thanks for this. 

I for one would like to endorse making Ultimate Frisbee a varsity sport.  Leaders and the best.

I have had serious conversations with my brothers (one a H.S. Football coach) to hold back my nephews from football.  We need to protect our sons and be men before our fathers.  We can learn.

Thanks for writing this.

Padding, shell, padding. Probably isn't the perfect model, but its probably better.

It'd be really interesting to get a wide-range study of former players, cohorts of people every 5 years for example, to see if there are trends and try to align them with rule changes, pad changes, average weights, speeds, etc.

for both the safety of the players and for the future of the game are spot on.  Drastic changes are indeed needed, and past due.  Hopefully, the NFL will take the lead as they have the social platform and the resources to take this on like no other entity.

What I can't figure out is why teammates slap each other on the helmet to celebrate. Maybe I never wore a helmet that fit me perfectly or something, but I always hated when my coach or teammates would slap my helmet or headbutt me to celebrate.  It's not like it rings your bell or anything, but you do feel it.  We keep reading over and over again that the repetitive blows do more damage than a single massive blow to the head. That said, I honestly think slapping guys on the helmet or headbutting (even teammates) should be a penalty, and a fine in the NFL.  It may not have a huge impact on the larger problem, but it's likely to have SOME impact and it's sooooo easy to correct.

"We've seen it in 90 out of 94 NFL players whose brains we've examined, we've found it in 45 out of 55 college players and six out of 26 high school players

Thanks for expressing your point of view. I believe the attitude of the people involved in a sport need to change before changing equipments to make it safer for every participant. Rule changes will help in that transition. If the coaches and parents inculcate a different approach to playing football from an early age, that could translate to a lot less violent game and hence less damage to the players.

Can this game be completely safe? May be. May be not. But at least it would be a good start.  

This is a step, and there'll be much larger ones in the future.  

Football is going to change a lot in the next 10 years, I'd bet it's hardly recognizable to today's version.  The NFL has known this is coming for at least a couple years now.  That's why you've seen more of the flag football, 'get outside and be active' motto, inclusion of women, etc.  They know that they' been causing damage and the game will have to change, and with that change, they'll lose some of their original fanbase, the men who like hitting and hard nosed play.

Watch rugby.  It's a better version of football.  Constant play, shorter games, 2 way players, minimal officiating, nation v nation competitions.

Appreciate your thoughts and it's hard to disagree with them.

However, I think that despite improving the helmets, teaching kids how to tackle right, enforcing more rules, etc. will only help to a certain degree. It's similar to boxing in the sense that destruction is the sport itself. You can only protect the players and teach the players so much to place them in a postion to avoid injury, but the nature of the sport itself will always yield these injuries.

Have there been any studies done on concussions in rugby?  It seems to me that using rugby as a proxy for football without helmets, it would be interesting to see if the helmet is actually part of the problem -- likely due to the perception of safety when making contact with ones head.

The idea of using the rulebook to enforce a different method of tacking is one possibility, but given how terribly the college football targetting rule is enforced, I don't have a lot of hope in that approach as an effective solution.

When I played youth football in the mid-80's, if you tackled with your helmet first, you'd draw a 15 yard penalty for "spearing." At some point in the intervening years, that penalty went away. I don't know if it was legislated out, or if the officials just stopped calling it. They seem to be bringing it back with the "targeting" penalty, but it will take some time for that to change the way the game is played. We, as fans, need to demand that officials call targeting or spearing instead of booing them for calling a penalty after a "big hit." No, that's not "big boy" football, it's an intent to injure and causes damage to both players. It's a great game that can be improved by enforcing rules that protect the players from themselves and the fans bloodlust.

The other big problem is the repetitive collisions at the line of scrimmage between the offensive and defensive linemen. I don't know how to fix that issue.

I sort of wonder if there really is a solution that will really address the underlying issues that cause concussions.  You can increase padding and awareness, but you are still having guys run into each other a good speed repeatedly and violently.  Taking the tackling part out of football seems the best solution but also one that is pretty untenable.  

Although teaching is one component, it does not address the core issue that the OP points out which is the willful use of the helmet as an intstrument. The only way to address this is to rewrite the rules in essence banning head to head & body contact. That will be hard to enforce, but until they make it illegal to initiate any contact with the head, CTE will be a problem. This is the only way to address the repeated hits which take place along the lines as well as lowering the head to tackle or run through tackles. Repeated 15 yard penalties with loss of down and coaches will eventually have to bench players who can not adapt because it is too costly to the team during a game. This will require adjusting the techniques used, but it would largely leave the game the same.

6 out of 26 high school football players have CTE?  That's approximately 20% of the sample.  What did these folks do besides football?  How does that compare with the general population?

High school football is dangerous relative to the rest of our contemporary society, but males, perhaps especially upper class males, have been hitting each other on the head repeatedly (and hard) for the majority of recorded history.  Training with blunted edged weapons from early childhood had to take a toll in Ancient and Medieval societies.  In our time, every male member of the Yanomamo must have CTE.

I'm not saying the statistics about high school football are wrong, but they would be surprising and it seems like a lot of these studies don't pass basic standards of scientific rigor (appropriate sample size, random sample, control group, etc.).  Statistics about pro football are a lot less surprising, but I need to see better studies before I start lumping high school football together with professional football re: the danger of CTE.

I think it would be great to hear your ideas on this, Steve, whenever you are willing to share them. I think even in raw early form it could get some interesting discussion going.

I've known a few players who played at a high level, and the type of body ache and pain they go through is ridiculous. Also ridiculous is the willingness -- the ability of high-level players to throw their body into something they know will hurt, and do so repeatedly. That's what gets them to the high level of play; that's what gets them injured (alas).

Good diary.

Sadly there are still quite a few people on this blog's forum who continue to believe that the link between smashing into each other and CTE is not well established.

Football is going to need to consider making changes to practice, similar to what the Ivy League is doing, in order to protect players.  I suspect that tackling will be banned in practices for all players below the college level.  This will not please the "you have to hear football crowd" though.