

is subject to change dramatically with new testing.  Until now CTE dx was only possible through post mortum examination and staining.  

This is about ti change dramatically.

http://m.espn.go.com/wireless/story?storyId=8867972&i=FB&w=1cjkh&wjb

CTE found in living ex-NFL players.

Brain scans performed on five former NFL players revealed images of the protein that causes football-related brain damage -- the first time researchers have identified signs of the crippling disease in living players.

Researchers who conducted the pilot study at UCLA described the findings as a significant step toward being able to diagnose the disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in living patients.

"I've been saying that identifying CTE in a living person is the holy grail for this disease and for us to be able make advances in treatment," said Dr. Julian Bailes, co-director of NorthShore Neurological Institute in Evanston, Ill., and one of the study's co-authors. "It's not definitive, and there's a lot we still need to discover to help these people, but it's very compelling. It's a new discovery."