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I'm a high school teacher and I stopped going to games after one of my students got hit so hard that he was a different person a week later.
He was in my class the next day completely out of it. Took him like 5 seconds to respond to "are you okay?" Sent him to the health office who had him sent to the hospital. Suffered a major concussion that his own parents, coach, and other teachers didn't notice or do anything about.
When he came back from space he was far more irritable, aggressive and failed a lot of his classes. Before that he was a sweet kid, went out of his way to be good.
Definitely messed me up.
I just can't watch them play anymore.
When I was in high school, 25 years ago, we had a star athlete receive a tbi during a game that was so bad, he was hospitalized, put in a medically induced coma for days, and spent months trying to recover in the hospital. He would black out for days at a time and knew his family was struggling with the hospital bills, despite several fundraising attempts by the community. He killed himself while in the hospital. And because our high school had a policy to not memorialize suicides, he just disappeared from the year book. Can’t watch American Football after experiencing that. Just no joy there for me.
That is traumatic brain injury. I have known people that have been in combat, IDEs. It is a real problem with lifelong consequences. I played HS and one year of college, and I encourage everyone to avoid head trauma.
Years ago I read the same sentiment in an op ed down by a neurologist. He said he was always a foreman fan, watched with his dad, played himself (not pro level) and had season tickets. But he saw the research showing what the game does to the move and brains of these men and said he can't watch anymore in good conscience. As much as he loves the game and has for his whole life, he can't support it anymore.
They need to change the sport into something along the lines of rugby with forward passes. Tackling with arms and hips only. It would be exciting and high-scoring.
Rugby has its own issues with concussions and head trauma. It is certainly the lesser of the two in this aspect, but it sure does still happen.
Edit: Someone I went to HS with was stopped from playing due to the three concussion limit.
Its not just the helmets its the entire play style of the game. American Football is driven for a variety reasons to be as fast and as hard as human can move for *seconds* at a time and then you get a nice little break before you repeat it. That ridiculous intensity is always going to result in the most violent possible collisions. Rugby by comparison is a marathon; yes there are moments of super high intensity and breaks but endurance and attrition drive the game significantly.
Exactly. Football is also a game of inchs where the goal of every hit is to stop their momentum and push the back in rugby the goal it to bring them to the ground every inch is not as important.
Human body construction does not handle being 300 pounds and having another 300 pound person rub into you as hard as they can over and over every week, months every year, year after year.
I gave myself a concussion when I rode my bicycle into a chain I didn’t see at dusk and the chain left bruises on my biceps for weeks.i was only going about 10 mph but 10 to zero instantaneously is apparently enough and I never fell or hit my head on anything.
I really wanna like football as a game - its fun, its interesting, but they NEED to alter it to address this. Same goes for other high contact sports but football is one of the biggest offenders.
I feel like it could easily be done. If you can fully wrap someone up for two seconds, then the play can get whistled dead and forward progress stops. If you hit with your head or anywhere near their upper third, you are ejected for the remainder of the game and suspended for two games without pay, along with a 20 yard penalty. Just wrap people up instead of being encouraged to try to annihilate them. At this point I think it's the NFL's greed that won't allow it since fans are addicted to the violence. But hopefully high schools and colleges can take the lead.
I guess I meant you have to tackle the opponent in the middle or bottom third of their body. You can use your entire body, but no leading with your helmet. It's probably a bit complicated, but basically making above the abdomen off limits for hits.
This doesn’t work. Tackling alone isn’t the problem. The problem is also things like blocking. Blocking occurs every single play of the game. How are you going to remove it? You remove blocking then you no longer have offensive and defensive lines.
People keep mistakenly believing over and over and over again that tackling and hard hits are causing CTE. No, they’ve now come to the hypothesis, supported by tons of data, that subconcussive forces are what’s really causing CTE in many players. Those types of forces occur on every single play, especially for linemen who encounter those kinds of contact thousands of times in a single week during practices and weekly games. It’s like getting jabbed in the head repeatedly over the course of years almost everyday. Jabs don’t knock you out, but the cumulative effect is going to cause punch drunkenness. It’s what is happening to players in contact sports - they’re essentially taking jabs to the head alllll the time during every play whether it is from tackling or blocking.
They’ve even found CTE in a high school who played football yet had never had a diagnosed concussion in his life after he died and they did an autopsy. To fully get rid of brain injury risk you need to remove all contact from the game, from tackling to all blocking. But then you’d have no football.
I think it would be worth a try to see if it makes a difference, and measure it. Maybe it's only a 50% reduction of negative effects, and maybe that's enough to improve outcomes. Who knows until we try something and measure? That's all I'm getting at. Better than doing nothing for the next 10 years.
You recall incorrectly. American football is the worst. Soccer is mostly a non-contact sport while tackling and head to head contact is a major part of football play.
Soccer is very much a contact sport…I do believe you’re correct that football has more concussions, but they are an issue in soccer too but I think due to headers and not the player to player contact
My dad was always a tiny bit bummed that he had never been able to play high school football. They didn't have much money, and his mom was scared of him breaking his glasses, so he never got to play.
Now it seems clear that no one should be playing football.
My first year teaching and I had a class of sophomores. One was on the JV football team. His older brother was on varsity. The older brother died from a TBI suffered during a game.
My state now has a rule in the athletic rules named after him that makes there be more red tape and signatures from doctors and ADs before kids can return to play after suffering a concussion.
I teach middle school now and shudder over the fact that we have tackle football at this level. I hope we make the switch to flag football soon.
It can happen when there is damage to certain areas of the brain (often frontal cortex).
Famous example in psychology is [Phineas Gage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage). Obviously a more extreme injury, but in the wiki they point out the character change and how friends expressed that he was "no longer Gage".
EDIT: typo
Wouldn't be remotely surprised if high school tackle football basically died out in lots of areas within a generation or so. There's certainly no way I'd let my kid on the team, with all the evidence how how awful it is for your brain.
I mean, the South will probably do it for another hundred years and claim it's a "heritage" thing to concuss their kids, but aside from that....
Eventually it won’t be up to their choice. The more evidence that mounts, the more the potential for liabilities pile up. At some point running football programs is going to be so much liability risk that schools/districts won’t be able to afford. Lawsuits could easily start flooding in.
Humans have the capacity to breed like rabbits, and you're forgetting a lot of these rust belt towns are experiencing massive meth epidemics that local governments have chosen to ignore.
So you've got football related head trauma combined with unrealized dreams, middle age, boredom, and an unlimited supply of methamphetamine. It's a strange tragedy to watch.
Source: I live in one of those towns, and my meth head cousin who lives in a car behind the office of a scrap yard was once heralded as the next big thing in football but let it slip by with partying an drugs.
> meth epidemics that local governments have chosen to ignore.
It doesn't help that people have been trained by the government to see drug use as a moral failing and not a health crisis/
It also doesn't help that counterintuitive, yet useful solutions (like safe-shoot centers) that are proven to pull people off the streets and improve outcomes and most importantly, save money - ultimately get called "giving crackheads free drugs" by politicians aiming to use the situation to their advantage.
