NFL Concussion Issue - NYT Article

[BostonTim]

The NY Times responds to the NFL's response:

popcorn

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/25/s...e-and-the-times-responds.html?ref=oembed&_r=0

And Roger makes another astute decision: "Let's go to war with the NYTimes, should be great fun!"

Cheers, BostonTim

 

[bideau]

those must be the only congressmen who have not yet had campaign contributions from the nfl lobbyists...

That would be a very astute observation.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Mercury News finds NFL funneling funds to lawmakers sitting on concussion committee. <a href="https://t.co/Pub98fR4D6">https://t.co/Pub98fR4D6</a></p>— Tom E. Curran (@tomecurran) <a href="https://twitter.com/tomecurran/status/713367628996284418">March 25, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

[BradyGirl]

This is fascinating. We are extremely lucky to have our golden era of Patriots football now, because the future may be drastically different. Right now the NFL is fine and will continue to roll on, just like MLB did for decades despite racism, labor trouble, and so on. They finally lost their hold on the country because their day had come and gone. They'd had a good run. Now the NFL holds that place of national pastime.

What will change it? Maybe not in our lifetimes, but eventually it'll be like <i>The Jetsons</i>: robot players playing football. And maybe Adalius Thomas will make it to practice on time.

Anything that gets as big and bloated as the NFL will eventually deflate (ha, ha). It's like a balloon that keeps getting helium pumped into it and eventually pops when it gets too big.

The cracks in the foundation start with the kids. If parents don't allow their kids to play football, there goes your future players. If more adult players quit early so they can still retain their faculties, your talent pool shrinks. What makes football appealing to people are the big hits. Will that continue if the rules keep changing or guilt sets in, watching this Roman Colosseum of gladiatorial combat?

Already the quality of football is watered down. How many games this year were unwatchable? Used to be that you could watch a game not involving your team and get some enjoyment out of it, but now it's most likely a snoozefest.

Goodell and the front office unwittingly has inserted their lying lies into the public consciousness. People don't care about the Patriots but if they've read even a fraction of Deflategate articles, they know that it was a big con job. Now when it involves an issue they might care about, they're conditioned not to believe Goodell and his rich cronies.

Maybe the NFL will never come down, but empires rise and fall all the time.

 

[Dwight Schrute]

This is fascinating. We are extremely lucky to have our golden era of Patriots football now, because the future may be drastically different. Right now the NFL is fine and will continue to roll on, just like MLB did for decades despite racism, labor trouble, and so on. They finally lost their hold on the country because their day had come and gone. They'd had a good run. Now the NFL holds that place of national pastime.

What will change it? Maybe not in our lifetimes, but eventually it'll be like <i>The Jetsons</i>: robot players playing football. And maybe Adalius Thomas will make it to practice on time.

Anything that gets as big and bloated as the NFL will eventually deflate (ha, ha). It's like a balloon that keeps getting helium pumped into it and eventually pops when it gets too big.

The cracks in the foundation start with the kids. If parents don't allow their kids to play football, there goes your future players. If more adult players quit early so they can still retain their faculties, your talent pool shrinks. What makes football appealing to people are the big hits. Will that continue if the rules keep changing or guilt sets in, watching this Roman Colosseum of gladiatorial combat?

Already the quality of football is watered down. How many games this year were unwatchable? Used to be that you could watch a game not involving your team and get some enjoyment out of it, but now it's most likely a snoozefest.

Goodell and the front office unwittingly has inserted their lying lies into the public consciousness. People don't care about the Patriots but if they've read even a fraction of Deflategate articles, they know that it was a big con job. Now when it involves an issue they might care about, they're conditioned not to believe Goodell and his rich cronies.

Maybe the NFL will never come down, but empires rise and fall all the time.

The NFL will never fail.

It is the penultimate gambling vehicle.


Just like cigarettes never died, the league will settle yet again for 10s of BILLIONS and come up with some rock solid liability waiver ( think idiot label on the pack of cigs ) and carry on business as usual.

These players predominantly come from conditions and environments most of us could never fathom. The allure of the payday vs dieing in a street gun fight is far too strong.

Roger will lie. He'll be the owners flak vest. He'll earn his money.

Carry on.

 

[Darth Despot]

Congress has gotten involved...

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...ervention-into-selection-of-brain-researcher/

Burn, baby, burn!

If it takes a liar to know a liar then Roger and Congress should be like long lost lovers.

 

[DeflatedFan]

If it takes a liar to know a liar then Roger and Congress should be like long lost lovers.

Should be a dizzying display of double talk!

 

[Hawg73]

If I'm an NFL executive or owner now and I have approximately half a brain then I'm going to do the following:

I'm going to plan for a future that doesn't include NFL football and try to delay the dissolution of the sport, because this pandora is never going to get back in the box. What Roger and Co. is doing is yawningly predictable. Delay, obfuscate, deny. Try to hold onto the udders as long as you can and milk with both hands.

All you need to do is look at the parents holding their kids out of youth football and that is exactly what has begun to happen all across the country.

