What is the future of football?

[Orion]

It's going to have to change  -  IMO.

Indications are now that just banging your head around at non concussion levels is enough to cause brain damage.  

One would have to assume that with that knowledge being known more mothers & fathers are going to keep their kids from playing the game as youngsters.  And they're going to more fervently persuade them against playing the game as they get older.  This will lessen the supply of players in the pipeline, over time.  And I would suspect more players will retire from the game earlier.  - I mean, just look at Myles Garrett, he called 'concussion' on himself and didn't play for a couple of weeks (was it 2?  or more?  I forget).  That's something that's light years different from not all that long ago when they gave players a sniff of smelling salts and sent them back into the game.  

The 'attitude' of the game is changing.  Players hop from team to team (with few exceptions).  It used to be that the players were very much like the fans...rabid fans of the team...they felt the same rivalries as the fans.  Now, with the players union and free agency, it's like they all work for the same supermarket chain, but at different stores....and someday they'll probably transfer to your local store.  -  It's truly a business.   Let me get INTO the business... then chase the money around the league when my rookie contract ends...stockpile my money and get out of the league before my brain gets scrambled.  -  Is that where we're headed in the short term?   And where are we headed beyond that?

 

 

[PoeticG]

8 minutes ago, Orion said:

It's going to have to change  -  IMO.

Indications are now that just banging your head around at non concussion levels is enough to cause brain damage.  

One would have to assume that with that knowledge being known more mothers & fathers are going to keep their kids from playing the game as youngsters.  And they're going to more fervently persuade them against playing the game as they get older.  This will lessen the supply of players in the pipeline, over time.  And I would suspect more players will retire from the game earlier.  - I mean, just look at Myles Garrett, he called 'concussion' on himself and didn't play for a couple of weeks (was it 2?  or more?  I forget).  That's something that's light years different from not all that long ago when they gave players a sniff of smelling salts and sent them back into the game.  

The 'attitude' of the game is changing.  Players hop from team to team (with few exceptions).  It used to be that the players were very much like the fans...rabid fans of the team...they felt the same rivalries as the fans.  Now, with the players union and free agency, it's like they all work for the same supermarket chain, but at different stores....and someday they'll probably transfer to your local store.  -  It's truly a business.   Let me get INTO the business... then chase the money around the league when my rookie contract ends...stockpile my money and get out of the league before my brain gets scrambled.  -  Is that where we're headed in the short term?   And where are we headed beyond that?

 

 

Maybe the solution could be to, oh... I'm afraid to type it because it may be worth billions... oh, the dilemma! 

[PoeticG]

Oh damn, somebody already thought of it I guess, here it is. This is probably the solution- at least short term. Here's the story and the link... https://www.sciencenews.org/article/magnets-helmets-might-make-football-safer

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Adding magnets to football helmets could reduce the risk of concussions, new research suggests. When two players collide, the magnets in their helmets would repel each other, reducing the force of the collision.

“All helmet design companies and manufacturers have the same approach, which is to try to disperse the impact energy after the impact’s already occurred,” neuroscientist Raymond Colello said November 15 at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

The magnets, he says, would put a brake on the impact before it happens.

The idea hasn’t been tested yet in helmets with real players, said Judy Cameron, a neuroscientist at the University of Pittsburgh. “But a lot of thought has gone into it, and the data that was shown about the ability of the magnets to actually repel each other looked extremely promising.” 

On the field, football players can run at nearly 20 miles per hour and can experience up to 150 g’s of force upon impact. Concussions readily occur at impacts greater than 100 g’s. Every year there are 100,000 concussions at all levels of play among the nearly 1.2 million people who play football in the United States.

Colello, of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, is testing magnets made in China from the rare-earth element neodymium. They are the most powerful commercially available magnets and weigh about one-third of a pound each (football helmets weigh from 3.5 to 5.5 pounds). When placed one-fourth of an inch away from each other, two magnets with their same poles face-to-face exert nearly 100 pounds of repulsive force.

Colello tested his magnets with the same procedure that the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment uses to evaluate football helmets. He placed magnets on the front of a weight and let it drop from various heights onto another magnet. The heights Colello tested (between 6 inches and 4 feet) represent the impact forces athletes normally experience on the playing field.

