rolling American football death spiral thread

I ask as a curious observer, not as a partisan of any kind: how much longer can a game that is being revealed as fundamentally unsafe survive in a litigious culture?

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/13/3179926/dan-le-batard-jason-taylors-pain.html

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/page/hotread-kickoffs/should-nfl-eliminate-kickoffs-pursuit-safer-game

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7559458/cte-concussion-crisis-economic-look-end-football

The NFL is connected to untold billions of dollars, current players are aware of the risks - I don't think lawsuits are going to bring down the NFL soon.

Parents not letting kids play football, OTOH, could eventually do some damage.

cigarettes are fundamentally unsafe and lotsa people still smoke, after decades of this being public knowledge. I think we could be at or near 'peak football' in some ways - who knows what's gonna happen to cable tv, will middle class parents be less likely to let their kids play hs football? yeah I think that's likely.

but will people still watch other peoples kids get hurt? sure. the sport that's grown the most over the last decade involves people kicking the shit out of each other. there isn't even a ball, they just kick the shit out of each other. it is very clearly not good for your health. I can see football losing a lot of its pure apple pie american charm as it gets more and more associated w/ injuries and less w/ the charming white american quarterback throwing a touchdown in a movie...but that doesn't mean it won't be a multibillion dollar industry for decades to come.

i'm thinking this is going to be a pretty boring story in the end...slow evolution over 30 years into a v. different game that is much less violent

Outside of sports, American human capital and productivity probably rise. No football Saturdays on college campuses means less binge drinking, more studying, better grades, smarter future adults. Losing thousands of college players and hundreds of pro players might produce a few more doctors or engineers. Plus, talented coaches and general managers would gravitate toward management positions in American industry.

lol Grantland

oh my lord who do they think they're kidding

no football?? how in the world am i going to binge drink now????

there was some study that suggested that grades went down when your football program was doing well

i'm sure that's correct but the gas-huffing grantland author seems to assume that ppl won't find something to replace football with.

but stretching that to 'it will reshape american productivity' is obv dumb. the author is tyler cowen and he is kinda a troll ftr.

well lord knows we do need more people vying for "management positions in american industry"

in his foodie economist book that came out last year he suggested not going to restaurants that have attractive women in them

hahahah that sentence is so beautiful i am not even going to investigate further

i think one thing that's out there to "save" football as it stands now is a breakthrough in helmets that substantially lowers head injuries. whether or not that's possible i have no idea.

i have started to think tho that the "parents will stop their kids from playing football" thing is a bit overplayed. there's still riches in football, especially for poor families. maybe some multi-sport high school athletes will choose another sport, but if you're talking about poor kids where football is ingrained in the community (like in south florida) and has a tradition of being an easy way of getting out of a shitty situation... i don't know. you have to have a specific size to play basketball, and baseball is such an intensive sport.

the magic helmet basically isn't possible

yeah

i remember reading once that there's drastically less head injuries in rugby because you have to learn how to tackle without using your head. in football, the helmet gives the feeling of invincibility, so the helmet itself is probably a misnomer anyway

yeah iirc some articles suggest that the existing super-helmets encouraged the trend of head-weaponization in the first place (that I hear exists, I seriously don't watch football or have any idea what they do with their heads. have been watching Friday Night Lights tho)

that's why I'm also kinda skeptical of cad's 'game evolves into something really different for safety reasons' - like marginal safety improvements just don't change the reason why people get concussions when playing this game and aren't gonna make a dent in the rate it happens.

im really thinking more significant rule changes than marginal safety improvements

i think the most realistic change is something that prevents players from playing through injuries. if the NFL has to pai out multiple billions of dollars after all these suits are settled, they would have a real compelling reason to significantly strengthen their rules/regulations so that no player can talk his way out of sitting due to a concussion.

well the big problem goes beyond existing helmets or this helmet or no helmet - it's that concussions happen because your brain is hitting your skull, not because something is hitting your head

xp

as an aside do we have the slightest idea how many head injuries actually happen in rugby? i bet we do not.

i genuinely think football will evolve into a pass-dominant touch-tackle sport

yeah I guess I can see that path as a lot more viable

it helps that it's what people like too

yeah i could see that

Football would be a lot safer if they just replaced tackling with tickling.

lol

I think some are greatly overestimating how much the average fan gives a shit. Most football fans I know rationalize it as some "they knew what they were getting into" BS. The real test will be whether the NFL can survive an ongoing parade of lawsuits, but if they do, I don't think the fanbase is going anywhere.

