Good thing is more and more players are coming out and talking about it.

But these joints are stopping any times soon.

Football is some bullshit.

Parents you okay with letting your kids play football?

http://smokingsection.uproxx.com/TSS/2013/01/leroy-hoard-outside-the-lines-video

Barely have anything to say

Its that horrifying

Dude looked seriously sick during the interview

----------------------------



O_E: "Acts like an asshole and posts with imperial disdain"




"I ORBITs the solar system, listenin..."

(C)Keith Murray, "

Young strong black man. Helpless.

Smh

http://espn.go.com/blog/nflnation/post/_/id/71742/outside-the-lines-leroy-hoard

http://card.mygamercard.net/lastgame/rjcc.png

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

That's stomach churning to watch. I like that he didn't pull any punches with how it really makes him feel, but it's difficult to see someone going through that.

very different things.

Thinking your kid shouldn't play football because the NFL is dangerous is like saying he should climb a jungle gym because being an astronaut is risky. Odds are, he isn't reaching the level where shit gets extra real.

Sure, I know guys who played high school ball with a bad knee or something, but no one who is a basketcase.

At the top level though, yes, the game is going to change.

kids get paralyzed etc., and find out insurance doesn't cover everything, forever.

much lower occurrence, but it happens. you can still get concussions, and coaches don't know /don't care how to properly care for it.

http://card.mygamercard.net/lastgame/rjcc.png

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

But let's not just bend the conversation any which way here. If we are talking about the kind of problems guys like Hoard and McMahon are suffering from, we are talking repeated, heavy head trauma that is not going to happen between 9th and 12th grade. Paralysis and shit like that, verrrrrrry low instance of it. I just don't see a tangible risk of severe and ongoing injury at the amateur level, not enough to tell a kid no on this one.

I would have VERY serious questions about letting a kid go beyond that though, even to a major college program.

is the shield

College and High School practices are where most of the damage is done

real sports went over this very thing a couple eps ago

you hit wayy more on a daily basis than in the NFL

of kids having issues too with head trauma.

Also, what if your kid is good. And it just doesn't stop in PeeWee or HS?

right and i mean i have seen kids only go up to like a minor junior level in hockey and have multiple concussions, too. my uncle had a bunch playing football and wrestling, but he had a disorder that made him prone to them so that is different (cost him a wrestling scholarship to IU).

good question about the higher levels, as i said below that's something i'd have to consider very seriously. i probably could have played college football SOMEWHERE. i had some very good schools come to visit and some decent ones get a little more aggressive. my senior year and shit though, i didn't even go to combines or anything. i had no interest in that. the physical risks were a considerable part of that, but it was more just a lack of interest plus the fact that it wasn't like football was my ticket or whatever. i got into better schools on just academics plus i had most of my education paid for with grants and stuff.

And that's a bad analogy for many other reasons.

The NFL players didn't sustain all of their injuries in the NFL.

Its the cumulate effects of trauma that do people in.

Oddly, this is probably the NFL's best defense in court: that it
isn't the NFL, but the life spent hitting. From pop warner on up

http://www.bu.edu/cste/case-studies/18-year-old/

BUT you have to recognize that it can only be
diagnosed post mortem. The truth is that all
kinds of young kids probably have it, but won't
start presenting with symptoms for another few
decades.

The only hope for them is that they stop playing and
don't exacerbate the symptoms

For an 18 year old kid to DIE of CTE symptoms means
his brain was completely fucked up...in only 18 years
of life. Its one of those single cases that isn't just
a red herring; it really does tell a larger, chilling
picture.




----------------------------



O_E: "Acts like an asshole and posts with imperial disdain"




"I ORBITs the solar system, listenin..."

(C)Keith Murray, "

Please read this article. You might learn something or not, but it something all parents should read.



http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-10-05/sports/ct-met-football-brain-study-1006-20101005_1_concussions-purdue-study-brain-injuries




1 prep football season, 1,800 hits to the head
New study warns of undiagnosed brain injuries in high school players
October 05, 2010|By Rex W. Huppke, Tribune reporter



We can see it — maybe even feel it in our teeth — when the Chicago Bears' Jay Cutler goes down with a concussion after being sacked nine times or a local high school player is pulled from a game after a vicious shot to the head.

But a new study of an Indiana high school football team hints that some athletes are suffering brain injuries that go undiagnosed, allowing the players to continue getting battered, unaware of the possible cognitive damage that has been done.



Of 21 high school players monitored for a full season by a team of researchers from Purdue University, four players who were never diagnosed with concussions were found to have suffered brain impairment that was at least as bad as that of other players who had been deemed concussed and removed from play.

"They're not exhibiting any outward sign and they're continuing to play," said Thomas Talavage, an associate professor at the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering at Purdue and the lead researcher on the study. "The cognitive impairment that we observed with them is actually worse than the one observed with the concussed players."

The report, published in the latest edition of the Journal of Neurotrauma, found that some players received more than 1,800 hits to the head during practices and games, some with a force 20 times greater than what a person would feel while riding a roller coaster.