“At 48 inches, if you dropped a standard helmet and it hit a stationary object, it would create 120 g’s of force,” says Colello. “With the magnets we drop that below 100 g’s.”

The magnets would complement existing helmet safety features. Colello speculates that adding magnets to a helmet would raise the price by $50 to $100. (Professional helmets today can cost several hundred dollars.) Amateur players, who will not experience impacts as crushing as pros do, could use helmets with cheaper, less powerful magnets.

Though the magnets do attract metallic objects, the National Football League prohibits athletes from wearing jewelry during games. Another safety concern is whether the magnets are dangerous to have near human heads. Colello says that a 30 minute- to one-hour MRI procedure produces magnetic fields 10 to 30 times as strong as those in helmet magnets.

Colello is now awaiting customized arc-shaped magnets that can be fitted inside helmets so he can begin field-testing them. First he will run crash-test dummy heads donning the helmets on a zip line; when the heads collide, accelerometers will measure the linear and rotational forces caused by the impact.

If the magnets make it through field tests, they could theoretically reduce the relative risk of concussions by up to 80 percent without changing the appearance or intensity of the game, Colello says.

 

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[Orion]

Interesting.  But they'll need magnets in the field, players knee pads and shoulder pads.

[Dutch Oven]

[mjp28]

When you just look at the current established CTE data it doesn't look good for tackle football.

Out of 111 former NFL player brains voluntarily donated for autopsies  110 showed signs of CTE and as time goes on those autopsies will grow.

I wouldn't be investing my money into professional football in the near future, and public multi-billion dollar facilities who knows?

And latest studies seem to show it's the hits not just concussions that are the problem. 

 

 

[The Gipper]

11 hours ago, Orion said:

It's going to have to change  -  IMO.

Indications are now that just banging your head around at non concussion levels is enough to cause brain damage.  

One would have to assume that with that knowledge being known more mothers & fathers are going to keep their kids from playing the game as youngsters.  And they're going to more fervently persuade them against playing the game as they get older.  This will lessen the supply of players in the pipeline, over time.  And I would suspect more players will retire from the game earlier.  - I mean, just look at Myles Garrett, he called 'concussion' on himself and didn't play for a couple of weeks (was it 2?  or more?  I forget).  That's something that's light years different from not all that long ago when they gave players a sniff of smelling salts and sent them back into the game.  

The 'attitude' of the game is changing.  Players hop from team to team (with few exceptions).  It used to be that the players were very much like the fans...rabid fans of the team...they felt the same rivalries as the fans.  Now, with the players union and free agency, it's like they all work for the same supermarket chain, but at different stores....and someday they'll probably transfer to your local store.  -  It's truly a business.   Let me get INTO the business... then chase the money around the league when my rookie contract ends...stockpile my money and get out of the league before my brain gets scrambled.  -  Is that where we're headed in the short term?   And where are we headed beyond that?

 

 

Why?  JUst because OJ now claims that he is suffering from CTE?    Why don't we find out for sure:   let's cut his brain open.  We can let Ron Goldman's dad make the first incision.

[The Gipper]

How about if we put all the players in a Hyperloop cannister?

[Orion]

Everyone gets helmets the size of beach balls.....filled with foam.  

The Ghoul wants to do away with the helmet all together.

[mjp28]

1 hour ago, The Gipper said:

Why?  JUst because OJ now claims that he is suffering from CTE?    Why don't we find out for sure:   let's cut his brain open.  We can let Ron Goldman's dad make the first incision.

I'm sure that would be "must see TV" 

Sadly though the list of tragic stories continues to grow over time, Iron Mike Webster, Ken Stabler, Junior Seau and many, many others over time paint a bad picture of one of our favorite pastimes. 

Sad but very true.

[Tour2ma]

2 hours ago, mjp28 said:

Sadly though the list of tragic stories continues to grow over time, Iron Mike Webster, Ken Stabler, Junior Seau and many, many others over time paint a bad picture of one of our favorite pastimes. 

We do not yet know what the future is because we do not yet know the impact that the rules changes to this point will have. Foremost of these is the installation of the concussion protocol.

All the old timers listed "shook it off" and played on. How many sideline shots do you still see in NFL films of grizzled, old players kneeling on the sideline waiving a cracked vial of smelling salts under their nose? That was "treatment" back in the day.

