Frontline - "League of Denial: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis"

What you are going to get from opponents of football.

I have it on my DVR.  I did see most of the Frontline special that was on before that about heat stroke and death.  Not bad, but what gripes me about these pieces is that they always seem to focus on the program that has coaches with southern accents, playing for a championship so they feel the "need" to put the star with an injury back into the game.  And they also get an interview from a kid who "wants to get back out there" with his teammates even though he is injured.  

How about going to a school where they have a full time trainer from a hospital partnership, coaches who are not southerners and where they actually put the kids well being above anything else.  In other words....go just about anywhere and you can find this program.  


And nothing against southerners, what I am saying is that you get a bunch of snobby journalists who look down on anything from the southern region of the USA and feel the need to make them look bad.  It just pi$$es me off because it seems that every time it is portrayed like that.

Not to hijack the thread, but has anyone ever come across a problem with the opposing team's doctor /trainer at an away game? We have a team doctor who comes to all home games and some away games, but if he is not there, what is to stop an opposing teams trainer from saying your star player has a concussion? For example... your starting running back gets shaken up and stays down for a minute. You do not have a team physician with you, the opposing team's doctor says he is done for the game with a head injury. What do you do if you think he is full of it?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using proboards

and Dr Bailes is now a very conflicted man when it comes to football.  loves the game but the damage it does is leading him to believe it should become a banned sport.

I watched the entire thing today and I thought it was very well done. As a parent and coach I had to cringe at some of it especially in regards to young kids playing the game. My main issue with all of the research is the fact that they cannot find any reason why some players get CTE and some do not. The NFL has a valid point by saying, "look at the thousands of ex-players who have no issues". There has to be some kind of link to person's medical history or genes that leaves them susceptible to CTE. If they can find this link then those who are "at risk" can be kept from playing. I think it's wrong to just say, Football is bad and causes brain injuries. So do lots of things. What if your child falls off their bike and hits their head?

As someone said, helmets are 10x better now than they were 15+ years ago. I graduated HS in 2000 and we had very few, if any concussion. I can't say 100%, but i have a good memory, and we didn't lose anyone due to concussions my senior year. Fast forward to last year and we as a team had several concussions. No exact numbers, but we had at least 7, maybe even up to 10. So are we honestly more aware of concussion 15 years later, are the helmets really NOT better, or are we too sensitive to minor head injuries and categorizing them as concussions?

Saw an article about James Harrison having kevlar installed in his helmet to help prevent concussions. A Dr. in the article is quoted as saying "I can't think of a single reason why installing Kevlar would protect the brain in a collision," he said. "It's the egg-yolk-inside-the-shell analogy. Making the shell stronger will still scramble the yolk."

So basically no matter what you wear on the outside you really can not protect the brain with a better helmet, it's still gonna rattle around in there if you get hit just right.

I also think there is more to these guys ending up like that later in life than just the concussions. I hate to say it but to play in the NFL that long or really to play in the league at all you have to be a bit off to start with. Then throw in the fact that no one really knows what these guys were putting in to their bodies as well that could have contributed as well.

Disclaimer: I do believe that concussions are real and have seen several players get one and never play again, just think it is nuts to make it sound like everyone will end up like the guys in the documentary.

I don't buy the argument of sub-concussive hits causing serious damage especially for players who do got play in the NFL. I just haven't seen it. I just haven't seen that there are a lot of former HS and college players who have developed dementia. 

I have no medical information, just observing all of this from a step back.

I think it's a heck of a lot more complex than any one or two answers.  But I am personally sure there are flat out more concussions now than 25 years ago when I played.  I got a concussion at 9 years old, just tripped and hit my head on pavement.  I wasn't any more prone to concussions after that.  In HS I remember some head shots that made my vision go white at the point of contact, but I am confident I was not concussed.  I did NOT have any symptoms beyond that hit and a mild headache for a few minutes after.  My HS age son has had 3, and he's had real, obvious symptoms that I did not have.  Nor did I ever see teammates with those symptoms trying to play, and I think I would have known.  There was nobody watching out for concussions then, so I have no doubt I'd have heard about a headache going a couple of days, or a player being foggy, etc. in the locker room.  Hell, probably would have been a point of pride and exaggerated.  Just didn't happen.  So while we're definitely more aware, and I'm sure there were probably some minor concussions that got missed back then due to that lack of knowledge, I just don't believe we were missing THAT many.

Again, just my uninformed opinion - 

Players are bigger and faster, but I doubt the biology and internal protections of the brain have improved to the same extent.  That means bigger collisions being absorbed without a correlated increase in protection.

Helmet technology is making it worse - as has been said, making the shell thicker doesn't stop the yolk bouncing around.  Making it SOFTER might, as it might dissipate the force before it reaches the skull much like crumple zones in cars.  But I think we had less concussions because the helmets weren't good enough to stop it from hurting a LOT if you led with your head.  I remember "head butting" another player after a big play, and thinking WTF, that HURT!  There was nfw I was going to do that again.  I put on my son's new helmet before he sent it in for reconditioning last year, and banged my head against a radiator and didn't feel a thing.  My guess is that "not feeling a thing" would NOT prevent a concussion if the hit was severe enough, but it would make me more likely to stick my head into a play because 99% of the time, it wouldn't hurt.

I wouldn't be surprised if the toxins we eat and drink are degrading some of the brain protection either.  Brain conditions (autism for example) have increased in the same period of time that we're talking about, since the mid-80's.  I realize this is a controversial topic as well since some use the same "we're just recognizing/diagnosing it more often" argument, and while I think that's true, I don't think it is the sole explanation.  I think it IS happening more in addition to it being over-diagnosed.  And I think it's highly probable that the sh*t we're doing to our bodies and environment are likely weakening the brain and/or it's protection.