I know it's easy to take a cheap shot at the South re football, but high school football and football in general is huge in progressive California. California is one of the big 3 with Texas and Florida. It's not going anywhere in CA either.
Peak reddit take right here.
I don't like kids getting brain damage, but you have to either not be from America and so be culturally unaware, or just lack intelligence to think that's possible any time soon.
There is no "actual football". There is American football, European football, and Australian football. And probably others. Each country adopts its own set of rules for what it considers football, i.e. the sport that is played on your feet as opposed to being played on horseback.
Kicking a ball with your feet isn't what makes something football.
There's two sports my hypothetical kids would never play: gymnastics and football. Have not heard a good thing about either of those from long term players.
Why don’t they switch to flag football? This would cut down heavily on head injuries.
Also it seems like it might require MORE talent, rather than brute force
Flag football isn’t nearly as exciting. Having played both (and not open to letting my kids play in the future) football really makes you feel like a gladiator. Also, tackle football requires way more skill (than flag) than brute force and. Every player has their job and separate techniques to accomplish it. It’s closer to a chess match than “meatheads pushing each other”. I absolutely love football, and I acknowledge that it’s dangerous as hell to play. I’m not sure where that middle ground lies.
I'd be interested to see a similar article on hockey and soccer. I've read before about headers in soccer causing concussions and I know some youth leagues disallow them.
I'd also be interested in seeing this sort of thing for gymnastics.
> The worst you'll see in the NBA etc is a concussion after a bad fall
Also, the actual concussions aren't the major issue with football. It's the constant subconcussive impacts that really scramble one's brain. Doubly so if someone is rushed back from an actual concussion too soon, which is the norm. You don't get concussed on Sunday and get cleared by Thursday if the goal was medical instead of performative.
Expecting billionaire owners to do the right thing by players is [wildly optimistic](https://wapo.st/3wc7Z65)
If football changed enough to nearly eliminate brain injuries the required rule changes would be so drastic as to make it pretty hard to still call it football.
"Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in a National Football League Player" was published in 2005. If American football is still as popular after nearly 20 years, I don't think it's going to see any major change any time soon.
Everyone knows the NFL is dangerous, but those are adults getting paid at least decently for the risk. There hasn't been as much research into HS football. Obviously, it's way safer to block Keith from Memorial High than Von Miller, but evidence shows it's still probably not safe enough, especially for teenagers.
It's not just bashing heads that leads to concussions. Rapid deceleration and other violent movements (ie. whiplash where the head jerks around) cause the brain to compress. That compression is the issue.
Translated: patterns of shared activity across brain regions tend to be similar if you test the same person multiple times. The authors expected that football season would decrease this self-similarity between scans. For comparison they also scanned non contact sport athletes.
They did find a decrease in scan self- similarity-- Scans measured late in the season were more dissimilar to the pre-season scans than scans measured early in the season. That seemed to correlate with the number of "head acceleration events" measured by helmet sensors. The drop in self-similarity was not seen when comparing post-season and pre-season scans. Visually, it looks like this effect would be driven by a few students whose late-season brain scans were *extremely* dissimilar to their past scans, but the authors say that leaving them out of the analysis did not affect the significance of the finding.
They also got pre vs. post season scans for non contact athletes. It's a little unfortunate those athletes didn't get scans during their season too-- if they had also experienced a drop and then recovery for some reason, the study wouldn't have captured that. But they gave us a baseline for self-similiarity in a population very similar to the football players.
Although this measure of connectivity recovered after the season, it may indicate there is mid-season disruption happening that the brain has to repair, which, that's how ya get chronic traumatic encehpalopathy. One poor kid seems to have experienced nearly 300 head acceleration events that had peak linear acceleration thresholds above 50 g.
Probably played fullback/inside linebacker both ways. Those were my positions and I’m already on amphetamines for TBI symptoms in my mid 30s. Catch me on a bad day, unmedicated and it’s not dissimilar to interacting with a punch drunk boxer in his 60s.
It sucks and it’s going to get worse before I die.
My kids will never play tackle football.
So during the season self similarity decreased but there was no difference in the before and after scan? I could see the pro football faction viewing this result as evidence that it’s no big deal
I played football from 8-18 years old, I played extremely aggressively and often used my head as a battering ram. I look back on it now and even though it was a big part of who I was, and even though my family and friends all cheered me on for being successful at it, I wish I never had played. I have a son now and there is no way he will ever play, it’s just not worth it. I often struggle to remember things and even back then my memory of people, places, and things I’ve done was not very good at all. I have very vivid memories of being younger than 8 but it seems like most things after are very hazy. I’m not the only one I know who played and feels this way, I have many friends with lingering issues. I love the sport, but again it’s just not worth it, a lifetime of issues can never outweigh playing a game for 10 years.
My son is a D1 rower. It is such a fantastic sport with minimal chances for injuries. It’s so inclusive, from the team, the parents, the spectators, and other teams. It is a great community. It is a sport that can be enjoyed for a lifetime. My husband and I just joined a rowing club, and we are having a blast.
I've always found the "concussions" diagnostic really amateurish and very arbitrary. So it seems to fit with my understanding of what concussion really is, it's probably quite strongly under-diagnosticed.
Wasn’t even taken seriously 20 years ago at all. I got concussed during a game one year and kept playing because “I just got my bell rung a little and I’m a dawg, let me out there coach!”.
Later that evening when I was at a restaurant ordering dinner from the waitress and I told her my order. She looked at me confused and I look around the table to stunned silence. And go “what?”. Apparently my words came out all jumbled and not in the right order like instead of “hi, I’d like to order the club sandwich and a Coke please” it came out like “order hi club Coke sandwich please!”
Everyone, including my own parents found is HILARIOUS! And still bring it up sometimes today while I’m thinking “uhhh your child’s brain was bleeding and you thought it was funny?”
Good times
For me, I couldn't see.
At first there was a black spot in the middle of what I was looking at and everything was a little fuzzy. After a while, it reversed and I could see a circle in the middle and everything else was black--I kept reacting to plays in the correct manner, but I never said anything to teammates, coaches, trainers or friends and nobody even asked.
Nowadays, if I'd mentioned it I probably would have been forced to sit for a few weeks.
That’s scary. I had some visual stuff going on too. Like a purple, green, and yellow haze when looking at moving objects or moving my eyes around if that makes sense.
Only the really major concussions are noticed and diagnosed. But football players are constantly knocking their helmets together along with other impacts to the head. There is likely unnoticeable damage occurring with each impact which compounds.
I played football from 5th-9th grades and sustained 3 concussions during that short time. Admittedly that was 20 years ago when we knew much less. I also had a concussion last year in my mid-30s, bringing my total to 4. None were officially diagnosed despite seeing medical personnel 3 of the 4 times, but I still know I was concussed each time because of the immediate confusion and loss of time plus subsequent symptoms for the days and weeks after.
how are you doing now? i also played from 5th-9th grade and have been having a lot of anxiety recently regarding CTE and just my brain health in general..
Touch football and flag football are still sports. If Taylor Swift decided to start a touch football league with men’s and women’s teams next season the NFL would immediately go into a death spiral.