The potential long-term impact of jaw-dropping collisions in sports has become a hot-button issue this NFL season. In the first week alone, four players sustained concussions, including starting quarterbacks Kevin Kolb of the Philadelphia Eagles and Matt Moore of the Carolina Panthers. The Bears' Cutler suffered a concussion Sunday night against the New York Giants, and it remains uncertain whether he'll be cleared to play this weekend.

But the Purdue study shines a light on injuries more insidious than full-blown concussions, ones that don't always result in outward symptoms yet could add up to cause serious long-term cognitive problems.

Hunt Batjer, chairman of the department of neurological surgery at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and co-chairman of the NFL's Head, Neck and Spine Committee, said the Purdue study — which he was not involved in — is timely, as many researchers are now debating what is more damaging: the intensity of an individual hit or the cumulative impact of repeated collisions.

"This is part of what we're trying to do at the professional level, to determine at what level does further trauma to the head result in potential neurological damage," Batjer said. "There could be changes that may not affect the player now but might affect them 10 or 20 years later. Those thresholds just aren't known."

He noted that an autopsy on Cincinnati Bengals receiver Chris Henry, who died in a domestic dispute last year, found that he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a brain disease caused by repeated brain trauma. But the receiver reportedly had not suffered concussions in his collegiate or professional career, indicating that the head injuries — like those found in the Purdue study — didn't rise to the level of a clinical diagnosis.

"On a daily basis, there's no effect these guys are going to observe, really," said Talavage, the Purdue researcher. "There's no immediate deficit. But what we are concerned about is that there have been a number of reports of NFL players and former college players who have shown scarring on their brains even without concussions, and we know that you can develop CTE without having a history of concussions. So the question from our study becomes, 'Are we seeing a possible explanation?'"


Talavage and his team conducted their research by placing monitoring equipment inside the helmets of players at Jefferson High School in Lafayette, Ind. They did baseline tests on each player before the season, invited several players in for additional tests each week and then conducted a postseason assessment of the subjects.

Four of the 21 players were diagnosed with concussions during the course of the season. But what surprised the researchers was that four players who showed no symptoms of concussion had significant performance drops on routine cognitive tests. Brain imaging tests also showed decreased activity in the parts of the players' brains associated with working memory.

"We were not expecting to find them, they just kind of popped up," Talavage said. "When you talk to players in this group, there's no outward sign. Yet here we are finding changes in testing scores and changes in their brain metabolism that show something that we're a little worried about."

Three of the four players were linemen, and one was a wide receiver. Talavage said that because the research is ongoing, none of the four players has been told about the brain scan results.

One of the 21 players monitored was Joel Ripke, 17, an offensive lineman. He has played football since fourth grade and absorbed about 1,800 hits to the head last season.

"A little bit of head contact can help (while blocking) because the helmets are pretty hard compared to your hands," said Ripke, a senior who hopes to play college ball. "There are a lot of guys who complain because I kind of lead with my head a bit too much. A couple guys complain about it a little, but that's football."



Ripke said he was happy to be part of the research and not at all afraid to continue playing.

"It's kind of good that people are paying attention to high school players and how the hits affect their brains," he said. "But I kind of just play. It's in the back of my mind, but I just play. I love it."

That zest for the game can make the issue of brain injury difficult for coaches to address.

"It's a tough slope because you could end up scaring kids away from even playing football, and you see that a lot," said Michael Holmes, the football coach at Leo High School in Chicago. "We make our kids conscious of it, but we don't try to scare them."

Reilly O'Toole, quarterback at Wheaton Warrenville South High School, said he doesn't think at all about head injuries.

"If you think about injuries or concussions, that's when they happen," he said. "Once you start playing not to get hurt, that's when you get hurt. It's a contact sport. If you don't like contact, you shouldn't be playing."

One step Talavage suggests is cutting down the number of full-contact practices that high school teams hold. That sentiment is echoed by the Sports Legacy Institute in Boston, which focuses on brain trauma in athletes.

"We have pitch counts for youth baseball because we understand that a kid throwing a ball 100 times a day for years could wear out his elbow without a single injury," said Chris Nowinski, co-founder of the institute and co-director of Boston University's Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy. "It's not crazy to think the brain can operate the same way."

Tribune reporters Chris Hine and Paul Skrbina contributed to this report.

rhuppke@tribune.com

Like we used to practice in half pads about half the time, low impact, long days going through shit and conditioning a bit.