One idea that I think might help - make the field bigger.  You can't load up for the "kill shot" if you're expending all of your effort just trying to catch the d*mn guy...

The debate regarding football and long-term brain injury has not yet reached the point where it is dominated by reason. There is so much that we do not know that anyone termed an "expert" can only be such in regard to the most nascent and primitive data. Furthermore, an expert with a bias is no better than a nonexpert. An activist with an agenda should be accorded no more credibility than their agenda deserves. This is not to imply that all of the doctors and scientists who are concerned about the relationship between football and brain injury do so for suspect motives. Some are obviously sincere and some are almost certainly correct. But there is that annoying and busybody population of hysterics that can abide no risk, nor any discretion other than their own. These are the mollycoddlers and nanny-ists who embrace zero-tolerance madness, who ban dodgeball, swing sets and believe that childhood is a pathologic condition undertreated by Ritalin.

It is common sense that repeated head trauma can produce chronic injury in the brain. It is also common sense that the conditions that would have allowed identification of clinical deterioration in football players have existed for approximately 70 years, yet football players from those earlier years were able to raise families, run businesses, prosper, and attend 50th class reunions with cognitive functioning indistinguishable from their classmates. The lack of a rigorous epidemiologic connection between participation in football and cognitive decline throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s is significant.

In assessing the credibility of information regarding football and chronic brain injury certain facts should be considered:

1.) Concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy are two different things. Concussions are a functional brain injury that in the vast majority of cases result in no permanent impairment, and CTE is a syndrome associated with distinct pathological findings in the brain.

2.) The pathologic findings in CTE (deposits of hyperphosphorylated tau proteins in characteristic distributions) are markers of the condition, and do not correlate well with cognitive functioning. Abnormal tau protein deposition is found in a spectrum of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, and result from processes other than trauma. Abnormal tau protein deposition has been caused in laboratory animals by inducing psychological stress. Researchers at USC identified a gene,RCAN-1, that appears to influence the susceptibility to abnormal tau protein deposits. It is quite likely that there is a genetic predisposition to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, as well as other neurodegenerative diseases.

3.) The finding of tau protein deposits in the brains of young athletes does not establish that they have, or will develop CTE. It is not known whether these deposits are due to head trauma associated with a particular activity, are physiologic or pathologic, are incidental findings, or whether these deposits persists or resolve. The significance of these findings in persons without clinical evidence of cognitive impairment is unknown.

4.) The current science regarding CTE is not very scientific. It is at this stage more accurately termed "hypothesis." In order to appropriately identify those factors that lead to development of CTE, it would be necessary to have the pathologic examinations of the brains blinded, so that the pathologists would be unaware of the source of the brain or the deceased's history, and to have an appropriate number of control brains to identify the background prevalence of CTE-type findings in persons who did not play football. Comparisons must be made with participants in other activities, such as skateboarding, bicycling, wrestling, lacrosse, snow skiing and basketball as well. It would be necessary to analyze the various factors that might influence the development of CTE such as the age at which brain trauma was incurred, the duration of such trauma, family history of dementia, the development of CTE in twins, one of whom played football and the other who did not, and other potentially relevant associations such as a family history of suicide, substance abuse or violence. Simply looking for evidence of CTE in persons that participated in football, is unscientific and invalid.

5.) It is unknown whether there is a "threshold effect" between the number and intensity of head impacts and the development of brain injury. The absence of a clear-cut correlation between football participation in the 50s, 60s and 70s and early dementia strongly suggests that there is. This is necessary to properly assess the risk associated with football participation, and would bear upon such issues as the length of football seasons and the intensity of hitting during football practices. It is quite possible, even probable, that the risks of long-term brain injury associated with football is not necessarily any greater than for other rigorous activities. CTE was found to have occurred in 17% of professional boxers, in whom the goal was to cause head trauma. That there is no safe level of impact is a platitude, unsupported by evidence.
6.) There are readily available methods of limiting the energy transfer to the brain during football participation. In the future, helmets will likely be bigger, providing more material to absorb and dissipate the energy of impact and lessening the resulting acceleration of the brain, and that blocking and tackling techniques will involve to minimize involvement of the head. For the present, the greatest risk of injury or playing football comes from inappropriate coaching and poor technique.

There is no disputing that football has risks, (including the risk of long term brain injury) and that these risks vary over time and from person to person. These risks may be unreasonable for some people, but outweighed by the benefits for others. There is no reason to think that football cannot be safely payed by the vast majority of participants, who do so with the proper training, supervision and equipment.

A few publications have highlighted the dangers of football by referring to an article published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine. This article stated that more than 12 players a year die playing football. It arrived at this number by identifying 243 deaths in football participants over a twenty year period. Of those, 79 were due to trauma (which works out to about three deaths per million participants per year). The other deaths were due to such things as heart failure (100 deaths), heat illness (38) and sickle cell trait (11). Three died from lightning, and another three from infection. The majority of deaths, in other words, had nothing to do with football being a contact sport. The article can be found here: ajs.sagepub.com/content/41/5/1108

I don't think it's necessary to play contact football until age 12. I know a lot of friends and current players who had as little as one year of peewee and end up being high school starters. I personally played soccer religiously until 6th grade when a peewee coach finally talked me into playing football. I always loved backyard football and watched it all the time so maybe that was the difference, but I started right away when i was 12 and thinking back I never wasnt a starter ever on any football team, including college.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using proboards