I suspect the insurance companies are going to make their concerns known soon. Would you sell liability insurance to an institution (looking at you high schools) that engage in an inherently dangerous extracurricular activity?

Treat contact sports as combat sports - institute weight classes/limits for players. Even line of scrimmage contact from a 300 pound projectile is significantly damaging in the long run.

Of course, half as many games so every week is a bye week would allow for more recovery - still not in the range of a professional fighter, but better. But the money would never allow that.

Maybe we should do like other tougher countries and get rid of the safety equipment, so the game have more running and lateral strategy and the players will refrain from slamming into one another hard enough to cause traumatic brain injury unless they _really_ want to get hurt bad.

I have been around football my whole life.

Its a beautiful, ugly sport. It has so many terrific benefits. And it is inherently, unquestionably dangerous.

LJ: I gained a slipped disc and eventually major arthritis in my lower back just from high school football. I can't claim I didn't like the game, but at the time I was also pushed into it and sold on the idea that I wouldn't be good at anything else. I spent the first 3-months after the pain started walking around with a cane like an old man involuntarily. I couldn't get out of a chair on my own at 16 without pain killers. I've had the back of a 50 year old ever since, but with exercise I've been able to live with it without surgery or pills. I don't mean any of this as a boo-hoo statement, just saying...you can gain a major injury very easily in this game.

In the same breath, I wouldn't tell people to not play football, because there are benefits. Like any high contact sport, however, you're risking your body in a major way. I was unlucky. I don't expect high school kids to be able to weigh those risks and I especially don't expect young males with the typical-for-that-age invincibility complex to be able to make a good judgment call -- but when you're playing Pro ball...I dunno. There should be some responsibility on your part, as a grown man, to know what you're risking.

This entire topic is very much in a gray area for me.

gonna give this point to sosage. Sorry that happened to you dude. Seriously.

to not be just a panderor, i was a gymnast and was really good at it. You risk hurting yourself in every sport, even if it's a pussy girl one

The problem is that you can't separate pro players and amateur players that easily. Pro-football recruits from and in a lot of ways depends upon college and high school football. The talent pool depends upon there being thousands and thousands of kids playing from a very young age.

I think that's why the pushback on this issue was so hard. If the idea became accepted among parents that "Football = pretty good chance of brain damage" (I'm oversimplifying, I realize) it would absolutely eviscerate the Pop Warner, High School and College programs that the Pro leagues depend on.

I'm not running down anyone's choices; I just think that the pro players are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to concussion issues.

You are correct about pro players suffering early onset dementia being only the tip of the iceberg.

CTE has been found in the brains of football players as young as 18 and has also been found in the brains of football players who were never actually diagnosed with concussions. In fact, it's been found in the brain of almost every football that has ever been examined for signs of the condition.

It seems likely that simply playing football is inherently dangerous and carries a high likelihood of causing brain damage.

I have a friend who blew his knee out playing football. I would like to see an X Prize for safer equipment.

So, what are these "benefits" of football you guys speak of? Can they really not be gained except at the risk of fucking up your body for life and turning your brain into a greasy milkshake?

Yeah well sports doesn't have a shady drug scene or cause cancer. Oh wait

"LiveJournal" aka personal story

To expand unnecessarily, in the early 00's Livejournal was the big social media site, and it was just an online diary, so a post on PoE that was just self reflection or personal anecdote was called an LJ or LJing, and you'd prefix rambling stories with "LJ Warning". I don't know if it was used much outside of PoE.

Analogous to "E/N", which is subject matter that means Everything to the writer but Nothing to anyone else. That comes from Something Awful's E/N forum, which is where goons whine about their personal problems.