OT: Great article on CTE and football
Interesting article that doesn't necessarily agree with the reports.
https://www.yahoo.com/sports/im-brain-scientist-let-son-play-football-1…
September 19th, 2017 at 1:57 PM ^
No full contact football until middle school is my plan for my sons as well. But let him attend non contact camps, play in a flag league, etc. Encourage soccer to develop good footwork.
September 19th, 2017 at 2:08 PM ^
September 19th, 2017 at 2:44 PM ^
September 19th, 2017 at 2:54 PM ^
See I was the opposite way. Played soccer because my parents wouldn't let me play football. As soon as I could play football I dropped soccer and never looked back and have no regrets.
September 19th, 2017 at 2:08 PM ^
I'm at too. He just started soccer a few weeks ago and I think I'm going to sign him up for flag after the winter.
September 19th, 2017 at 2:32 PM ^
I had kids play youth football. One thing to think about is that the collisions when they were in 4,5,6 grade the hits were pretty benign (the equipment is a signficiant portion of their weight and really slows them down). By about 8 th grade the hits became noticeably more violent.
September 19th, 2017 at 2:54 PM ^
(or bad news depending on your point of view): teenagers are growing up slower. Study from University of Michigan shows that even if your kid grows into an asshole or psychopath, he is less likely to borrow his old man's car keys than you were back in the day:
September 19th, 2017 at 3:00 PM ^
My 18 year old daughter just got her license about a week ago and she has zero interest in driving.
We moved her into Bursley a few weeks ago, and I've had to drive out there every Friday after work to pick her up so she can come home for the weekend. And it's not even to go out with friends. She just wants to hang out with us.
Completely different than I was at that age. It's really odd.
September 20th, 2017 at 6:32 AM ^
September 19th, 2017 at 2:06 PM ^
September 19th, 2017 at 2:32 PM ^
Coach,
I completely agree with your stance on this. As a coach and an ex-college player, youth football has become the vicarious glory days for too many coaches. Most do not teach the proper technique and are more concerned with winning big than teaching the local MS/HS systems that would truly benefit the kids.
Tackling scares me at this age, especially when you get the cowboy coach who teaches the old school facemask in chest, or head hunting techniques. Teach the kids to play with their feet and their hands in a flag football league. Teach kids to run and have developed gross and fine motor skills. Then come MS and HS, when the bodies are starting to grow, teach them to tackle and block correctly.
Just my two cents.
point - https://youtu.be/2gaHewzBI3U
September 19th, 2017 at 2:12 PM ^
I am at MGH in Boston and work with a lot of folks involved either directly or peripherally with TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) and CTE. The one-liner I have from them and reading is that epi studies (not to mention ones with neuropath results) are always going to be hard to use as definitive proof however the %'s of related illnesses in NFL players is so significant that it's hard to think it is not damaging to those folks at a minimum.
One tidbit I picked up from someone who does concussion protocols for a number of pro and college teams is that the hockey teams (at least around where I live) are far more "see no evil hear no evil" about concussions than the football teams and that there is as much if not more hesitancy amongst protocol folks to have their kids playing hockey because of that.
September 19th, 2017 at 2:40 PM ^
I know a kid who got concussed playing hockey. The coach put him back in anyway. The ref noticed the kid was wobbly and made him get off the ice. He was reinjured a couple of weeks later (after having been cleared by Dr) which was the end of his hockey playing. Unfortunately, he suffers from headaches and inability to concentrate still even though it is several years hence. Obviously, don't know for sure it is a result of the concussions, but is awfully suspicious.
September 19th, 2017 at 2:33 PM ^
I had always been reluctant to allow my kids to put on a football helmet and run full speed into a wall 10x per day, but then I read an article on Yahoo(!) that related a pathologist's personal anecdote of how he came to the decision it's just fine to let his kid run into a wall headfirst over and over, and I've changed my mind.
His analysis seemed a bit superficial, his prose sounded like what you'd hear from the guy on the stool next to you at the bar, and he made a bit of a strawman argument about the issue being concussions as opposed to repeated sub-concussive impacts, but Yahoo vouched for his legit-sounding medical credentials, so you know, it's all good. He had this very good point:
There have been no definitive, peer-reviewed, properly controlled, double-blind studies in the medical literature showing it is dangerous for children to run headfirst into walls.
Never. I'm shocked, honestly, because how hard could it be to recruit parents willing to volunteer their children for such a study? It's true that kids running headfirst into walls had correlated with behavioral problems in children, but the link has not been shown to be causal using the kind of methodology I mentioned above in bold.
Thus, while it's true that no brain scientist contradicts the fact children's brains are developing and a developing brain is more susceptible to long-term effects of trauma compared to a fully formed adult brain, we should all feel reasonably reassured that running into walls headfirst is probably OK.
People who try to convince you otherwise, like liberals and the lamestream media, have a clear anti-wall agenda rather than concrete, or even sheetrock, evidence to back up their hysterical claims.
By the way, I used to run into walls headfirst all the time growing up, and I turned out just fine, as evidenced by the fact I think it's OK for kids to run into walls headfirst.
September 19th, 2017 at 2:41 PM ^
should fight
September 19th, 2017 at 5:02 PM ^
XM and I have gotten into some nasty political back and forth in mostly now-deleted threads, but a day later we'll leave friendly comments on each other's posts about non-political subjects like nothing happened. I upvote him on non-political threads all the time.
Compartmentalizing politics and having a short memory about online "fights" is a pretty good skill that would make this blog, the interwebs generally, and society at least a little more pleasant, IMHO.
Besides, we all know it's the promoters who win every fight. "Only in America," man.
September 19th, 2017 at 5:10 PM ^
drink until you forget what you were fighting about
September 19th, 2017 at 3:01 PM ^
September 19th, 2017 at 3:22 PM ^
never played. am i right?
September 19th, 2017 at 5:06 PM ^
that juveniles don't spell and format as well as I do. Typically.
Flanker and safety in h.s., then rugby in college and since. More germane to this thread, though, is that once when I was a baby my dad put me on top of the car while he fished something out of the car. I predictably ended up plummeting headfirst into the pavement. I ended up without any discernible long-term effects (depending on who you ask), but my mom inflicts suffering on my dad to this day.
(By the way, it was generic and not about you XM, seriously...)
September 19th, 2017 at 8:36 PM ^
on being gracious.
and the baby drop, heck, everybody but you forgot about it so i suggest you not disclose that on future job or life insurance applications.
September 19th, 2017 at 3:11 PM ^
Why is a great article? Because it fits your narrative on CTE and concussions?
September 19th, 2017 at 11:47 PM ^
September 19th, 2017 at 4:40 PM ^
September 19th, 2017 at 4:57 PM ^