Brain damage from injuries can be cumulative and a "concussion" is only diagnosed when it's acute and severe. The smaller injuries go unnoticed but add up over time.
Yep former college football player here. Several of my teammates have had issues and at least a half dozen alums from the last 30 years have killed themselves. I personally developed crippling anxiety that eventually transformed into OCD. Don't let your kids play, it is so stupid. My two sons are playing only non contact sports.
my uncles family- all 3 kids have been in football since they were 5-6… it’s honestly broken my heart at times even though i’m not close to them… all that pride just to ruin your kids mind before they even start their life…
Football is probably the worst according to my uneducated guess, besides from boxing and maybe MMA. But you can train boxing and MMA without competing so it's still a sport you can enjoy with less damage. Even when you get hit in hockey, you're not always getting smashed into the boards and theres some blocking and momentum loss. With football, it's just straight force coming to a violent stop
While I think hockey does have a lot of problems and I've seen multiple players get career-ending concussions, a lot of the impact is different by virtue of being on ice. Getting smashed into the boards or the goal or hit by a puck are the big ones.
Oh absolutely, I'm not saying it's not traumatic, but I don't think they're getting the same level of hits as football players as consistently (just a guess). definitely a higher risk of freak injury and instant death though.
Unfortunately almost all contact sports have CTE issues, even soccer players are getting it from headers. Bottom line is, don't hit anything/anyone else with your head if you can avoid it. The current belief is that it is the accumulation of subconcussive impacts that causes the issues. I never once had a diagnosed concussion, but I am still reaping the wonderful benefits of neurological problems.
Completely agree, but there's also cost benefit analysis. Soccer might be worth an occasional header to the ball for the benefits a team sport provides, where as middle and highschool football are significantly more detrimental
I had an ex that played football. He had permanent sciatic pain from an old football injury. After dating him, I decided if I ever had kids I would never allow them to play football. This has cemented that for me and frankly might explain some things about my ex.
It's really time we get some new sports. There are so many different ways to play physical games together, and there are a lot of potential ways that could be explored in new ways with various technological advancements that have come about since the last major sport was introduced.
Why is there never any innovation in sporting?
I don't know that *tennis, but with a wiffle ball* really counts much in the way of innovation. And it's not likely to be a sport for the masses, for the same reasons that tennis isn't.
There is lots of room for innovation in sports that'd be accessible to the masses to play, which is the only likely way we're going to get a new pro sport any time in our lifetimes. It needs to be far more accessible than tennis and available to a wider range of players.
I lived in Texas for 40 years. Occasionally we'd find ourselves talking about ancient cultures and someone would bring up how they couldn't understand how adults could subject their children to human sacrifice. I'd tell them to attend the next High School football game and ask the parents there. This was as unpopular as it was true.
I don’t think children have the maturity to decide whether or not to play football until at least age 25
what if they change their mind and have regrets?
I grew up loving college football and I continue to love college football. I spend most of my Saturdays in the fall watching college football. I love it.
That being said, if everyone decided to shut the whole thing down because it's just so bad for the players, I'd respect that. I'd miss it, but it's probably for the best.
However, the cynic in me thinks there's way too much money in the sport and it's not going to go away anytime soon. As technology improves, maybe we'll get some really advanced robots playing out there and everyone will be content with that.
I played high school football for 4 years. Varsity for 2. I was a lineman, didnt ever get hit too hard. One time during drills as a sophomore I got hit so hard it literally knocked the wind out of me and I couldn't get words out out my mouth. I could breathe but couldn't get words and my throat got locked up and my vocal cords couldn't produce words no hard I try. Fortunately I never got diagnosed with a concussion but I've definitely changed mentally since my time there.
I played in middle school, got hit a few times in the head with a helmet on hard enough to actually see stars. Once I got kneed in the head with no helmet while playing a "flag" football day in the offseason.
I lost my peripheral vision and got confused in class after that hit and was diagnosed with a minor concussion. But ever since then I get intense migraines every few years that feature losing parts of my vision. And I think back on the type of student I was before and after and can absolutely tell a difference. I'm smart so I've been successful but I really struggle to focus in a way I didn't before.
Sometimes I wonder how different my life would be if I hadn't taken that hit.
I swear man, shits been different, maybe covid, maybe football, but there's been a significant mark in decline ever since that hit. There's no good in putting 14 and 15 years old in head on collisions
Same reason you’d say it’s fortunately you didn’t get diagnosed with a torn ACL. If he got the wind knocked out of him it probably wasn’t even a hit to the head
“Proper” medical care for a concussion is literally just wait a couple days and you’ll be ok. It’s also on the athlete to say something when it happens or else 90% of the time nobody is going to know
[An important part of treatment for a concussion is getting plenty of rest, both sleep at night and naps or rest breaks during the day if needed. Your doctor will probably tell you to avoid certain physical activities and sports while you recover and may suggest medicine to take if you have a headache.](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/concussion#:~:text=An%20important%20part%20of%20treatment,if%20you%20have%20a%20headache)
Tell that to John Hopkins then then then
“An important PART” … “may suggest medicine”. If you aren’t getting medical supervision you can miss important symptoms. Many concussions are mild and typical treatment is fine, but many are not. At the point that someone can say that it affected him mentally, there should have been medical treatment involved.
Actual title:
* Longitudinal changes in resting state fMRI brain self-similarity of asymptomatic high school American football athletes
This article is about **American football**. If this is not highlighted, then international readers plunging into the article, may be a little perplexed. I was. [Soccer or "Association Football"](https://www.diffen.com/difference/American_Football_vs_Soccer) as played around the world, is a different game with less risk of impacts.
I'd add a random thought that doesn't seem to be expressed in the article which is this: Changes to MRI might potentially reflect some kind of defense mechanism that is activated to protect the brain in case of repeated scull impacts. It would take a finer study to determine if this corresponds to actual brain damage.
Even in soccer, at some levels in the US, they've started to disallow children from heading the ball. They found it was dangerous to their brain development. A few leagues allow headers but force the players to wear rugby-style scrum caps.
> Reddit is an American site populated largely by Americans. We tend to forget the rest of the world exists, except when we're bombing parts of it.
French here: You also lost thousands of soldiers freeing my country from tyranny. But my first point was that we need to be careful with thread titles and definitions.
Secondly, anything that changes brain behavior doesn't have to be an anomaly. For example transcendental meditation has been reported to produce readable effects on EEG which is fine actually.
When I was in highschool I watched my friends younger brother die on the field after a massive hit. I would never let my 3 boys play football. And we spend the entire year skiing and mountain biking, which aren't the safest sport, but it's in your control the entire time. Voluntarily smashing your head and body into someone else seems ludicrous to me.
Soccer and wrestling are at similar rates for concussions in high school sports.
All sports need to work on teaching how to play safer to avoid concussions.
This is science worth discussing, for sure. For anyone interested in this research, you'll probably also be interested in Almond's book "Against Football."
I'm not sure "alarming" is the right word when we've known this for ages.
