Playing football young can lead to emotional and cognitive issues
Specifically, subjects whose posthumous brain donations were part of the UNITE study had their family histories examined. The earlier they started playing, the earlier their symptoms would appear:
"...the researchers discovered for those players who had CTE, every one year younger the individual started playing tackle football predicted the earlier onset of behavioral and mood problems by 2.5 years and cognitive problems by 2.4 years."
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/30/health/youth-football-cte-study/index.ht…
Who could've guessed that repeated brain trauma at a young age would cause issues
and That is Whack!
So underrated. Now I need to watch it again... god dammit!
I remember reading in demon haunted world about what Sagan referred to as “back of the envelope” calculations. IIRC He said there is value in making quick judgments of available data and continuing research if it went against the grain.
For me, probably 70% of the males I know played in Pop Warner through High School. None have CTE symptoms.
I’m okay with my son playing.
It is incorrect to assume that none of the people you played with have no symptoms of CTE. This demonstrates your lack of knowledge of CTE generally. Moreover, you are an example of the kids I feel bad foor -- those with parents who have poor decision-making abilitiy.
Evidence is clear that football damages brains. I will not make that decision for my son. If he wants to play, he can play when he has left the household at 18, which this country thinks is too young to handle booze, but is plenty old enough to go to war and decide to fuck up your brain.
Moreover, anyone can spout off anecdotal evidence. I have a family member who died of CTE. He withered away for four years and died at 64.
My dad, uncle, and grandfather died of cancer. My Mom and cousins are cancer survivors.
I wouldn’t presume to tell you about the lifestyle choices you make for your kids that might be carcinogenic, nor would I broadly question your decision making ability as a parent.
I’m sorry for your loss. Truly. But it doesn’t give you the right to be an ass or question another’s parenting skills.
April 30th, 2018 at 11:24 PM ^
April 30th, 2018 at 10:40 PM ^
April 30th, 2018 at 10:47 PM ^
studies show that similar behavioral and mood problems were experienced by Michigan fans who suffered trauma just watching the team in the Brady Hoke years...
When you say the phrase "safety play was actually fine last year" to Michigan fans they experience emotional and cognitive issues.
I mean, I will admit that I was often uplifted by the good week of practice, and then I would give the usher my tickets and would then suffer mood swings. I think that if we are going to do a study on THAT, we need to develop a very precise survey that probably doesn't need to go much further than this blog.
Make sure the survey covers how the game day football sounded vs. attendee expectations of how the football would sound.
April 30th, 2018 at 10:08 PM ^
...I cry every time I hear a Josh Groban song?
Dont be a baby, now get out there and hit somebody
But try not to use your frontal lobe
To get to the gold standard of a randomized control trial we would have to randomly assign people to play football for years, which is not possible (nor ethical).
Given these constraints, starting with retrospective studies makes sense. It is not the researchers' fault that many will take this data as strong evidence of a causational relationship. However, it does seem to me the larger scale evidence is starting to mount to match the reality that of wives of the NFL have been telling us / what we've all seen happen to boxers.
There would be several hopes with the end game, most of which we are not at the capability yet of achieving. The first would be finding true causation of CTE - as we can't definitivly assess CTE in the living (unless that has changed in the last 3-4 months) we are unable to do more that have a correlation. And once we are able to assess CTE in the living we can start perfoming studies to have an idea of a better age to allow contact sports (as of know we can all argue when is a good age but we honestly don't have any sound science behind it, or atleast none that I am able to find in the UM library database).
As we are learning more about CTE, concussions, and how the brain works we are able to start making better technology, like the device that Kuechly wears, to help limit the forces that are most likely to cause concussive issues.
So honestly right now our end game is creating better equipment to reduce the risk and educating people on the possibility of brain trauma, just like the possibility of trauma to the rest of your body, in playing sports. Highlighting the importance of regular injury screening, not allowing young kids to play injured, and having in place specific guidelines for return to play after concussion (which is starting to occur). This isn't to say your brain is any more or less important than other body parts, but a causation is not enough to outlaw anything. If they so choose to take that risk than so be it, which personally the benefits of sports significantly outweight the current known risks for injury.
I'd assume individuals will have different endgames. Prior to this amount of research I might have been more supportive of my kids playing football young. Now I am unsure if I will be supportive of them playing at any point. I am now uncomfortable with people choosing to play football at high levels, and have cognitive dissonance over how much I enjoy watching football, but I still do. Regardless, I prefer people to have as much possible knowledge about the risks going in. We can argue about whether it is "good/fair" to perpetuate a system that puts a high financial reward on risking your body/brain to this degree, but that is another question. As to the science--my original point--the goal is to have as much information about the risks as possible.
Your point does hold to a degree that all sports have risk for head injuries, but having played both football and rugby, you take a lot more bigger head hits in football.
until high school
But we will end up with nothing but generic 2 and 3 stars
I attended Mt. Pleasant High School and graduated in '96. We didn't start tackling until 9th grade in the public school system while the surrounding districts did. We went 4-4 as freshmen and went on to go 24-4 as a class over our next 3 years and put one of the best teams in the state on the field. Tackling before high school is completely unnecessary.
April 30th, 2018 at 10:09 PM ^
I have six older brothers. I think I WAS the football.
the football back home at the end of the day, they were always pulling that on me.
April 30th, 2018 at 10:13 PM ^