These stories keep leaving a really bad taste in my mouth though, I feel a shameful complicity in just having watched the game...

i remember reading once that there's drastically less head injuries in rugby because you have to learn how to tackle without using your head. in football, the helmet gives the feeling of invincibility, so the helmet itself is probably a misnomer anyway

― J0rdan S., Thursday, January 17, 2013 4:40 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In football you can play to the whistle and have 30 seconds to recover or leave the field, so in that timeframe all manner of violence can occur. Rugby has (more) sustained play so you couldn't have that kind of behavior or half the field would have injured dudes on it.

back before helmets people were getting killed in football all the time so I'm skeptical that they're a net negative

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6fejWutXCk

I've never heard about pre-helmet deaths - AFAICT only one NFL player has ever died on the field.

i think the most realistic change is something that prevents players from playing through injuries. if the NFL has to pai out multiple billions of dollars after all these suits are settled, they would have a real compelling reason to significantly strengthen their rules/regulations so that no player can talk his way out of sitting due to a concussion.

"In 1905, there was roughly one-fifth the number of college football players as there are today, yet, 18 were killed and 159 severely injured in that one year alone. "

sounds like a good way for weasel coaches to get extra timeouts

the solution is very simpe, guys: everybody should watch basketball instead

Football in 1905 didn't look much like today's game. What about 1945 or 1950?

I should think that the NFL is in no immediate danger of being litigated out of existance. After all, US courts tolerated the buying and selling of baseball players as chattel for a century. Almost 100% of modern american football players would be avid to sign away any and all rights they might have for redress of injuries, just for the chance to play in the NFL.

kind of interesting to think of all the brain damage O.J. Simpson was probably living with for the last 30 years

Football in 1905 didn't look much like today's game. What about 1945 or 1950?

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Thursday, January 17, 2013 1:00 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

football in 1905 didn't look much like today's game because the forward pass was invented to stop people from dying so much

I think the comparable sport here has to be boxing. It's not dead, but it's nowhere near as popular as it was last century, and I think football will head that way as people get turned off by the dawning understanding of the physical toll. (I'd like to see radio/tv numbers for how popular boxing has been over the last century.)

boxing was never as popular as football is right now tho

even in boxing's heyday i don't think it compares to football right now

it's hard to compare eras like that regardless

but I do think that, the two paths are either cad's high scoring touch football or wmc's game that's viewed as less family friendly and more masculine a la boxing etc. like your mom won't be organizing the super bowl party.

two other things that affect its future are going to be what happens to streaming video / cable / broadcast advertising etc and what happens to the american university system over the coming decades.

The biggest factors in the demise of boxing were first, overexposure, next widespread corruption, and lastly, unbridled greed that broke up the "world championship" titles into fragments. The NFL is flirting heavily with overexposure, but there is no hint atm that the games are fixed or the refs have been bought, and the NFL's central management is keeping conflict within the league from causing overt problems.

Aimless OTM. I don't think brutality means a thing.

MMA has picked up ground on boxing because the UFC acts as the central body with the true champs, doesn't protect up and comers to the degree of boxing, etc., despite being viscerally more brutal. (though, actually, I'd rather have my kid take up MMA than boxing - less dangerous to his or her brain).

oops, didn't edit - I don't think brutality was key in boxing's decline - that goes mostly to corruption and the way corruption screwed up the heavyweights. Plus better money in other sports and a cultural emphasis on team sports.

football in 1905 didn't look much like today's game because the forward pass was invented to stop people from dying so much

Should have been the forward kick.

Speaking of football, I wonder if they limited substitutions like in soccer, would that change on-field behavior?

Bigger sham: NIL collectives not coordinating with athletics departments or Super PACs not coordinating with candidates

For those of you who, like me, have purposefully avoided NFL news, this is a useful summary: https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2023/2/6/23583787/the-uncomfortable-messy-truth-of-watching-the-nfl

If those ugly headlines won’t force a moral reckoning, what will?

Possibly a player who is popular enough to be known by non-fans being decapitated on-air during a game. If his parents protest. Possibly.

Holy shit @ the cost of the NFL Sunday Ticket package via Youtube TV - $350+$70/mo or $450 and only Sunday day games no Thursday/Sunday/Monday night.

Good.

haha, of fucking course. there goes my plan to surprise mom with Giants games.

idk i might still do it.