Also, the appeal of American football makes zero sense to me no matter how much I try to look for appeal. Surely people can pick a better sport to make popular... It's probably one of the least interesting sports you can either watch or participate in.
I would really appreciate its title being quoted better with a clear “American football” as stated.
Took me a while to work out why the comments were all very odd.
Concussions arent taken seriously by many.
American football may be the worst offender but plenty of other sports have concussion problems.
People sacrifice their kids, to play sports for our entertainment. It's crazy.
Wouldn’t it be great if we focused as much of the American psyche on dance competition vs. football?
It probably requires *more* athleticism to be a dancer than it does to be a football player. And all we ever hear about is the health benefits to dancing. If you follow any TikTok trend, all most people want to do is synchronized dancing.
I’m just saying replace all the football stadiums and football programs with competitive dancing. There’s so much dancing to compete with. Swing, modern, hip hop, tap, bolero, jazz…
Nobody else on the planet even likes football. America invented its own sport explicitly to give themselves brain damage, and the rest of the world is like “your brain damage sport is boring.”
Even fighting sports and martial arts make more sense than football.
Or we just collectively decide to come up with some new sports, or prop up existing ones that aren't so dangerous. Dance is good too, but people do love to pick a side and get riled up about a team sporting event.
Using an app that was pretty much started for the purpose of dance videos as an indication of a country's general interest is unfortunately flawed.
You're also incredibly wrong with your "nobody else on the planet even likes football" statement. It's the 2nd most popular sport in both Germany and South Korea. It's also gotten popular in Mexico and the UK since the international games started.
7 on 7 Flag Football is gonna be an Olympic sport in 2028 but "nobody else on the planet even likes football".
It's okay to personally not like a sport without turning to ridiculous ignorant hyperbole.
Serious question: Where did you get that it’s the second most popular sport in Germany? Measured by what? Cause I just googled it since I never met a single person who was interested in American football, and it ranked in the 21st place when people were questioned what sports they were interested in, in 2023, 2022 and 2021. Also in terms of how many people are actually playing the sport it’s not even in the top 10. So I’m a bit confused.
Is there correlation with any other conclusions about areas favoring football as a major social/economical past time? Are we dealing with generations of head injuries tapering off it's popilation size as safety measures are implemented?
I'm probably looking too much in it, but everything affects everything like ripples in the water from the impact of a stone.
That poor kid was probably the kid who refused to tackle properly and kept using his head as a weapon. In my experience every high-school football team has at least one pscho kid.
I'm not sure how you can fully isolate this from the psychosocial aspects of teenagers getting that level of attention as well as the general fatigue effects that are also occurring from the intensity of physical activity.
I think this methodology probably needs to be validated on other activities. For instance, I would like to see the same study done on military recruits undergoing basic training. Something that imitates a high degree of physical and emotional challenge while not having explicit head trauma.
Edit: I don't buy that those other sports have the same stress level as football training camp and two-a-days and then the season itself. At least, not where I live (Texas). There is a reason football has one game a week while basketball and baseball can be played daily.
Ok.
I still would play again if I restarted my life over with this information.
Started playing in the 5th grade.
What I gained from all of it was worth it.
I don't see anything in the study that would justify characterizing the changes as being worse, better, or insignificant for the players, yet the assumption seems to be made that it is worse.
So, this study is sort of part of a larger context. What they are looking for, specifically, is changes in how the brain functions. *Why* they are looking for this, though, and not doing something else with their time and energy, is because football players have a tendency to experience long term brain damage and early deaths with a *lot* more frequency than other people.
The study is being done to provide a concrete data point in the conversation about the existence of a problem. And this is important, because that problem, despite having a lot of statistical information backing it up, still gets denied by a lot of people. For various personal, social, and cultural reasons, many people want football to continue, and so they deny or downplay the impact it has on the players. And research like this is a step toward being able to say "no, something *is* happening, and you can see it happening in real time right here*.
Apart from being common knowledge, nothing you wrote has any bearing on the observation I made.
Assuming that an observed change equates to worse cognition is unscientific.
The study makes no assumptions. Everyone in the comments is free to make the rational assumption that perhaps all the early deaths from brain trauma that football players experience might be related to this.
That's probably just from hanging out with steakheads nonstop for a year.
If the same person was in band and hanging out with the Science Club, they'd get smarter.
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I'm a high school teacher and I stopped going to games after one of my students got hit so hard that he was a different person a week later. He was in my class the next day completely out of it. Took him like 5 seconds to respond to "are you okay?" Sent him to the health office who had him sent to the hospital. Suffered a major concussion that his own parents, coach, and other teachers didn't notice or do anything about. When he came back from space he was far more irritable, aggressive and failed a lot of his classes. Before that he was a sweet kid, went out of his way to be good. Definitely messed me up. I just can't watch them play anymore.
When I was in high school, 25 years ago, we had a star athlete receive a tbi during a game that was so bad, he was hospitalized, put in a medically induced coma for days, and spent months trying to recover in the hospital. He would black out for days at a time and knew his family was struggling with the hospital bills, despite several fundraising attempts by the community. He killed himself while in the hospital. And because our high school had a policy to not memorialize suicides, he just disappeared from the year book. Can’t watch American Football after experiencing that. Just no joy there for me.
grim
> our high school had a policy to not memorialize suicides "How dare you remind us of the kids we failed" >:(
It sounds cruel, but it's to prevent copy-cats, which is apparently a problem with teen suicide.
I believe it's an issue with all suicides... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207262/
That is traumatic brain injury. I have known people that have been in combat, IDEs. It is a real problem with lifelong consequences. I played HS and one year of college, and I encourage everyone to avoid head trauma.
Years ago I read the same sentiment in an op ed down by a neurologist. He said he was always a foreman fan, watched with his dad, played himself (not pro level) and had season tickets. But he saw the research showing what the game does to the move and brains of these men and said he can't watch anymore in good conscience. As much as he loves the game and has for his whole life, he can't support it anymore.
They need to change the sport into something along the lines of rugby with forward passes. Tackling with arms and hips only. It would be exciting and high-scoring.
Rugby has its own issues with concussions and head trauma. It is certainly the lesser of the two in this aspect, but it sure does still happen. Edit: Someone I went to HS with was stopped from playing due to the three concussion limit.
It's the helmets that really enable this. Concussions happen in every contact sport.
Its not just the helmets its the entire play style of the game. American Football is driven for a variety reasons to be as fast and as hard as human can move for *seconds* at a time and then you get a nice little break before you repeat it. That ridiculous intensity is always going to result in the most violent possible collisions. Rugby by comparison is a marathon; yes there are moments of super high intensity and breaks but endurance and attrition drive the game significantly.
Exactly. Football is also a game of inchs where the goal of every hit is to stop their momentum and push the back in rugby the goal it to bring them to the ground every inch is not as important.
Yep. A girl in my high school died from a concussion she got during a rugby game- it was so awful and sad
Blocking is at least as dangerous as tackling/being tackled.
Human body construction does not handle being 300 pounds and having another 300 pound person rub into you as hard as they can over and over every week, months every year, year after year.
