Aaron Hernandez' Brain Had Severe CTE

[fluhartz]

1 hour ago, EliteTexan80 said:

You're basically printing money at this stage. 

yep

[JaguarCrazy2832]

20 hours ago, Thelonebillsfan said:

Brain damage like he sustained directly impacts impulse control. CTE didn't turn him into a monster, but it certainly removed a barrier and very likely was one of several causes.

A barrier that led him to kill?

Yes CTE here is something the NFL is worried about but I’m not giving him any slack

[Norm]

Urban Meyer SUPPOSEDLY said he would end up in the HOF or prison when he recruited him. That **** was online years before he was even drafted. 

That's all I can think anymore.

[Norm]

On 11/9/2017 at 10:36 PM, DontTazeMeBro said:

Didn’t he also do angel dust? Wasn’t he a thug in high school?

There's people who claim he killed people in HS....IIRC. This isn't after the fact ****. I read this when he was at UF. Not that any of that is true by any means. But it seemed like a warning sign to me. As a UF fan, it wasn't exactly a secret he was a POS.

[theJ]

On 11/9/2017 at 10:47 PM, incognito_man said:

true. In fact, I'd suspect the NFL would be the last level to be affected by this.

The first pins to fall are going to be academic-driven universities (think IVY league). I wonder how long it is until the first one disbands its football program citing CTE as a driving reason.

The first pins are already falling on the pop warner level.  Lots of lower level leagues are switching to flag.  They are in my area.

[theJ]

On 11/10/2017 at 3:42 AM, ChazStandard said:

AH was way too young to have symptoms of a degenerative disorder

Are you "certain" about that?  Seems you're throwing out the same declarations as the poster you quoted.

Fact is, we don't understand enough about it to say for sure.  But we do have a lot of corollary evidence.

[lancerman]

1 minute ago, theJ said:

The first pins are already falling on the pop warner level.  Lots of lower level leagues are switching to flag.  They are in my area.

And that's the problem. Because yes it is still okay to find talented athletes in high school who never played before, BUT the pool is smaller than the kids who grew up playing. And High School is where you are going to start seeing parents not sign off on their kids playing. Those two levels will be impacted the most. 

From there a greater onus will be on college coaches who can develop raw talent and then the NFL will have to make due with that. I think there's a chance that over the next 10-20 years you start seeing a quality dip across the board.

[lancerman]

On 11/10/2017 at 8:21 AM, Pats#1 said:

Like someone above stated, I think a huge step in this research will be testing brains of younger players like middle and high school students.

For that to happen though, the parents will have to okay their young child's body to be cut open and examined, which I don't even want to try and comprehend with a young son of my own about to be born. 

If, let's say, we do see younger players start to be tested after death, and they show CTE damage, that will be the straw that breaks the camels back IMO.

I think once you can test living people and they find a few high schoolers and middle schoolers with CTE that's game set and match. Nobody will be playing but the kids who have no choice, and that's assuming that their systems survive everyone else dropping off.

[theJ]

1 minute ago, lancerman said:

And that's the problem. Because yes it is still okay to find talented athletes in high school who never played before, BUT the pool is smaller than the kids who grew up playing. And High School is where you are going to start seeing parents not sign off on their kids playing. Those two levels will be impacted the most. 

From there a greater onus will be on college coaches who can develop raw talent and then the NFL will have to make due with that. I think there's a chance that over the next 10-20 years you start seeing a quality dip across the board.

To some degree, maybe.  I suspect that we'll see the biggest drop in participation among the more educated (read: higher income) crowd.  It may be some time yet before we see participation drop in lower income areas.  Barring legal intervention, if the evidence continues to mount.

[lancerman]

Just now, theJ said:

To some degree, maybe.  I suspect that we'll see the biggest drop in participation among the more educated (read: higher income) crowd.  It may be some time yet before we see participation drop in lower income areas.  Barring legal intervention, if the evidence continues to mount.

That still has a negative impact on the sport. Once white collar towns and divisions start dropping off in participation rate it's going to gut governing bodies and limit state championship tournaments. The sports going to get a stigma if it becomes a low income sport and eventually states are going to look at the optics of the poorer kids being the only ones smashing their heads together and they'll make a decision. Then you take into account that the fandom of the sport probably takes a dip when high school and college football become less popular. 

Realistically the NFL has a tough decision to make. I really would consider stripping down the protection players where so they can't go all out and heavily enforce penalties for anything but the most clean form tackling. 

[coors]

I feel bad that he had CTE.. most likely all from football.. but IMO, it doesn't give him a pass for anything that he did.

[Fatgerman]

Good news, bad news. Was talking with a PhD at University of Akron about the viability of harnessing magnetic repulsion to improve player safety equipment; the theory being to use strong magnets within the helmet and shoulder pads, so when two helmets, or a helmet and  shoulder-pad collide, the magnets being the same/equal  polarity, would repel each other, thus dramatically reducing the force of the blow. They're developing something similar for car suspension systems as an alternative to springs. 

Bad news: It occurred to me to see if anyone else had a similar idea for football safety as an answer for the CTE problem, and turns out, Pitt has been working on it for three plus years. So, I'm too late.

Good news, when their research has produced a viable product and goes to market, brain impacts from blows will be reduced, theoretically, by 80% . So, football is not heading for disaster as many, including myself, had feared.

[incognito_man]

2 minutes ago, Fatgerman said:

Good news, bad news. Was talking with a PhD at University of Akron about the viability of harnessing magnetic repulsion to improve player safety equipment; the theory being to use strong magnets within the helmet and shoulder pads, so when two helmets, or a helmet and  shoulder-pad collide, the magnets being the same/equal  polarity, would repel each other, thus dramatically reducing the force of the blow. They're developing something similar for car suspension systems as an alternative to springs. 

Bad news: It occurred to me to see if anyone else had a similar idea for football safety as an answer for the CTE problem, and turns out, Pitt has been working on it for three plus years. So, I'm too late.

Good news, when their research has produced a viable product and goes to market, brain impacts from blows will be reduced, theoretically, by 80% . So, football is not heading for disaster as many, including myself, had feared.

can't wait to see OBJ get his head stuck to the goalpost

[Fatgerman]

Just now, incognito_man said:

can't wait to see OBJ get his head stuck to the goalpost

Ha! Yeah, it's gonna take time to accommodate the infusion of the new equipment, the metal goalposts being a great example. Research will also have to be done to examine how the human brain will be affected by the magnets; with the central nervous system being basically an electrical impulse system. On the plus side, equipment will cost more, but not terribly. Commercial magnets or magnetic material, we estimated, would raise the price of a helmet or shoulder-pads by about $100.    

[ET80]

36 minutes ago, Fatgerman said:

Good news, bad news. Was talking with a PhD at University of Akron about the viability of harnessing magnetic repulsion to improve player safety equipment; the theory being to use strong magnets within the helmet and shoulder pads, so when two helmets, or a helmet and  shoulder-pad collide, the magnets being the same/equal  polarity, would repel each other, thus dramatically reducing the force of the blow. They're developing something similar for car suspension systems as an alternative to springs. 

Bad news: It occurred to me to see if anyone else had a similar idea for football safety as an answer for the CTE problem, and turns out, Pitt has been working on it for three plus years. So, I'm too late.

Good news, when their research has produced a viable product and goes to market, brain impacts from blows will be reduced, theoretically, by 80% . So, football is not heading for disaster as many, including myself, had feared.

Really interesting stuff here...