Frontline: League of Denial

Oh, good to know those party drugs I listed don't cause irreversible brain damage, much of which carries the same symtoms of CTE (even if they don't cause CTE, the symptoms overlap). It's also a relief to know that a bunch of dumb, ultra-wealthy jocks whose free time is an endless party aren't using these same party drugs (which I now know are harmless) in massive quantities. I gotta admit, now that you've cleared this all up, thinking that a major addict like Mike Webster's problems may have at least been partially atributed to his drug/alcohol abuse does seem pretty silly in retrospect.

You know that they've found CTE in high school kids right? Are they out poppin E and snorting cocaine on the weekends too? 

Bubble, I remember reading that about high school kids. I think you'll find fewer and fewer parents letting their kids play football in the future. Our neighbor's 12-year-old had a fairly severe concussion last year and now he's got migraines. Are they from the concussion? We don't know, but he doesn't play football any more.

 

As for Butkus? Some player (I think it was the book "Paper Lion") described being hit by Butkus as like being raked over, that he had a way of hitting that felt like it started at your toes and went all the way to your head. By the time Butkus was finished hitting you, your whole body hurt from bottom to top where with other guys it would hurt only where they hit you. I loved watching Butkus play, except when he played Green Bay of course! Sayers and Butkus were two of the all-time all-time greats.

Wow, looks like the problem here is rooted in reading comprehension. I never said that CTE was caused by drug use, just that the symptoms overlap. The guys with the worst neurological problems (Mike Webster, Andre Waters) also usually happened to be terrible addicts. Crazy to think that their problems may have been greatly increased by substance abuse, right?

Thanks Boris.

 

My oldest boy played football and I was fine with it until the facts started rolling in. I steered by two youngest boys away from football into soccer. Pretty sure that means they are gay.

The onset of CTE is shown to be minimally linked to a higher propensity to use drugs. 

 

Link 1

 

Link 2

 

So, yeah there's a relation between CTE and drug use. but the independent variable is not drug use, it's CTE. 

 

Every single ref, coach, and any other adult in an official capacity of any kind in this video should be banned from participating in school athletics for allowing that match to continue. Un freakin' believable.

It is un****ingbelievable to me FondDu

Maybe he watched too much Karate Kid before the tournament?

 

Anyway, yeah, youth football is surely going to take a hit when affluent/educated parents have their kids play something else. But "luckily" there are plenty of poor/uneducated people to fill the NFL.

 

Not the game itself.  Just the name "football".  The hands, arms,legs and head are also used.

This explains a lot...actually. Butkiss lover...LMAO.

 

FIB !

 

 

Tsssth...what is he a buttkisser or something?? Tss tss....

 

Believe it or not dipschit you can live 2 hours outside of Chicago and not be in Illinois. I know, amazing right?! Don't worry though I wont over tax your limited brain with a geography lesson. 

Saw an interesting article out of UCLA today

Several scientists have discovered a way to image the brains of living players to assess CTE

 

They developed a radioactive probe (FDDNP) that binds to the telltale Tau protein and is visible on a PET scan.

 

Small sample size, but all 5 of the former NFL players they scanned had highly elevated Tau protein in 2 areas of the brain linked to CTE in football players. Much more work to be done to validate the test, but if current players can be tested, how hard will the NFL owners work to keep it away ? And will NFLPA step up or shut up and keep cashing their checks ?

 

According to the article it would cost less than $ 10 Million to test all active players

The NFL was worried about testing everybody for HGH; this one would be the mother of soiled underwear at the Park Avenue HQ on the NFL

 

Amazing times we live in and its rather ironic that Troy Aikman who retired from the NFL due to concussions was one of the people who said the NFL won't be the top sport forever

 

IMO the NFL won't go away, it'll just change to be more like flag football. There's simply too much cash and too much interest for it to die altogether.

 

 

 

Instead of just players, they need to test people at large. As you said the sample size is small and if they test only football players what exactly does that say about the results?

Great question, and I wasn't clear - the department at UCLA that developed the test did so in an attempt to diagnose Alzheimer's in senior citizens (before it manifests in behavioral changes)

 

Its from the Geriatric Medicine Dept at UCLA, so the bulk of their testing is done on non- NFL players. The article says they get thousands of requests to run the test on patients, but they cannot accommodate them all,yet

And the currently accepted method for diagnosing CTE is still via autopsy, so this one has a ways to go before its fully validated.

 

Its still a really big breakthrough in this arena.

My guess is the league will continue to throw darts at the science, the same technique the NFLPA is currently using to drag their feet on HGH testing.

Obviously neither side wants to stop milking the cash cow

 

 

 

 

Had an interesting conversation last week with the Commissioner of a flag football league we play in

 

We asked him why he was willing to spend so much time building and running the league and his answer was that he and the High School coaches decided they needed to do something to thwart the dwindling numbers of kids interested in playing tackle football

 

Their plan is to fill the funnel with kids who loved football via flag, and then be able to recruit a percentage of them to play tackle. He said if we don't get the Mom's into football early and often, they'll choose lacrosse, soccer or other sports and never even give football a shot.

 

The youth leagues here are already seeing a drop off in kids trying out for tackle, one of the local Pop Warner leagues had at least 4 teams in each age division as recently as 3 years ago.

 

Now, they are having a hard time fielding one team in the older divisions. Unless a kid is really a superstar, parents are reluctant to put them in harms way

 

The Risk vs Reward equation is shifting. In the flag league we're in, they fielded 4 teams in our age group the first year, 8 teams last year and 14 teams this year -

 

Pretty amazing to see the seismic shift in SoCal football, and its only a matter of time before it happens across the rest of the country imo.