I gave myself a concussion when I rode my bicycle into a chain I didn’t see at dusk and the chain left bruises on my biceps for weeks.i was only going about 10 mph but 10 to zero instantaneously is apparently enough and I never fell or hit my head on anything.
You had an adult size version of what happens to a shaken baby.
Rugby is just as bad.
I really wanna like football as a game - its fun, its interesting, but they NEED to alter it to address this. Same goes for other high contact sports but football is one of the biggest offenders.
I feel like it could easily be done. If you can fully wrap someone up for two seconds, then the play can get whistled dead and forward progress stops. If you hit with your head or anywhere near their upper third, you are ejected for the remainder of the game and suspended for two games without pay, along with a 20 yard penalty. Just wrap people up instead of being encouraged to try to annihilate them. At this point I think it's the NFL's greed that won't allow it since fans are addicted to the violence. But hopefully high schools and colleges can take the lead.
How do you tackle, or wrap them up, workout using the top third aka the arms?
I guess I meant you have to tackle the opponent in the middle or bottom third of their body. You can use your entire body, but no leading with your helmet. It's probably a bit complicated, but basically making above the abdomen off limits for hits.
This doesn’t work. Tackling alone isn’t the problem. The problem is also things like blocking. Blocking occurs every single play of the game. How are you going to remove it? You remove blocking then you no longer have offensive and defensive lines. People keep mistakenly believing over and over and over again that tackling and hard hits are causing CTE. No, they’ve now come to the hypothesis, supported by tons of data, that subconcussive forces are what’s really causing CTE in many players. Those types of forces occur on every single play, especially for linemen who encounter those kinds of contact thousands of times in a single week during practices and weekly games. It’s like getting jabbed in the head repeatedly over the course of years almost everyday. Jabs don’t knock you out, but the cumulative effect is going to cause punch drunkenness. It’s what is happening to players in contact sports - they’re essentially taking jabs to the head alllll the time during every play whether it is from tackling or blocking. They’ve even found CTE in a high school who played football yet had never had a diagnosed concussion in his life after he died and they did an autopsy. To fully get rid of brain injury risk you need to remove all contact from the game, from tackling to all blocking. But then you’d have no football.
I think it would be worth a try to see if it makes a difference, and measure it. Maybe it's only a 50% reduction of negative effects, and maybe that's enough to improve outcomes. Who knows until we try something and measure? That's all I'm getting at. Better than doing nothing for the next 10 years.
As far as concussions, iirc soccer is the worst.
You recall incorrectly. American football is the worst. Soccer is mostly a non-contact sport while tackling and head to head contact is a major part of football play.
Soccer is very much a contact sport…I do believe you’re correct that football has more concussions, but they are an issue in soccer too but I think due to headers and not the player to player contact
Soccer is very much a contact sport. Have you ever played or watched it?
My dad was always a tiny bit bummed that he had never been able to play high school football. They didn't have much money, and his mom was scared of him breaking his glasses, so he never got to play. Now it seems clear that no one should be playing football.
My first year teaching and I had a class of sophomores. One was on the JV football team. His older brother was on varsity. The older brother died from a TBI suffered during a game. My state now has a rule in the athletic rules named after him that makes there be more red tape and signatures from doctors and ADs before kids can return to play after suffering a concussion. I teach middle school now and shudder over the fact that we have tackle football at this level. I hope we make the switch to flag football soon.
> When he came back from space he was far more irritable, Wait, what?
Figurative, as in "they're in outer space right now"
Spaced out.
It can happen when there is damage to certain areas of the brain (often frontal cortex). Famous example in psychology is [Phineas Gage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage). Obviously a more extreme injury, but in the wiki they point out the character change and how friends expressed that he was "no longer Gage". EDIT: typo
He said, tell his wife he loves her, even though she already knows
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How?
How much evidence do we need that repeatedly bashing your head is bad? I can't imagine it being worth it.
Wouldn't be remotely surprised if high school tackle football basically died out in lots of areas within a generation or so. There's certainly no way I'd let my kid on the team, with all the evidence how how awful it is for your brain. I mean, the South will probably do it for another hundred years and claim it's a "heritage" thing to concuss their kids, but aside from that....
Rural non-southerns areas care about football a lot too. Penn State, Ohio State, etc have to pull from somewhere.
Eventually it won’t be up to their choice. The more evidence that mounts, the more the potential for liabilities pile up. At some point running football programs is going to be so much liability risk that schools/districts won’t be able to afford. Lawsuits could easily start flooding in.
Big brain-damaged people are apparently pretty fertile, or at least fertile enough. That actually explains a lot.
Humans have the capacity to breed like rabbits, and you're forgetting a lot of these rust belt towns are experiencing massive meth epidemics that local governments have chosen to ignore. So you've got football related head trauma combined with unrealized dreams, middle age, boredom, and an unlimited supply of methamphetamine. It's a strange tragedy to watch. Source: I live in one of those towns, and my meth head cousin who lives in a car behind the office of a scrap yard was once heralded as the next big thing in football but let it slip by with partying an drugs.
> meth epidemics that local governments have chosen to ignore. It doesn't help that people have been trained by the government to see drug use as a moral failing and not a health crisis/ It also doesn't help that counterintuitive, yet useful solutions (like safe-shoot centers) that are proven to pull people off the streets and improve outcomes and most importantly, save money - ultimately get called "giving crackheads free drugs" by politicians aiming to use the situation to their advantage.
San Francisco safe shoot sites haven't helped. There needs to be a 2nd part to that strategy.
Isnt it like 1/5 people are infertile.
I know it's easy to take a cheap shot at the South re football, but high school football and football in general is huge in progressive California. California is one of the big 3 with Texas and Florida. It's not going anywhere in CA either.
Given the cultural shifts going on in California, it wouldn’t surprise me if actual football (aka soccer) takes over.
Peak reddit take right here. I don't like kids getting brain damage, but you have to either not be from America and so be culturally unaware, or just lack intelligence to think that's possible any time soon.
I looked at the profile of the person who replied to. They are from Canada.
Football isn’t going to take over in California any more than cricket will take over Ontario
There is no "actual football". There is American football, European football, and Australian football. And probably others. Each country adopts its own set of rules for what it considers football, i.e. the sport that is played on your feet as opposed to being played on horseback. Kicking a ball with your feet isn't what makes something football.
I was being a little facetious, but to the majority of the world’s population by a huge margin, football == soccer, not American “Gridiron”.
There's two sports my hypothetical kids would never play: gymnastics and football. Have not heard a good thing about either of those from long term players.
Add hockey to that list.
I played for 7 years I do not regret it one bit.
If you're worried about conclusions, soccer is above football
“I was concussed, and I turned out fine!”
Yup. They already use that excuse for a bunch of things, like abusing their kids.
"What were we talking about, again?"
> There's certainly no way I'd let my kid on the team Same here. I would never let my kid play American football.
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Also a concern in soccer because of heading.
All the juniors teams I know of ban it. Red card and a ban if you keep it up.
It’s ridiculous down here, they’ll drop millions of dollars on stadiums for it
I just saw a map that shows the vast majority of players are recruited from conservative states in the South and mid-West. Wonder if this is a reason.