The science of concussive impact and its relationship with CTE is not settled. However, if you play with a concussion, which at its core is a bruised and swollen brain, you lower the impact threshold for compounding the brain injury you originally suffered. That much is understood. That, by and large, has been eliminated.

 

Equipment? Not going to see magnets or more straps or bubble wrap... won't see any outward changes. What we will "see" if monitoring... accelerometers on the headband at the center of the helmet suspension system to monitor players better than they are today. Transponders to send the info in real time.

Other rules? Sure there will be some around permissible contact, but better enforcement of those on the books is most likely.

The one new rule I can see is shortening the game. Everyone complains that they take too long as it is anyway, so shorten the game to 10 minute quarters. This would follow the example of the other major, concussive sport, boxing, which went from 15 round championships to 12 decades ago.

[hoorta]

16 hours ago, Orion said:

It's going to have to change  -  IMO.

Indications are now that just banging your head around at non concussion levels is enough to cause brain damage.  

One would have to assume that with that knowledge being known more mothers & fathers are going to keep their kids from playing the game as youngsters.  And they're going to more fervently persuade them against playing the game as they get older.  This will lessen the supply of players in the pipeline, over time.  And I would suspect more players will retire from the game earlier.  - I mean, just look at Myles Garrett, he called 'concussion' on himself and didn't play for a couple of weeks (was it 2?  or more?  I forget).  That's something that's light years different from not all that long ago when they gave players a sniff of smelling salts and sent them back into the game.  

The 'attitude' of the game is changing.  Players hop from team to team (with few exceptions).  It used to be that the players were very much like the fans...rabid fans of the team...they felt the same rivalries as the fans.  Now, with the players union and free agency, it's like they all work for the same supermarket chain, but at different stores....and someday they'll probably transfer to your local store.  -  It's truly a business.   Let me get INTO the business... then chase the money around the league when my rookie contract ends...stockpile my money and get out of the league before my brain gets scrambled.  -  Is that where we're headed in the short term?   And where are we headed beyond that?

 

The answer? Zombo (and maybe Gipper) -  aren't going to like it. You're seeing it already- SOCCER.  We're slowly catching up to the rest of the world. Youth soccer was unheard of in my teen years back in the 60s- and take a look at it now.  If you have an interest, you can catch the Premier League on the tube. Back then, Pele (the Jim Brown of soccer) was a curiosity. Super Bowl viewership worldwide pales in comparison to the World Cup final. I have no doubt with the level of kids playing now the good old USA will take it's rightful place and be challenging for the World Cup down the road- we already have some elite players, just not enough currently. Some kids (and smart parents) have figured out if you're good enough at the sport- you can haul in more loot than any football or basketball player. The top 10 paid soccer players all make more than $20 million. Cousins' $28 million a year pales in comparison to Ronaldo's $50 million, and he pulls in another $15 million in endorsements on top of that. 

Sure there's head to head collisions- but they're rare. I'd guess getting hit in the head by a shot at the pro level is concussion territory. LOL, maybe they should be wearing helmets too?  

[Tour2ma]

Also already seeing in soccer? A prohibition on headers in youth leagues and in practicing headers at higher levels.

[Richiswhere]

NFL is just the end game

[LionOfBuddha]

Soccer will take over. 

Football is going to slowly die as parents won’t sign their kids up for it.

Then there will need to be an outdoor fall sport to replace the void, with Spanish soon to be the most spoken language in this country, it’s a no brainer

[DieHardBrownsFan]

Pussification of football will be its demise.  Poor kiddies.

[gumby73]

 

I see London.I see France. Roger Goodell can kiss our A$$  

[TexasAg1969]

24 minutes ago, DieHardBrownsFan said:

Pussification of football will be its demise. 

I just don't see the problem!

 

[hoorta]

44 minutes ago, DieHardBrownsFan said:

Pussification of football will be its demise.  Poor kiddies.

But there will still be MMA if you want real violence.    

[Orion]

I'm pretty sure that whacking a fast moving soccer ball with your head is NOT gonna be good for your brain.  The elimination of the header is in soccer's future.

[mjp28]

6 hours ago, Tour2ma said:

We do not yet know what the future is because we do not yet know the impact that the rules changes to this point will have. Foremost of these is the installation of the concussion protocol.