Tired of the tropes in this article. This guy is in complete denial that he’s aiding and abetting the untimely and early deaths of people in his community, not helping them “find a way out.”

Free article here

Slightly unexpected, in that this is illustrated by David Squires -- normally doing (the other kind of) football, this is his first specific one about the American version I can think of:

https://www.theguardian.com/football/ng-interactive/2023/sep/06/david-squires-on-eric-smith-and-the-nfls-toll-on-one-players-mind-and-body

Completely wrecked by this feature.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/16/us/cte-youth-football.html

wow

that was tough to get through

One thing that happens in that video happens to me, tho obviously I don't have a son, nor one that plays football—

but whenever I pass by a football field, and see all these young men and boys tackling each other, I am overwhelmed with sadness and anger. Just seems so senseless.

i *almost* played football in high school. several of the PE coaches saw me running track and tried to recruit me to play wide receiver, which in retrospect feels more like recruiting a kid for the military. i actually really enjoyed playing football casually at local parks, where my friends and i were definitely tackling each other, but we were also not beating the hell out of each other. but HS football was a different trip. i didn't want to get hit head-on while catching a pass, to get a limb snapped during a tackle, it just generally seemed like a bad idea. i'd seen enough clips of gritty chicago bears wideout tom waddle getting assassinated in the red zone by opposing safeties to know i didn't want that to happen to me.

I played in high school and have heard the comparisons to the military before, twice by teammates who wound up enlisting. I guess its mostly in the way they really do try to break you down and convince you that the only virtue is to give more than your body can handle, and that anything less is not only shameful but also an act of cowardice that lets down your teammates. Well they don't quite say it in those words but still. I played basketball too and it definitely was not like that. But football is a very different sport, I mean if you play you will get hurt, simple as that.

I don't think I was really ever at 100%, but especially after 5 games or so, you get one side of your body hurt, so you overcompensate and get the other side hurt as well, and there's a certain point where after the 2nd quarter you just want it to be over. That kind of made me wince when they decided to extend the NFL schedule by a game, I mean it's those last few that really suck for these guys. I played about half at tight end, which made you susceptible to some really big hits, and after a couple of those you just really really did not want the ball to come your way. I also played on the OL which gets you hurt in a different, more mundane sort of way. The soreness I felt the morning after some of those games...yeesh. Sometimes I'd be lined up against a guy who not only had 30-40 pounds on me but was faster than me as well. Those games were hell, especially since the only reason I was in that position is because my school was small, so we just kinda had who we had. There wasn't really anyone who could help. I think one game I basically held on every single play, because if I didn't the QB was gonna get killed, and we were already on our 3rd one. I'm proud to say I only got flagged twice but only because even holding didn't slow the guy down much.

That said I'm still glad I played, I mean some of it really was fun and I think the bonds you make really are something special. But yeah at the end of every season I just thought "fuck this, I'm not playing next year", and then I'd kinda get pressured into doing it anyway, not that it would take much. I guess I'm lucky nothing serious ever happened.

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/39212869/kirby-smart-laments-fsu-opt-outs-georgia-orange-bowl-rout

College football coaches are the worst people on Earth. Can’t believe these shithead kids didn’t risk their futures on a meaningless game!

College bowl games have very rapidly lost their whole reason for existence. The possible exceptions might be for a few of the smaller Division I college teams from the off brand conferences - most of whose players will never sniff an NFL contract, so that a trip to some place like Chattanooga or Gainesville to play a game in mid-winter sounds like a fun break. The truly small college divisions already get to have a meaningful playoffs.

Smart was mostly being a gracious winner in those comments. He isn't calling out the players. He's pointing out how the bowl system is broken and that FSU was a good team this year, whatever the meaningless bowl score.

We might also treat non-playoff bowl games similar to a pre-season scrimmage. Some fans will still be interestwd. So long as people don't treat the scoreboard as unweighted data about who was actually good this year, it's fine.

narrator: people continued to treat the scoreboard as unweighted data about who was actually good this year

A similar story to the NYT one above about young injuries - the detail about the NFL player (Dave Duerson, mentioned above) who specifically shot himself in the heart so that his brain could be studied wrecked me.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/cte-impact-young-football-players-1234804580/

so, brett favre?

Take pity on a fraud doer w the park

An Alabama A&M football player who suffered a head injury during a game in October has died.