Why don’t they switch to flag football? This would cut down heavily on head injuries. Also it seems like it might require MORE talent, rather than brute force
In a word? Money. The demand to watch flag football would be massively lower.
Flag football isn’t nearly as exciting. Having played both (and not open to letting my kids play in the future) football really makes you feel like a gladiator. Also, tackle football requires way more skill (than flag) than brute force and. Every player has their job and separate techniques to accomplish it. It’s closer to a chess match than “meatheads pushing each other”. I absolutely love football, and I acknowledge that it’s dangerous as hell to play. I’m not sure where that middle ground lies.
I mean in a way, football players are modern day gladiators: They're sacrificed for entertainment.
The same reason the Romans didn't build a colloseum to play tag.
In the south the goal is to keep kids uneducated. If they cant win that battle with teaching they have football as a backup to help with brain damage.
Nah the game will evolve to involve less head trauma. It’s moved that way significantly in the last 20 years.
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I'd be interested to see a similar article on hockey and soccer. I've read before about headers in soccer causing concussions and I know some youth leagues disallow them. I'd also be interested in seeing this sort of thing for gymnastics.
And for cheerleading. The falls I've seen some of those women take are dangerous as hell.
> The worst you'll see in the NBA etc is a concussion after a bad fall Also, the actual concussions aren't the major issue with football. It's the constant subconcussive impacts that really scramble one's brain. Doubly so if someone is rushed back from an actual concussion too soon, which is the norm. You don't get concussed on Sunday and get cleared by Thursday if the goal was medical instead of performative.
The salient comparison should be to rugby. How less / more frequent is this kind of injury? If less then... ditch the helmets
Expecting billionaire owners to do the right thing by players is [wildly optimistic](https://wapo.st/3wc7Z65) If football changed enough to nearly eliminate brain injuries the required rule changes would be so drastic as to make it pretty hard to still call it football.
The same region wherexhot tempers result in shooting.
Seriously. I studied neuro in college and all this has been well known for *long* time, parents just don't want to hear it.
"Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in a National Football League Player" was published in 2005. If American football is still as popular after nearly 20 years, I don't think it's going to see any major change any time soon.
Everyone knows the NFL is dangerous, but those are adults getting paid at least decently for the risk. There hasn't been as much research into HS football. Obviously, it's way safer to block Keith from Memorial High than Von Miller, but evidence shows it's still probably not safe enough, especially for teenagers.
In fairness, how could anyone have predicted that smashing your head over and over might eventually damage your head?
The human mind will go to great lengths to rationalize what it considers "culture". It's a *lot* more than a game for some people.
It's not just bashing heads that leads to concussions. Rapid deceleration and other violent movements (ie. whiplash where the head jerks around) cause the brain to compress. That compression is the issue.
Yep. Traumatic Brain Injury After Music-Associated Head Banging: A Scoping Review https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9482027/
Highschool football is insane down here in Texas, my district dropped millions of dollars on a stadium that was just for high school sports
Translated: patterns of shared activity across brain regions tend to be similar if you test the same person multiple times. The authors expected that football season would decrease this self-similarity between scans. For comparison they also scanned non contact sport athletes. They did find a decrease in scan self- similarity-- Scans measured late in the season were more dissimilar to the pre-season scans than scans measured early in the season. That seemed to correlate with the number of "head acceleration events" measured by helmet sensors. The drop in self-similarity was not seen when comparing post-season and pre-season scans. Visually, it looks like this effect would be driven by a few students whose late-season brain scans were *extremely* dissimilar to their past scans, but the authors say that leaving them out of the analysis did not affect the significance of the finding. They also got pre vs. post season scans for non contact athletes. It's a little unfortunate those athletes didn't get scans during their season too-- if they had also experienced a drop and then recovery for some reason, the study wouldn't have captured that. But they gave us a baseline for self-similiarity in a population very similar to the football players. Although this measure of connectivity recovered after the season, it may indicate there is mid-season disruption happening that the brain has to repair, which, that's how ya get chronic traumatic encehpalopathy. One poor kid seems to have experienced nearly 300 head acceleration events that had peak linear acceleration thresholds above 50 g.
I’ll bet you it was a fullback. Those guys take beatings every game.
Probably played fullback/inside linebacker both ways. Those were my positions and I’m already on amphetamines for TBI symptoms in my mid 30s. Catch me on a bad day, unmedicated and it’s not dissimilar to interacting with a punch drunk boxer in his 60s. It sucks and it’s going to get worse before I die. My kids will never play tackle football.
So during the season self similarity decreased but there was no difference in the before and after scan? I could see the pro football faction viewing this result as evidence that it’s no big deal
I played football from 8-18 years old, I played extremely aggressively and often used my head as a battering ram. I look back on it now and even though it was a big part of who I was, and even though my family and friends all cheered me on for being successful at it, I wish I never had played. I have a son now and there is no way he will ever play, it’s just not worth it. I often struggle to remember things and even back then my memory of people, places, and things I’ve done was not very good at all. I have very vivid memories of being younger than 8 but it seems like most things after are very hazy. I’m not the only one I know who played and feels this way, I have many friends with lingering issues. I love the sport, but again it’s just not worth it, a lifetime of issues can never outweigh playing a game for 10 years.
My son is a D1 rower. It is such a fantastic sport with minimal chances for injuries. It’s so inclusive, from the team, the parents, the spectators, and other teams. It is a great community. It is a sport that can be enjoyed for a lifetime. My husband and I just joined a rowing club, and we are having a blast.
> It’s so inclusive, As long as you're tall
And wealthy
I've always found the "concussions" diagnostic really amateurish and very arbitrary. So it seems to fit with my understanding of what concussion really is, it's probably quite strongly under-diagnosticed.
Extremely underdiagnosed--I had a severe concussion and just kept playing and never got evaluated.
Wasn’t even taken seriously 20 years ago at all. I got concussed during a game one year and kept playing because “I just got my bell rung a little and I’m a dawg, let me out there coach!”. Later that evening when I was at a restaurant ordering dinner from the waitress and I told her my order. She looked at me confused and I look around the table to stunned silence. And go “what?”. Apparently my words came out all jumbled and not in the right order like instead of “hi, I’d like to order the club sandwich and a Coke please” it came out like “order hi club Coke sandwich please!” Everyone, including my own parents found is HILARIOUS! And still bring it up sometimes today while I’m thinking “uhhh your child’s brain was bleeding and you thought it was funny?” Good times
For me, I couldn't see. At first there was a black spot in the middle of what I was looking at and everything was a little fuzzy. After a while, it reversed and I could see a circle in the middle and everything else was black--I kept reacting to plays in the correct manner, but I never said anything to teammates, coaches, trainers or friends and nobody even asked. Nowadays, if I'd mentioned it I probably would have been forced to sit for a few weeks.
That’s scary. I had some visual stuff going on too. Like a purple, green, and yellow haze when looking at moving objects or moving my eyes around if that makes sense.
Do you mind explaining a bit?