Now, do you think those parents are going to relent when the kid is in High School? I doubt it. Maybe a few, but the feeder program is going to dry up in a little over a decade.

I'm not saying there will be zero professional football, but the glory days will be way back in the rearview mirror. The stigma of brain trauma, and the "gladiator" effect, may actually enhance it's popularity with a small percentage of viewers or fans, but once this train really gets rolling the general public won't want to support it and the economics of the sport will collapse.

We're still at the beginning of the end, but you'll know that shit is really looking dire when owners attempt to unload their franchises to see if a sucker is going to give them "market" value and they can get out of the valley before the dam lets loose.

I've felt this way since I first saw the documentary on Dr. Bennett Omalu and his study of CTE on PBS and realized that his conclusions were inescapable. Football players get scrambled brains. Virtually all of them (no, not kickers. Jesus). I only played a couple of years, but I might have CTE. It is just a matter of time before Roger's Kingdom unravels with a tidal wave of lawsuits and public condemnation and the whole thing crashes through the floorboards.

I could ramble on for quite a while with speculation of how all that may occur, but I'll save that for another time.

I am fine with continuing to watch the sport and have decided that I'll just try to ride this thing into the ground. As long as the players know and there is zero reason for any of them not to today. I don't want to watch people ruin themselves for my amusement unless they consent. I may change my mind in time, but that's how I view the situation. Right now, that stuff is sort of percolating in the back of my mind as I continue to follow the Pats.

I give it fifteen years before football is a novelty sport played for an audience of about 5% of what it is now. Said sport will have all the ambiance of an XFL game crossed with the movie Rollerball.

The only way my doomsday prophecy will not happen is if somehow, and there are efforts underway as we speak, new helmets and methods of preventing concussion/heavy impacts are miraculously successful. The physics of brain injury suggest that will not be easy to accomplish, if not impossible, but there is a lot riding on somebody coming up with something substantive.

 

[DeflatedFan]

One small quibble with your post Hawg73...

Since the NFL has spent the last 20 years denying and obfuscating, including disrupting, delaying, and misrepresenting research, nobody really knows the true dangers of playing football with regards to head trauma. So, the players can't really know the full extent of the dangers. They may know there is a connection, but not necessarily the extent.

 

[Darth Despot]

Hawg, I can imagine an event where your scenario plays out over a much quicker time frame.

Imagine were all watching a game when we see on of those hits that makes you cringe and hold your breath. The player goes limp even before he hits the ground. After a long delay he's rushed to a hospital but the doctors are unable to revive him.

Similar scenes played out on High School fields last season. The difference is we were not all watching.

After that, trying to delay, deny and obfuscate will not be possible, and if they try to it will not be tolerated.

This thing could whimper out, but it could also blow up.

 

[bideau]

One small quibble with your post Hawg73...

Since the NFL has spent the last 20 years denying and obfuscating, including disrupting, delaying, and misrepresenting research, nobody really knows the true dangers of playing football with regards to head trauma. So, the players can't really know the full extent of the dangers. They may know there is a connection, but not necessarily the extent.

That is changing quickly. The NFL can't prevent ex-players from donating their bodies to science, which we're seeing in increasing numbers (Kevin Turner, Junior Seau for two). The horse has left the barn and the NFL cannot close the door at this point.

The research is building and parents are noticing.

To take Hawg's opinion further, we'll start to see this in all contact sports including hockey and the fighting sports. We've already seen boxing diminished greatly in the past 20 years. The NHL has recognized the risks of concussion for much longer than the NFL, but there's only so much that can be done.

Sports as we know is beginning to evolve and will be very different in 20 years.

 

[Dwight Schrute]

Hawg, I can imagine an event where your scenario plays out over a much quicker time frame.

Imagine were all watching a game when we see on of those hits that makes you cringe and hold your breath. The player goes limp even before he hits the ground. After a long delay he's rushed to a hospital but the doctors are unable to revive him.

Similar scenes played out on High School fields last season. The difference is we were not all watching.

After that, trying to delay, deny and obfuscate will not be possible, and if they try to it will not be tolerated.

This thing could whimper out, but it could also blow up.

Like in the NHL?

Or boxing?

Or NASCAR?

Deaths in all. Still playing on.

 

[mooseontheloose]

Like in the NHL?

Or boxing?

Or NASCAR?

Deaths in all. Still playing on.

I think the big difference is that the dangers are well understood and the sporting bodies work to limit their frequency and severity. Participants aren't misled.

Conversely, the NFL has worked very hard to hide the dangers of concussions from players and everyone else to protect their cash cow. I would think that really increases its liability and potential negligence for courts and the general public compared to the others you mentioned.

 

[patswin]

I have a hunch Jerrah Jones will be found to be a key player in this debacle. Just a funny feeling no more no less. Id love to see him hung out to dry.
I'm starting to think he has a lot to do with the Pats getting boned by the league too.

