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The Problem with Football

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Posted by Ed (1210 days ago)

Need a Moving Quote?

I think this study can carry across to any heavy contact sport...

Disturbing..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf-qgqLqzds

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_fAqwoWxfo&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9oPGusWJSY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdakK8ocyq0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SoDPFhT-u8

What's wrong with football? It's written in the pain on Greg Hadley's face. The senior from Colgate University, a two-time all-conference linebacker on the school's football team, is sitting in a Bedford, Mass., laboratory, staring at shattered brains of dead football players. On this Friday afternoon, Hadley has come to visit Dr. Ann McKee, a Boston University neurological researcher who has received a dozen brains donated from former NFL, college and high school players. In each one, it's simple to spot a protein called tau, which defines a debilitating disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. Common symptoms of CTE include sudden memory loss, paranoia and depression during middle age. The disease is also known as dementia pugilistica, or punch-drunk syndrome, because until recently the overwhelming majority of its victims were boxers. Not anymore. Researchers like McKee have found a deep and disturbing association between CTE and America's most popular sport.

Hadley wants to see, in raw, microscopic detail, what could await him. All CTE victims have had some kind of head trauma, and Hadley has received four concussion diagnoses during his college days. As they examine images under a microscope, McKee tells Hadley that the brown splotches represent the dreaded tau buildup in the brain. The brains are as brown as the pigskin itself.

Hadley lets out a quiet "Jesus" and sinks in his chair. His girlfriend stares at him, looking as if her cat just died. "I had no idea it was all over the place like that," Hadley says. He glances at a picture of a normal brain next to the stained brain of a deceased player. "You look at something like that and think, This is your brain, and this is your brain on football."

On Feb. 7, some 90 million people will watch the Indianapolis Colts play the New Orleans Saints in Super Bowl XLIV in Miami. Perhaps the Roman numerals are appropriate. Although football hasn't quite reached the bloodlust status achieved at the ancient Coliseum, the path to Super Bowl XLIV is strewn with the broken bodies and damaged brains that result when highly motivated, superbly conditioned athletes collide violently in pursuit of glory. The more we learn about the human cost of this quintessentially American sport, the more questions are being raised regarding the people who run it and play it. More than 3 million kids play football at the youth level, and an additional 1.2 million suit up for their high school teams. So football's safety issues reverberate far beyond the NFL. From within the NFL, and without, a consensus is emerging that reforms are needed to keep football from becoming too dangerous for its own good.

Baseball is America's pastime, but football is its true passion. The Friday-night lights bond towns across the heartland; on Saturdays, fans forget their worries to worship at the altar of the campus tailgate, smoke rising above grills like incense. On Sundays, we park our posteriors on the sofa to cheer the sublime spirals, miraculous catches and riveting runs down the sideline. It is one of our most lucrative forms of mass entertainment, celebrated not just on ESPN but in prime-time soap operas (Friday Night Lights) and Hollywood blockbusters (The Blind Side). The NFL's players and owners and the myriad industries associated with the game — fanzines, websites, merchandisers, fantasy leagues — have all been beneficiaries of the tens of billions of dollars the sport generates. But it is irrefutable that those profits have come at the expense of the long-term mental health of those who play football. And perhaps more important, the young people emulating the actions of their NFL heroes are putting their futures on the line as well. "We need to do something now, this minute," says McKee, the brain researcher. "Too many kids are at risk."

Concussive Dangers
Football has been a rough sport since the leather-helmet days, but today's version raises the violence to an art form. No other contact sport gives rise to as many serious brain injuries as football does. High school football players alone suffer 43,000 to 67,000 concussions per year, though the true incidence is likely much higher, as more than 50% of concussed athletes are suspected of failing to report their symptoms.

The human brain, although encased by a heavy-duty cranium, isn't designed for football. Helmets do a nice job of protecting the exterior of the head and preventing deadly skull fractures. But concussions occur within the cranium, when the brain bangs against the skull. When helmets clash, the head decelerates instantly, yet the brain can lurch forward, like a driver who jams the brakes on. The bruising and stretching of tissue can result in something as minimal as "seeing stars" and a momentary separation from consciousness.

Repeated blows to the head, which are routine in football, can have lifelong repercussions. A study commissioned by the NFL found that ex–pro players over age 50 were five times as likely as the national population to receive a memory-related-disease diagnosis. Players 30 to 49 were 19 times as likely to be debilitated. Of the dozen brains of CTE victims McKee has examined, 10 were from either linemen or linebackers; some scientists now fear that the thousands of lower-impact, or "subconcussive," blows these players receive, even if they don't result in documented concussions, can be just as damaging as — if not more so than — the dramatic head injuries that tend to receive more attention and intensive treatment.