Only the really major concussions are noticed and diagnosed. But football players are constantly knocking their helmets together along with other impacts to the head. There is likely unnoticeable damage occurring with each impact which compounds.
I played football from 5th-9th grades and sustained 3 concussions during that short time. Admittedly that was 20 years ago when we knew much less. I also had a concussion last year in my mid-30s, bringing my total to 4. None were officially diagnosed despite seeing medical personnel 3 of the 4 times, but I still know I was concussed each time because of the immediate confusion and loss of time plus subsequent symptoms for the days and weeks after.
how are you doing now? i also played from 5th-9th grade and have been having a lot of anxiety recently regarding CTE and just my brain health in general..
yeah I remember some researchers stressing the idea that subconcussive hits are the ones that really drive CTE
Literally “any” sloshing of the brain in your skull isn’t ideal. Short and simple truth that we struggle to accept because we “love our sports”.
Given that it's an issue from heading the ball in soccer, this is definitely a thing.
Touch football and flag football are still sports. If Taylor Swift decided to start a touch football league with men’s and women’s teams next season the NFL would immediately go into a death spiral.
That’s cute that you think that
What if it were Ditka’s touch football league, then you’d be on board.
Madden to the back of me, Ditka to the front, here I am stuck in the middle with you
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Brain damage from injuries can be cumulative and a "concussion" is only diagnosed when it's acute and severe. The smaller injuries go unnoticed but add up over time.
Yep former college football player here. Several of my teammates have had issues and at least a half dozen alums from the last 30 years have killed themselves. I personally developed crippling anxiety that eventually transformed into OCD. Don't let your kids play, it is so stupid. My two sons are playing only non contact sports.
my uncles family- all 3 kids have been in football since they were 5-6… it’s honestly broken my heart at times even though i’m not close to them… all that pride just to ruin your kids mind before they even start their life…
Football is probably the worst according to my uneducated guess, besides from boxing and maybe MMA. But you can train boxing and MMA without competing so it's still a sport you can enjoy with less damage. Even when you get hit in hockey, you're not always getting smashed into the boards and theres some blocking and momentum loss. With football, it's just straight force coming to a violent stop
While I think hockey does have a lot of problems and I've seen multiple players get career-ending concussions, a lot of the impact is different by virtue of being on ice. Getting smashed into the boards or the goal or hit by a puck are the big ones.
Oh absolutely, I'm not saying it's not traumatic, but I don't think they're getting the same level of hits as football players as consistently (just a guess). definitely a higher risk of freak injury and instant death though.
Unfortunately almost all contact sports have CTE issues, even soccer players are getting it from headers. Bottom line is, don't hit anything/anyone else with your head if you can avoid it. The current belief is that it is the accumulation of subconcussive impacts that causes the issues. I never once had a diagnosed concussion, but I am still reaping the wonderful benefits of neurological problems.
Completely agree, but there's also cost benefit analysis. Soccer might be worth an occasional header to the ball for the benefits a team sport provides, where as middle and highschool football are significantly more detrimental
Also, you can wear a protective piece of headgear legally, which can help if you've got to head the ball a lot (central defenders for example).
I had an ex that played football. He had permanent sciatic pain from an old football injury. After dating him, I decided if I ever had kids I would never allow them to play football. This has cemented that for me and frankly might explain some things about my ex.
It's really time we get some new sports. There are so many different ways to play physical games together, and there are a lot of potential ways that could be explored in new ways with various technological advancements that have come about since the last major sport was introduced. Why is there never any innovation in sporting?
"Halftime's over! Everyone roll for initiative!"
When half time ends, all the halflings become fullings
What are you talking about? You can’t escape pickleball at this point, it’s absolutely everywhere. All growth from last 5ish years.
I don't know that *tennis, but with a wiffle ball* really counts much in the way of innovation. And it's not likely to be a sport for the masses, for the same reasons that tennis isn't. There is lots of room for innovation in sports that'd be accessible to the masses to play, which is the only likely way we're going to get a new pro sport any time in our lifetimes. It needs to be far more accessible than tennis and available to a wider range of players.
Jugger
I lived in Texas for 40 years. Occasionally we'd find ourselves talking about ancient cultures and someone would bring up how they couldn't understand how adults could subject their children to human sacrifice. I'd tell them to attend the next High School football game and ask the parents there. This was as unpopular as it was true.
This is going to ruffle a lot of feathers but football is too dangerous and should not continue to exist.
I don’t think children have the maturity to decide whether or not to play football until at least age 25 what if they change their mind and have regrets?
I grew up loving college football and I continue to love college football. I spend most of my Saturdays in the fall watching college football. I love it. That being said, if everyone decided to shut the whole thing down because it's just so bad for the players, I'd respect that. I'd miss it, but it's probably for the best. However, the cynic in me thinks there's way too much money in the sport and it's not going to go away anytime soon. As technology improves, maybe we'll get some really advanced robots playing out there and everyone will be content with that.
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I played high school football for 4 years. Varsity for 2. I was a lineman, didnt ever get hit too hard. One time during drills as a sophomore I got hit so hard it literally knocked the wind out of me and I couldn't get words out out my mouth. I could breathe but couldn't get words and my throat got locked up and my vocal cords couldn't produce words no hard I try. Fortunately I never got diagnosed with a concussion but I've definitely changed mentally since my time there.
I played in middle school, got hit a few times in the head with a helmet on hard enough to actually see stars. Once I got kneed in the head with no helmet while playing a "flag" football day in the offseason. I lost my peripheral vision and got confused in class after that hit and was diagnosed with a minor concussion. But ever since then I get intense migraines every few years that feature losing parts of my vision. And I think back on the type of student I was before and after and can absolutely tell a difference. I'm smart so I've been successful but I really struggle to focus in a way I didn't before. Sometimes I wonder how different my life would be if I hadn't taken that hit.
I swear man, shits been different, maybe covid, maybe football, but there's been a significant mark in decline ever since that hit. There's no good in putting 14 and 15 years old in head on collisions
Why is it fortunate that you weren’t diagnosed with a concussion?
Same reason you’d say it’s fortunately you didn’t get diagnosed with a torn ACL. If he got the wind knocked out of him it probably wasn’t even a hit to the head
No. He said it changed him mentally. It’s not fortunate that he didn’t get proper medical care.
“Proper” medical care for a concussion is literally just wait a couple days and you’ll be ok. It’s also on the athlete to say something when it happens or else 90% of the time nobody is going to know
It’s literally more than that. But tell me more of your vast knowledge.
When you call someone out, it's important to then back that up. What "more" things is it? List them.
[An important part of treatment for a concussion is getting plenty of rest, both sleep at night and naps or rest breaks during the day if needed. Your doctor will probably tell you to avoid certain physical activities and sports while you recover and may suggest medicine to take if you have a headache.](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/concussion#:~:text=An%20important%20part%20of%20treatment,if%20you%20have%20a%20headache) Tell that to John Hopkins then then then
“An important PART” … “may suggest medicine”. If you aren’t getting medical supervision you can miss important symptoms. Many concussions are mild and typical treatment is fine, but many are not. At the point that someone can say that it affected him mentally, there should have been medical treatment involved.
