Deion Sanders: Dangerously Ignorant.

The Nantz post derailed the discussion on this thread.

Mr. Nantz may be more "dangerously ignorant" than Mr. Sanders. By quite a wide margin.

 

"The majority of concussions resulted from participation in football (47.1%, n = 912), followed by girls’ soccer (8.2%, n = 159) ... "

So if we eliminate headers to reduce those 159 concussions, what do we eliminate to reduce those 912 in football? Tackling? Linemen firing off at each other and clashing helmets?

 

I say do nothing and leave the sports alone.

 

Tackling in the NFL has been almost nonexistent for a while now.

 

Why can't basketball players kick the ball?

 

We're all still learning on the fly. Thing is, I took - and still take - issue with anyone who just bleats that heading the ball needs to be banned.

There are bigger head-injury issues in sports, soccer in particular. Might there be a long-term issue with heading in enough accumulation? Perhaps. But again ... unless we salt away the sorts who did that over a period of many years, assume they did nothing else to trigger any sort of head trauma and studied them over decades, I question that we'll find anything terribly conclusive. Or anywhere near as ugly as some of the stuff we've seen with American football players who we're pretty certain used their helmets and/or suffered numerous concussions over their careers and lives.

I understand this is nebulous, and that could do nothing but chum the water. But, in a similar vein, just declaring that banning use of the head in soccer isn't terribly intelligent, either.

 

The key is banning the damaging stuff before high school. I'm a broken record on this, but ... here is the Grantland piece on Ann McKee, the doctor who examines the brains when athletes donate them.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8218700/neuropathologist-dr-ann-mckee-accused-killing-football-be-sport-only-hope

Story also touches on Robert Cantu, clinical professor of neurosurgery at Boston University, with a passage that a former player pulled his boys out of football after listening to Cantu explain the vulnerability of the brain between ages 6 and 14,

That's the key, and that's why I think we're headed toward a ban on tackle until high school. And although football is many times more likely than soccer to cause concussions, if a ban on headers in younger ages is what's needed there, that's fine. Because I can guarantee you 80 percent of the players heading the ball aren't doing it properly.

The physiology of the brain requires that it stay undamaged until age 14. That coincides perfectly with high school. It's such an easy fix.

 

It's that type of research that will make it impossible for NFL players to win their lawsuit.
No way of proving that damage did not happen prior to playing in The NFL.

Best they will do is get a settlement where the NFL provides healthcare for all retired players. And actually with Obamacare this may no longer be an issue either since players with pre existing conditions can now get healthcare.

 

The NFL's TBI committee lying about the dangers of football will result in the league settling before it gets too much further.

 

And I wasn't one of the ones insisting we ban heading the ball in soccer. I asked how fundamental of a change it would be to take it out of the game because that is a consideration, especially because we are still learning about all this.

My issue was with you claiming that it was a fact that headers were not causing brain injuries in soccer when more and more doctors, trainers and coaches are saying that they do believe it is an accumulation of blows to the head, not just the big hit that causes a concussion, that can lead to long-term brain damage.

I do think LTL has a point. Maybe it is time to take the contact out of football and other sports before high school. I would include heading the ball in soccer as a part of that.