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NFL Ends Partnership With NIH


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On 7/29/2017 at 10:56 AM, iPwn said:

Things like this make it harder and harder to justify being a fan of this sport. 

Meh. The shoes on your feet were put together by an 8 year old, the phone in your pocket was assembled in a building with suicide nets surrounding it.

I won't lose too much sleep if the current generation of football players make the decision to play football if they have a general understanding of the risks.

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41 minutes ago, cddolphin said:

the phone in your pocket was assembled in a building with suicide nets surrounding it.

Not that this much matters, but at a company with (even prior to the nets) lower suicide rates than the US as a whole, lower than their own national average, and lower than factory workers in the US as well.

But there’s certain things that you consume that you can control. You need a cell phone in this day and age. You need shoes. There’s only so much you can do to mitigate your negative impact in those ways.

You don’t need to watch a sports league that is attempting to hide the damage that the sport is causing its participants. If the NFL truly was trying to educate their players on the risks, and truly making efforts to make the game safer while acknowledging those risks, then that’s one thing. Acknowledging that people jump from your building occasionally and putting nets there in response is kinda a good thing. But the NFL isn’t doing that; they’re putting a net around part of the building, while trying to tell everyone that no one has ever jumped anyway. It’s hard to justify giving my attention to a league that refuses to acknowledge the known extent to which they are harming their employees, when there’s so many other sports that either do acknowledge it, or don’t have those kinds of risks. It’s a rough place to be in, because I love football. I just have a hard time reconciling my support with the knowledge that the NFL is trying to make their players go into harm’s way without the full knowledge of what that harm is.

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12 hours ago, showtime said:

 

The reason I bring up basketball is because as parents refuse to let their children play football due to health hazards, those kids will look for other sports to play and I am willing to bet they look more towards basketball, baseball and even maybe hockey before they give soccer a thought.

I will admit I was going to post something different until I came across these two charts (from: http://www.sportsmarketanalytics.com/Blog/July-2015/The-Millennials.aspx )

chart-1.aspx

I was going to say that soccer could easily overtake hockey due solely to requirements of an ice hockey rink (recurring maintenance costs for rinks are substantial). But I see that only soccer and ice hockey participation have increased from 2010 to 2014 for 18-34 year olds.

Chart-4.aspx

And the NHL is tied for the second highest frequent attenders of major sports for 18-34 year old. I would also point to the MLS have the second highest overall attendance numbers.

I don't buy that it could overtake the NFL in 20 years. But, I could see it making a move.

 

Honestly, it will depend on the USMNT's performance, and that will depend on US Soccer. Americans love winners, but the USMNT is handicapped by A) the rest of the world is MUCH better than us at soccer than we are, and B) poor management/development/scouting of talent.

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I coach youth flag football in SoCal and have had lots of interesting conversations with the local high school coaches

One of them runs the Flag League and I asked him why he spends so much time and effort on it. Its a huge undertaking

He said his plan is to have 1000 kids playing Flag in hopes of convincing 50 Mom's to play tackle - a 5 % conversion rate. He said otherwise, he doesn't have a team anymore. Freshman Football ( tackle) had 70-90 kids coming out every year, last year they had 33.

Flag Football is the future for youth/high school kids and that's part of why the NFL has invested so heavily in it-

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8 hours ago, cddolphin said:

Meh. The shoes on your feet were put together by an 8 year old, the phone in your pocket was assembled in a building with suicide nets surrounding it.

I won't lose too much sleep if the current generation of football players make the decision to play football if they have a general understanding of the risks.

Whataboutism has never been an adequate defense or reasoning to anything else that's got negative ramifications. "Things are worse everywhere and x was made through exploitation" doesn't mitigate that kids as young as 12 are risking permanent brain trauma over an entertainment product.

We shouldn't wave our hands and go "so what" simply because it's easier. We should always be looking for ways to mitigate the sports long term damage or, if we cannot or the leading body of the sport refuses too, no longer support that sport.

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34 minutes ago, Thelonebillsfan said:

Whataboutism has never been an adequate defense or reasoning to anything else that's got negative ramifications. "Things are worse everywhere and x was made through exploitation" doesn't mitigate that kids as young as 12 are risking permanent brain trauma over an entertainment product.

We shouldn't wave our hands and go "so what" simply because it's easier. We should always be looking for ways to mitigate the sports long term damage or, if we cannot or the leading body of the sport refuses too, no longer support that sport.

Fair points. My main thrust was that if there are risks about playing football that you can only minimize and not eliminate, I won't lose sleep over some athletes' pain for my 3 hours of viewing pleasure so long as the athletes being of sound mind willingly take the risks that come with it. I agree wholeheartedly that unbiased data collection should be a priority, and some of the NFL's significant resources should be put towards valid research.

For me personally the bigger ethical questions is allowing children to play football, especially when it comes to lower socio-economic areas where the sport is pushed on the youth so extremely it's almost viewed as the only way to "make it out". It's disgusting to see, and I went to highschool in a town like that. On the other hand, not allowing tackle football until college would be a terrible blow to product quality.

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45 minutes ago, cddolphin said:

My main thrust was that if there are risks about playing football that you can only minimize and not eliminate, I won't lose sleep over some athletes' pain for my 3 hours of viewing pleasure so long as the athletes being of sound mind willingly take the risks that come with it. I agree wholeheartedly that unbiased data collection should be a priority, and some of the NFL's significant resources should be put towards valid research.

Also agree with this. If the NFL were to come out in support of the research, acknowledge there are gross risks both known and unknown, and actually put effort towards mitigating some of the risks while exposing what some others are, at least for me, that makes my fandom a lot easier to justify.

As much as Dana himself is a goof, the way he’s taken the stance that the UFC is barbaric and that there carries a significant risk to fighters both known and unknown, it makes support of that a whole lot easier. They’re not trying to hide behind this veil of “things aren’t that bad,” and that at least makes it more palpatable, knowing the participants are given as much information on the risks as possible 

 

I’m not sure what the answer for youth football. I don’t know how you go about handling that, because it’s a bit different with informed consent when it comes to kids. But something, somehow needs to be done.

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My son will not play tackle football until hs...period.  I love football and i played in hs myself.  I sometimes have to wonder if my forgetfulness or misplacing of words is from getting older as i approach my 40s or if its a result of of 1000s of subconcussive hits.  I wont deny my son the opportunity that i had to play a sport i love when he is old enough to understand the risks and make an informed decision.  Thats a difficult task for a hs kid, but impossible for an 8-12 yo.  I will steer him towards other sports such as baseball and swimming

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On 8/3/2017 at 11:54 AM, Superman(DH23) said:

My son will not play tackle football until hs...period.

No kids for me, but if I have ever have any I'll probably do the same same. Although I wonder how prevalent concussions are in youth FB like Pop Warner Pee Wees and under leagues.

Those kids aren't moving all that fast or with a very much explosiveness. I'm sure concussions happen but I wouldn't be surprised if they weren't as common as middle school and up.

I'd be interested in those numbers, but from what I've seen there hasn't really been a study or a big enough one to care about.

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