>Sure, I know guys who played high school ball with a bad knee
>or something, but no one who is a basketcase.


i don't know anything about your friends, but how many of them are 40-45 years old? from my understanding of CTE, it rapidly accelerates the onset of dementia-like symptoms, so that a 40-45 year old former player starts to get the brain of a 75-80 year old. this is an oversimplification of the diagnosis, but it provides a decent analogue.

as OE mentioned, they are starting to see early symptoms of CTE in younger athletes now as well, but i think you see the worst symptoms (memory loss, confusion, suicide) in former players in their 40s-50s.

it's funny because i have been saying for about ten years that the sport's days are likely numbered, that the field needs to get bigger and that this is a real problem.

now suddenly the knee jerking is going on and i sound like the old fogey. people have been playing high school football for over a century and while there are risks in any contact sport, they are nowhere near as high as you go up levels to the NCAA and NFL between 1) sheer repeated exposure to risk and 2) the size/strength of your opponents.

i am no sports historian, but i think you also need to factor in that today's athletes are, on average, much stronger than they have been over the last 100 years. also, you've got kids playing these sports year-round. the stakes are much higher and parents & kids push much harder.

on top of that, whenever it comes to psychological/brain trauma, i'm not sure you can look at diagnoses much past the last 25-30 years simply due to lack of awareness and missed diagnoses. i mean, just look at how PTSD is treated today, when it was barely recognized as little more than shell-shock historically.

not every kid playing football through high school is going to suffer from CTE, and of course the risks increase as you play among the faster, stronger players in college and the NFL. but the risks are still there.

i mean i remember going through it and to me it was harmless. today i feel great. i never had a concussion or even a minor head injury. outside of a couple bad sprains, nothing else went wrong either. most people i know escaped with no major injuries. the guys i do know with problems had knee developmental issues mostly, although there were some contact injuries, too. i just don't see much wisdom in the repugnance toward youth football. i could see steering your kids in another direction, but outright forbidding them? nah.

and i'm not surprised about this news, given his style of running.

the most terrifying part is that even though he writes those three names in each of his journals, he could wake up one day with his brain misfiring and end up like them.

sounds like he's got a lot of good support going right now though with his wife, robert smith, kids, etc.

A few things struck me, but probably number one was that this highlighted how important a support network is to these guys. Like the most important thing to him was just having a guy like Robert Smith listen.

I hope Leroy finds a way to make the best of the rest of his life. It seems, from the piece, that he's got a good wife and a good fam.

This wasn't something that happened to this dude inadvertently. At this point I can't really see how these guys or their families can have the nerve to come back later and point fingers. YOU KNOW THE RISKS GOING IN. NO ONE IS CRYING WHILE THEY ARE CASHING CHECKS AND PLAYING.

There are plenty of much more dangerous professions that no one talks about that guys lose much more for a lot less money, being a soldier immediately comes to mind. No one is paying a soldier millions of dollars to lose arms and legs or even their lives.

Look I sympathize with anyone having to live their life in pain and depression. It's awful. But we can probably say with some certainty that if Hoard had not played football for years and endured a countless number of impacts to his head he probably wouldn't be in this situation. What is there to argue here? The game should be safer but people can;t get up in arms about it after the fact like no one knows playing football can leave you like this. It's ridiculous. If you don't wanna risk being all fucked up then don't play. Period. I am glad there is awareness being brought to this issue but the players are every bit as responsible for their condition if not more so than the league. Self preservation.

is common knowledge. Really it's only starting to be understood, and the NFL has only acknowledged it in that last 2 or 3 years. So it's not accurate to say that Leroy Hoard knew the deal going in. Saying Leroy Hoard should have realized that he'd have to sit in a dark room for hours at a time isn't in line with the reality at the time.

Also, i don't really get your point... are we not supposed to feel bad for him? is he not supposed to share his story? He's educating people on the reality of playing in the NFL in a way that he probably wasn't educated.

The research about CTE is fairly new but the repercussions of playing for ALOT of guys isn't. I think it's great that these findings are coming to light and that guys like Hoard are telling their stories and making sure that there is more awareness. What I don't agree with is hypocrisy. It's a shame but all that can be done now is to try and make the game safer for younger kids coming up. Either way there's only so much that can be done outside of just making it flag football. It's a violent collision sport. You mean to tell me people weren't aware that smashing your head into another person over and over for years at violent speeds over and over again would do damage. C'mon.

his family shouldn't be crying when he died, because they didn't cry when they cashed the checks. Policemen and Firemen die all the time for less money.

>There are plenty of much more dangerous professions that no
>one talks about that guys lose much more for a lot less money,
>being a soldier immediately comes to mind. No one is paying a
>soldier millions of dollars to lose arms and legs or even
>their lives.

yeah, and the poor people in America should never complain because nobody is talking about the family of 10 living in a tent and eating bugs in another country. CTE and football is an issue that needs to be treated on its own merits. stop with that GOP false equivalency.

acceptance in the things guys like OchoCinco and Ed Reed say. Shit I have talked to guys in minor hockey and independent league football who said things like "You play hockey, you're going to get hit in the head" and "This is what we fuckin' signed up for."

So I don't see this culture of whining you're talking about today. I actually think the older players probably weren't very well informed about the risks and are now not only trying to be treated and survive, but also trying to inform younger generations about those risks.

I'm not seeing a place for indignation toward guys who are struggling to live, sorry.