The university announced that linebacker Medrick Burnett Jr. died Tuesday evening, a month after he was injured in the Oct. 26 game against Alabama State. Burnett was 20.

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/42646316/alabama-medrick-burnett-jr-dies-month-head-injury

pic.twitter.com/PwaU8SXxEq

— no context college football (@nocontextcfb) November 28, 2024

welp

"alive"

Slightly unexpected, in that this is illustrated by David Squires -- normally doing (the other kind of) football, this is his first specific one about the American version I can think of:

https://www.theguardian.com/football/ng-interactive/2023/sep/06/david-squires-on-eric-smith-and-the-nfls-toll-on-one-players-mind-and-body

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 11 September 2023 21:30 (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

Just read that, bleak as fuck. The panel with the broken glass as a frame broke me.

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/46389050/gunman-nfl-headquarters-shooting-diagnosed-cte

Rudi Johnson RIP

Nbd, this former NFL player with CTE slaughtered two workers and four members of an extended family.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/us/phillip-adams-cte.html?unlocked_article_code=1.pU8.Qi_d.x7lxPWmfYcl-&smid=url-share

Ban football.

NFL football vs the 2nd Amendment - I’m not sure which is the immovable object and which one is the unstoppable force, or which one is the rock and which one is the hard place, but this is the country we were born in. I’ve tried nothing and I’m all out of ideas.

tbf by this logic, ban cars! and alcohol!

tbf by this logic, ban cars! and alcohol!

a completely voluntary sport that has led to a collective psychosis wherein a national pasttime consists of mostly Black men destroying their bodies and brains for the benefits of billionaire owners and idiot fans only to be left high and dry when they are too broken? sure exactly like driving a car or drinking alcohol.

Ban football.

I'd agree with banning full contact football for kids. This paragraph disgusted me:

In Rock Hill, tackle football starts at age 7.

“Your son, who’s 7 now, looks so adorable and real cute in that jersey and huge pants,” Katie said. “But you know what could happen? That 7-year-old could turn 32 and walk a quarter of a mile down the road and kill six people. That’s the danger of football.”

The NFL has changed a lot even since 2015 which was Adams' last year in the NFL. I think it will be a while before we see whether these safety measures pan out - especially considering some kids may already have been seriously concussed multiple times before they ever even make the NFL.

Nah, this is the contemporary Coliseum and the players are the gladiators, it's barbaric and ridiculous, ban football.

No that's MMA

remember that slap fight league that dana white or whoever started, i think they had to stop because literally EVERYONE was getting concussed every time (surprise).

The slap fight league is still going but it's such a gross freak show to 99.9% of the population that it got cancelled from TV and moved to Youtube. Pretty sure it's surviving as a money laundering deal for the Saudi PIF at this point.

not on board with paternalistic moralizing about football, though

said like a true Texan

is it paternalistic moralizing if it is 100% true?

If you accept my premises completely am I not right?!?!

But yes, your posts would still be paternalistic if they were 100% true.

cool, people are dying terrible deaths and harming others because of a sociopathic commitment to a violent game. ban football.

i've noticed more players than ever wearing guardian caps during games this year. it still only seems like a few guys on each team but i think the stigma around them -- that they look stupid -- appears to be wearing off slowly. i think there is some data suggesting that they have helped prevent concussions in practice settings (altho teams also practice far less and less hard than they used to) but will be years obv before we have any hard data on how they may be helping in full game settings

however there is something about the mental environment of football and how it requires you to dehumanize the individual in front of you in order to physically punish him that is not the same in other sports and probably leads to people who are otherwise prone to violence succeeding in football where they may not otherwise be able to in other sports or walks of life. tyreek hill's reaction to having his leg torn apart the other night -- smiling and laughter -- felt dark and sociopathic to me given his history as a domestic abuser

his response while on the cart was odd and sorta disturbing to me, too. beyond brave cheerful acceptance into weird thirsty celebration. was he impaired? was he glad to be relieved of some greater suffering inherent to his role in regular play? was he misunderstanding as to his injury? i didn’t/don’t get it.

its a pretty normal reaction to finding out you don't have to play for the Dolphins anymore

not gonna judge a dude who was clearly in shock (and maybe on morphine) for being weird on his likely final exit from football theater.

but yeah of course ill judge him for his past as a scumbag

i just looked for and saw the posterior vs the lateral cam view of that. now i am embarrassed that i was the one lacking understanding of the incident. whoa, ok.