Full Story http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1957046,00.html#ixzz0e8m8KdyJ

(I am based in Hong Kong)

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Posted by Ed (1209 days ago)

Texas Football and the Price of Paralysis

In 2004, when Friday Night Lights was being made into a movie, director Pete Berg invited me to the Astrodome in Houston to watch the filming. It didn't take long to realize that the magic of moviemaking was no magic at all — repetitive and dull. I became bored, which is when I saw a small cluster of young men in wheelchairs on the sidelines.

(Watch a video of what football can do to the brain.)

http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,64253995001_1957921,00.html

I can still feel the stiffness of their fingers as I grasped their hands. I can still see the eyes of longing as they watched a movie being made about the game they still loved. I knew firsthand the willingness of Texas high school football players to sacrifice themselves to team and town and winning the state championship. But I was still unprepared for what these young men shared — the price of paralysis that had come from their experience. I fumbled for words. I played into the very thing that not a single one of them wanted: my pity.

Six years later, I recall that moment because of the attention that is finally being paid to injuries in pro football — at least head injuries, prompted by the wonderful reporting of Alan Schwarz of the New York Times. But I also think about it because I know the focus will not trickle down to where it is needed most: the high school level. Research has shown that young players are far more susceptible than older ones to serious injuries.

Concussions are the hot topic, and their residual effects can be hideous. But they are not the only injuries in a game increasingly engorged with unholy violence at all levels. Catastrophic spinal-cord injuries are rare, but in Texas alone there are roughly two a year. That information comes from Eddie Canales, who so unfairly knows more about the subject than anyone else.

On Nov. 2, 2001, San Marcos Baptist Academy, the team Eddie's son Chris played defensive back for, took on Waco's Reicher Catholic with the playoffs at stake. Chris was all of 5 ft. 7 in. (1.7 m) and 120 lb. (55 kg). He liked to "put the wood on it," as his father recalled. With the game on the line, a running back for Reicher found daylight and made a move to the inside as Chris came up to cut him off. The runner tried to leap over Chris, and it was most likely his hip that smashed into Chris' helmet, snapping his neck back. Chris made a game-saving tackle anyway, but then he lay motionless at the 30-yard line for 20 minutes until an ambulance arrived. His father came on the field and knelt next to him.

"I can't move anything. I can't feel anything. What if I am paralyzed?"

"Don't think about that," said his father.

Chris was transported 32 miles (50 km) from San Marcos to University Medical Center Brackenridge in Austin. There a doctor told Eddie and Pita Canales that their son was paralyzed from the shoulders down. Eddie, the director of operations at the University of Texas at San Antonio bookstore, quit his job to tend to his son. He turned him over every two hours to prevent bedsores because the insurance company initially refused to pay for a pressure-supported mattress. He inserted a catheter every three hours. He gave Chris medications every six hours. He slept on the floor next to Chris. His care commenced at 7:30 a.m. and did not end until 3:30 the following morning. He fought with the insurance company over virtually every piece of equipment that was needed. The company finally agreed to pay 50% of the costs, but the Canaleses' expenses the first year were still $60,000. (See pictures of eccentric college mascots.)

As a result of his experience, Canales started a nonprofit group called Gridiron Heroes to lend crucial support to other families experiencing the same horror with their sons that he had gone through. Some of the support is financial, but more of it is emotional, and Chris, who through relentless work now has some mobility in his arms, finds sustenance in his life from helping others so they are not alone.

Eddie and Chris, who is now 26, still love the game and realize that it is a collision sport. But their efforts to increase awareness of the dangers have gotten a mixed reception. A suggestion that 25 cents of every ticket sold at high school games in Texas be set aside to help defray the cost of caring for paralyzed players went nowhere. During the off-season, the Canaleses go to clinics, and coaches listen intently. During the season, the coaches turn deaf in favor of winning at any cost. (See the year in health 2009.)

There should be an ambulance at every high school game. There should be trainers. But don't bet on it, as school districts cry a lack of money. Kids will continue to suffer serious head injuries. Kids will continue to become paralyzed because they never learned how to properly tackle, with their heads up. The game's violence will continue because that's exactly why we like it, our gladiatorial lust still intact 16 centuries after the Romans. The bigger the hit, the greater the roar.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1957060,00.html

(I am based in Hong Kong)

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