Football and CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy)

[DonRocks]

Man, they're going to have to change the rules of football to include "no hitting above the chest" or something. If that sounds like nanny-monitoring, read on:

"All But One of the 111 Former Pro Football Players Had Brain Injury CTE in Study" by Nicole Van Groningen, MD on abcnews.com

I wonder if the one who didn't was a field-goal kicker.

As ironic as this sounds right now, I'm grateful to my parents for discouraging me from trying out for football in tenth grade. (I probably would have been the starting nosetackle or center on JV, which means I would have gotten my bell rung on a regular basis.)

When I was 8, we were on a cross-country trip. At a hotel swimming pool, I was having great fun going down the curving sliding board into the water, until the one time when the slide curved, but I didn't. I *cracked* my head on the side of the pool, before dropping into the water and being fished out by about five people, barely conscious. I remember two other head injuries that were this dramatic during my lifetime (both bicycle accidents - the first on the chin, the second on the eyebrow). Interestingly enough, I had several Grand Mal seizures within a year-or-so of that swimming pool accident, and was on anti-seizure medication for about five years. They stopped as soon as I started taking medication, and my EEGs all looked normal five years later, but to this day, I wonder if this so-called "childhood form of epilepsy" was a direct result of that conk on the head - the lump was about the size of a plum - and will come back to haunt me later in life.

[zgast]

1 hour ago, DonRocks said:

Man, they're going to have to change the rules of football to include "no hitting above the chest" or something. If that sounds like nanny-monitoring, read on:

"All But One of the 111 Former Pro Football Players Had Brain Injury CTE in Study" by Nicole Van Groningen, MD on abcnews.com

That article is petrifying.  It speaks to everything we don't know about brain injuries.  For example, what is the general rate of CTE in the population?  Clearly not 99%+, and the article indicates it's well below 9% as well.

So glad I steered clear of football, though.

[DonRocks]

59 minutes ago, zgast said:

That article is petrifying.  It speaks to everything we don't know about brain injuries.  For example, what is the general rate of CTE in the population?  Clearly not 99%+, and the article indicates it's well below 9% as well.

So glad I steered clear of football, though.

I went to college with William "The Refrigerator" Perry. I didn't know him or anything, but we crossed paths three days a week, him walking one way to class; me walking right past him going the other way. After a couple of years, I knew very well how big and strong he was. He was listed at about 6'2" 325 coming out of college (I'm just guessing); he was more like 5'11" 350. He was *huge*, immensely powerful - he could dunk a basketball backwards - and set the ACC record for leg press. 

He was, if not the first NFL 300-pound lineman, then one of the first, and 30 years later, people still remember him as if it were yesterday.

The amazing truth is that William Perry would be about *an average* NFL lineman in terms of size today. Most are over 300 pounds, and some are pushing 400 - a trendsetter, absolutely, but poor William isn't doing so well these days, and I fear for what the future has in store for current NFL linemen.  And it isn't just linemen.

I love football, and I love boxing as a pure sport, but people are just too strong now, and they're literally committing unintentional homicide, even if the death doesn't happen for another 30-40 years.

I don't know if anyone remembers this, but for the Chicago Bears, Perry blocked for Walter Payton on something like 2nd-and-goal at the 1-yard line. Payton got stopped short of the touchdown, but Perry literally picked him up and *threw him* into the end zone. It turns out that's illegal, but Perry had no idea - that's how strong he was.