 

[Roberto71]

I have a hunch Jerrah Jones will be found to be a key player in this debacle. Just a funny feeling no more no less. Id love to see him hung out to dry.
I'm starting to think he has a lot to do with the Pats getting boned by the league too.

What the LA decision made clear was the fact that Jones is the power centre of the league now. He was the one who manoeuvred the decision for LA when it seemed a certainty that the Carson project would win. Jones is a money man and had Goodell and on his side and appealed to the greed of the other owners that the Inglewood site would be almost a NFL theme park with new HQs for the NFL network and all NFL media.

He outmanoeuvred Kraft and many of the other older owners like Richardson who supported Carson.

He has the image of a bungling Arkansas moron, but behind closed doors he's ruthless and the greediest of the lot of them. No doubt he was in Roger's ear about DG. He's an evil p**ck.

 

[patswin]

What the LA decision made clear was the fact that Jones is the power centre of the league now. He was the one who manoeuvred the decision for LA when it seemed a certainty that the Carson project would win. Jones is a money man and had Goodell and on his side and appealed to the greed of the other owners that the Inglewood site would be almost a NFL theme park with new HQs for the NFL network and all NFL media.

He outmanoeuvred Kraft and many of the other older owners like Richardson who supported Carson.

He has the image of a bungling Arkansas moron, but behind closed doors he's ruthless and the greediest of the lot of them. No doubt he was in Roger's ear about DG. He's an evil p**ck.

All of which would make him eating a shit sandwich in all of this more than awesome. Let's see what happens!

 

[Roberto71]

And the funniest thing is, he's f**ked the Cowboys for 20 years now. Their fans hate him more than anyone.

 

[Hawg73]

One small quibble with your post Hawg73...

Since the NFL has spent the last 20 years denying and obfuscating, including disrupting, delaying, and misrepresenting research, nobody really knows the true dangers of playing football with regards to head trauma. So, the players can't really know the full extent of the dangers. They may know there is a connection, but not necessarily the extent.

Actually, you are 100% wrong about that.

Dr. Bennett Omalu, the BU research team, maybe a million people that watched the PBS special, a few million more that watched the Will Smith movie version and everybody involved with the NFL directly and a lot of folks who have read about the matter fully realize that almost every brain studied so far shows definitive evidence of CTE. It was something like 68 out of 69 the last time I heard the stats and CTE is not a common diagnosis at all, much less better than 98% of a study group coming up positive.

Saying that these guys don't know the "full extent" is slightly true, since nobody can effectively examine their brains for CTE while they are still alive, but given the extremely negative facts that are all over the news they fvcking well SHOULD understand that they are all going to have to deal with the effects of the disease in one way or another.

 

[PatsFanLisa]

Actually, you are 100% wrong about that.

Dr. Bennett Omalu, the BU research team, maybe a million people that watched the PBS special, a few million more that watched the Will Smith movie version and everybody involved with the NFL directly and a lot of folks who have read about the matter fully realize that almost every brain studied so far shows definitive evidence of CTE. It was something like 68 out of 69 the last time I heard the stats and CTE is not a common diagnosis at all, much less better than 98% of a study group coming up positive.

Saying that these guys don't know the "full extent" is slightly true, since nobody can effectively examine their brains for CTE while they are still alive, but given the extremely negative facts that are all over the news they fvcking well SHOULD understand that they are all going to have to deal with the effects of the disease in one way or another.

Only a buffoon wouldn't understand that there is a corrolation between head trauma and brain disease, psychological and neurological debilitation, and a whole shitpot of other residual effects of getting your head hit repeatedly, whether it's been proven scientifically or not...and it has.

 

[Hawg73]

I have a hunch Jerrah Jones will be found to be a key player in this debacle. Just a funny feeling no more no less. Id love to see him hung out to dry.
I'm starting to think he has a lot to do with the Pats getting boned by the league too.

You're catching on about Jones. He's been stabbing Bob Kraft in the back all along even while pretending to be his good buddy. He's a fvcking drunken snake and I'm glad my filter is still functional or I'd get really graphic.

I also forgot to mention that Texas will be the last outpost of football as we know it. It might never actually die there even if they have to do it in secret like "fight club".

Jerrah will be dead by then, but there'll be plenty of sumbitches down there who think football is more important than life as it is, so who cares if some good 'ole boy has hisself a skull full of scrambled eggs? Let him be some kinda dang male cheerleader if he don't want to end up wearing a drool bucket and pass me a Lone Star. Make it a case.

God, guns and football and not necessarily in that order.

 

[Hawg73]

Like in the NHL?

Or boxing?

Or NASCAR?

Deaths in all. Still playing on.

A solid point, although we'll have to see how hockey stacks up when it gets studied in a comprehensive way. I'll admit I don't know what has been done so far as that goes, but I heard on sports talk radio that it's been done and it's bad.

Boxing is probably worse than football, but.....you're right. Still fighting. This one really made me think that maybe I'm dead wrong about all of it.

NASCAR has deaths, but those guys have a far greater chance of getting decapitated than to get CTE from repeated trauma. That one is a bit different.