 

 

They have an AARP flag football league in SoCal?

 

Ha Ha !

 

I coach, the kids play... but an AARP league would be an absolute riot though...we'd have to wear the flags around our shoulders because the old farts can't bend far enough to pull the flags otherwise   

I was under the impression that most neuro scientists have expressed caution in using brain imaging for about any conclusions, not because the science isn't fascinating, just that we are in our infancy with understanding how the brain talks to itself. 

 

Some of the brain imagining on language reception for children with autism and neurotypical brains is fascinating.  The roadmaps are completely different. 

Well that's the problem.  They should be using gps.

 

No kiddin? That is interesting. Would love to find the reason Autism increased since the 70's. One person I know thinks it's too many ultrasounds.

Imaging and making conclusions about something as complex as language or Autism is still way beyond our grasp.

 

In the case of the CTE work at UCLA, they are looking for a specific marker protein called Tau and they can label it with a fluorescent dye and see if it shows up and where it shows up. The quantity of it can be measured and where it is localized can be seen on scans. That's much more rudimentary and within our current capabilities as I understand it.

 

They use the presence of the Tau protein as a confirmative test at autopsy and the ability to do it in still-living people is a huge leap forward. Still a long ways to go

 

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/porta...to-image-242445.aspx

 

If I were a player, I'd get scanned every year

 

Pants optional.  They've earned it.

Would love to find the reason Autism increased since the 70's.

I'm guessing it's a cumulative effect of a lot of things like the prevalence of plastics, chemicals in home products, chemicals in foods, additives in foods, and the constant crapping in our nest that has gone beyond insane in the last 50 years...  in short our worship of fossil fuels and everything they allow us to do.

 

I'm not looking to argue or cite anything.  It's what my fossil fuel (and A&D addled) brain is led to believe. 

Or, maybe just diagnosed more now?

 

Them's just the facts.

I have a sister with autism...and my dad's convinced it is a direct result of his exposure to Agent Orange while serving in Vietnam. Who knows?

Settlement

If we wanted to we couldn't throw our corpses in a land fill.  Average human has too many toxic levels of chemicals in it to be allowed by EPA.  They'd have to send Al into the sun.

Reports are they have 65 years to pay 1 bil to these players. Let's do some simple math. How many will actually see what they are entitled to by the time they're dead?

 

Ya, I'm sure there's plenty of high 5's going on at the exec offices

 

 

Read the book. As a Badger fan who saw Mike Webster play at Wisconsin, I was just appalled by the facts of his downfall. The science is solid, which is why denying it is called denial. Nope it isn't drugs or genetics. Its multiple head injuries. Are some more susceptible? Quite possibly. Did the NFL behave like Big Tobacco or the Catholic clergy? Yes it did. 

 

I'll never celebrate a big hit again. Its not entertaining to watch brain damage being inflicted. 

 

Personally. Fourth generation Packer fan, whose sons all player football. One had a concussion and missed three games his senior year. He would have gone right back on to the field if they had let him. And ten years earlier, they would have.

 

 Someone needs to be the expert, the doctor, the one who has the player's best interests at heart. It isn't the league. It often hasn't been the team doctors. 

 

The NFL will change drastically. Sooner rather than later. 

 

  

But who will push for this change?  The owners don't care; they just want to keep labor costs down.  The coaches don't care; they just want to win.  The current players don't care; they just want to keep their job.  

 

At the end of the day, one of those parties has to care and so far, they don't.  Only reason this has come to light is because of retired players but after this lawsuit is settled, retired players will never have a say in this again.  

 

I hope you're right, that the game will eventually change.  The reality is that the stakeholders that can change the game have shown the won't.  

 

Does Chris Borland care?

There also are really not enough ejections for hits to the head in the NFL as well.  They should be much more liberal with this.  Head injuries are a huge problem and it doesn't take a high velocity hit to cause them either.  Im actually halfway shocked we haven't seen a player die on field in a long while, i think 1971 was the last time?  Just this week a cricket player died of all things running into a teammate going for a ball.

 

The NFL has been tremendously lucky not to have something brutal happen on field in this day and age.  The tragedy of a death is bad enough, but the damage the sport will take because of it will likely be catastrophic - as well it should be - because frankly they have done the bare minimum in regards to safety.

 

1. antiquated helmets, mouthguards, you name it there is likely a better option.

2. players doped out of their skulls on HGH and more

3. players playing injured, going back on the field with bad injuries to win (i.e.: broken ribs, lacerated spleens, and more)

4. owners not investing in players safety while they are on the field as well as when they are out of the game

5. Unqualified Referees doing games.  These guys are mostly part-time dudes (getting paid around 200k).  Im not sold that full-time refs are the best option either, but I am convinced that half of them are probably in their positions due to the good ol' boys network.

OSHA does not seem to care.....what other industry would be able to go forward with the injury record of the NFL?   

Please tell me you forgot to add the tag and that you don't really want federal bureaucrats regulating professional sports leagues.  If you think Roger Goodell is bad, running the league by government bureaucrats or elected official grandstanding would be a thousand times worse.

Nope, do not want that, only wondering why in a industry where the employees are virtually assured of getting injured there seem to be no regulations concerning that. In a country that allows nothing it just seems odd 

King crab fishing is dangerous. Not only are you virtually assured of getting hurt, there's a good chance you're working with someone that's going to die on the job. 

 

I don't think we have to go any further than Jameis Winston walking out of a Publix with a bunch of crab leg's under his arm to tie everything together either.

 

Full circle.