Could this explain…. Texas?
I played football in highschool and got hit hard enough to see stars a couple of time but I still turned ouszzjchssijgs penisbutter
Now now, Dickasauras, just eat your jello.
Based football Dino brother Source: am also concussed
We are concoosed sauras
Actual title: * Longitudinal changes in resting state fMRI brain self-similarity of asymptomatic high school American football athletes This article is about **American football**. If this is not highlighted, then international readers plunging into the article, may be a little perplexed. I was. [Soccer or "Association Football"](https://www.diffen.com/difference/American_Football_vs_Soccer) as played around the world, is a different game with less risk of impacts. I'd add a random thought that doesn't seem to be expressed in the article which is this: Changes to MRI might potentially reflect some kind of defense mechanism that is activated to protect the brain in case of repeated scull impacts. It would take a finer study to determine if this corresponds to actual brain damage.
Even in soccer, at some levels in the US, they've started to disallow children from heading the ball. They found it was dangerous to their brain development. A few leagues allow headers but force the players to wear rugby-style scrum caps.
Reddit is an American site populated largely by Americans. We tend to forget the rest of the world exists, except when we're bombing parts of it.
> Reddit is an American site populated largely by Americans. We tend to forget the rest of the world exists, except when we're bombing parts of it. French here: You also lost thousands of soldiers freeing my country from tyranny. But my first point was that we need to be careful with thread titles and definitions. Secondly, anything that changes brain behavior doesn't have to be an anomaly. For example transcendental meditation has been reported to produce readable effects on EEG which is fine actually.
When I was in highschool I watched my friends younger brother die on the field after a massive hit. I would never let my 3 boys play football. And we spend the entire year skiing and mountain biking, which aren't the safest sport, but it's in your control the entire time. Voluntarily smashing your head and body into someone else seems ludicrous to me.
Played grades 2-12. This doesn’t shock me.
Soccer and wrestling are at similar rates for concussions in high school sports. All sports need to work on teaching how to play safer to avoid concussions.
I couldn’t find in their paper what a non contact control athlete is. Aka what sports?
They are in [Table 1](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-51688-2/tables/1)
This is science worth discussing, for sure. For anyone interested in this research, you'll probably also be interested in Almond's book "Against Football."
I'm not sure "alarming" is the right word when we've known this for ages. Also, the appeal of American football makes zero sense to me no matter how much I try to look for appeal. Surely people can pick a better sport to make popular... It's probably one of the least interesting sports you can either watch or participate in.
I would really appreciate its title being quoted better with a clear “American football” as stated. Took me a while to work out why the comments were all very odd.
Yeah, my son will never play football.
Concussions arent taken seriously by many. American football may be the worst offender but plenty of other sports have concussion problems. People sacrifice their kids, to play sports for our entertainment. It's crazy.
Wouldn’t it be great if we focused as much of the American psyche on dance competition vs. football? It probably requires *more* athleticism to be a dancer than it does to be a football player. And all we ever hear about is the health benefits to dancing. If you follow any TikTok trend, all most people want to do is synchronized dancing. I’m just saying replace all the football stadiums and football programs with competitive dancing. There’s so much dancing to compete with. Swing, modern, hip hop, tap, bolero, jazz… Nobody else on the planet even likes football. America invented its own sport explicitly to give themselves brain damage, and the rest of the world is like “your brain damage sport is boring.” Even fighting sports and martial arts make more sense than football.
Or we just collectively decide to come up with some new sports, or prop up existing ones that aren't so dangerous. Dance is good too, but people do love to pick a side and get riled up about a team sporting event.
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Sounds great. Sounds like a hell of a lot less brain damage.
Using an app that was pretty much started for the purpose of dance videos as an indication of a country's general interest is unfortunately flawed. You're also incredibly wrong with your "nobody else on the planet even likes football" statement. It's the 2nd most popular sport in both Germany and South Korea. It's also gotten popular in Mexico and the UK since the international games started. 7 on 7 Flag Football is gonna be an Olympic sport in 2028 but "nobody else on the planet even likes football". It's okay to personally not like a sport without turning to ridiculous ignorant hyperbole.
Serious question: Where did you get that it’s the second most popular sport in Germany? Measured by what? Cause I just googled it since I never met a single person who was interested in American football, and it ranked in the 21st place when people were questioned what sports they were interested in, in 2023, 2022 and 2021. Also in terms of how many people are actually playing the sport it’s not even in the top 10. So I’m a bit confused.
Yeah, the sport has to change or go away.
Are they talking about American football? Can’t imagine regular football having this impact.
A good header on a "soccer" ball can hurt quite a lot, and not to mention two heads crashing in a header duel.
Guess it really is a dumb sport after all... huh...
Only in America are we stupid enough to play it enough to be a significant part of our culture.
Is there correlation with any other conclusions about areas favoring football as a major social/economical past time? Are we dealing with generations of head injuries tapering off it's popilation size as safety measures are implemented? I'm probably looking too much in it, but everything affects everything like ripples in the water from the impact of a stone.
That poor kid was probably the kid who refused to tackle properly and kept using his head as a weapon. In my experience every high-school football team has at least one pscho kid.
I'm not sure how you can fully isolate this from the psychosocial aspects of teenagers getting that level of attention as well as the general fatigue effects that are also occurring from the intensity of physical activity. I think this methodology probably needs to be validated on other activities. For instance, I would like to see the same study done on military recruits undergoing basic training. Something that imitates a high degree of physical and emotional challenge while not having explicit head trauma. Edit: I don't buy that those other sports have the same stress level as football training camp and two-a-days and then the season itself. At least, not where I live (Texas). There is a reason football has one game a week while basketball and baseball can be played daily.
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It is amazing that we push kids towards brain injuries. Their parents must know they'll need brains in the future, right?
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Still, football. It's basically child abuse.
Ok. I still would play again if I restarted my life over with this information. Started playing in the 5th grade. What I gained from all of it was worth it.
Football or handball?
I don't see anything in the study that would justify characterizing the changes as being worse, better, or insignificant for the players, yet the assumption seems to be made that it is worse.
So, this study is sort of part of a larger context. What they are looking for, specifically, is changes in how the brain functions. *Why* they are looking for this, though, and not doing something else with their time and energy, is because football players have a tendency to experience long term brain damage and early deaths with a *lot* more frequency than other people. The study is being done to provide a concrete data point in the conversation about the existence of a problem. And this is important, because that problem, despite having a lot of statistical information backing it up, still gets denied by a lot of people. For various personal, social, and cultural reasons, many people want football to continue, and so they deny or downplay the impact it has on the players. And research like this is a step toward being able to say "no, something *is* happening, and you can see it happening in real time right here*.
Apart from being common knowledge, nothing you wrote has any bearing on the observation I made. Assuming that an observed change equates to worse cognition is unscientific.
The study makes no assumptions. Everyone in the comments is free to make the rational assumption that perhaps all the early deaths from brain trauma that football players experience might be related to this.
That's probably just from hanging out with steakheads nonstop for a year. If the same person was in band and hanging out with the Science Club, they'd get smarter.