All the old timers listed "shook it off" and played on. How many sideline shots do you still see in NFL films of grizzled, old players kneeling on the sideline waiving a cracked vial of smelling salts under their nose? That was "treatment" back in the day.

The science of concussive impact and its relationship with CTE is not settled.........

.........This would follow the example of the other major, concussive sport, boxing, which went from 15 round championships to 12 decades ago.

True we have to see how things play out from here including rule adaptation and any possible improvements in helmet and other technology. 

On boxing I remember that well, my dad was a club fighter and fought in the NAVY during the WWII era. (before my time) he got out.  I used to watch fights on TV with him in the late 1950s, 1960s, a friend of his post WWII was a top 10 heavyweight and later was nicknamed "punchie" and died early from complications of dimmencia. 

Heavyweights in particular could be out on their feet after 12 rounds, guys like Ali paid a price for that.

[TexasAg1969]

5 minutes ago, mjp28 said:

True we have to see how things play out from here including rule adaptation and any possible improvements in helmet and other technology. 

On boxing I remember that well, my dad was a club fighter and fought in the NAVY during the WWII era. (before my time) he got out.  I used to watch fights on TV with him in the late 1950s, 1960s, a friend of his post WWII was a top 10 heavyweight and later was nicknamed "punchie" and died early from complications of dimmencia. 

Heavyweights in particular could be out on their feet after 12 rounds, guys like Ali paid a price for that.

Some of Joe's left hooks were not truly appreciated until many years later. Ali took some wicked shots from Smokin' Joe.

[Orion]

Who knew that boxing wasn't going to be good for your brain?!  

[Ghoolie]

23 hours ago, PoeticG said:

Oh damn, somebody already thought of it I guess, here it is. This is probably the solution- at least short term. Here's the story and the link... https://www.sciencenews.org/article/magnets-helmets-might-make-football-safer

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Adding magnets to football helmets could reduce the risk of concussions, new research suggests. When two players collide, the magnets in their helmets would repel each other, reducing the force of the collision.

“All helmet design companies and manufacturers have the same approach, which is to try to disperse the impact energy after the impact’s already occurred,” neuroscientist Raymond Colello said November 15 at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

The magnets, he says, would put a brake on the impact before it happens.

The idea hasn’t been tested yet in helmets with real players, said Judy Cameron, a neuroscientist at the University of Pittsburgh. “But a lot of thought has gone into it, and the data that was shown about the ability of the magnets to actually repel each other looked extremely promising.” 

On the field, football players can run at nearly 20 miles per hour and can experience up to 150 g’s of force upon impact. Concussions readily occur at impacts greater than 100 g’s. Every year there are 100,000 concussions at all levels of play among the nearly 1.2 million people who play football in the United States.

Colello, of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, is testing magnets made in China from the rare-earth element neodymium. They are the most powerful commercially available magnets and weigh about one-third of a pound each (football helmets weigh from 3.5 to 5.5 pounds). When placed one-fourth of an inch away from each other, two magnets with their same poles face-to-face exert nearly 100 pounds of repulsive force.

Colello tested his magnets with the same procedure that the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment uses to evaluate football helmets. He placed magnets on the front of a weight and let it drop from various heights onto another magnet. The heights Colello tested (between 6 inches and 4 feet) represent the impact forces athletes normally experience on the playing field.

“At 48 inches, if you dropped a standard helmet and it hit a stationary object, it would create 120 g’s of force,” says Colello. “With the magnets we drop that below 100 g’s.”

The magnets would complement existing helmet safety features. Colello speculates that adding magnets to a helmet would raise the price by $50 to $100. (Professional helmets today can cost several hundred dollars.) Amateur players, who will not experience impacts as crushing as pros do, could use helmets with cheaper, less powerful magnets.

Though the magnets do attract metallic objects, the National Football League prohibits athletes from wearing jewelry during games. Another safety concern is whether the magnets are dangerous to have near human heads. Colello says that a 30 minute- to one-hour MRI procedure produces magnetic fields 10 to 30 times as strong as those in helmet magnets.

Colello is now awaiting customized arc-shaped magnets that can be fitted inside helmets so he can begin field-testing them. First he will run crash-test dummy heads donning the helmets on a zip line; when the heads collide, accelerometers will measure the linear and rotational forces caused by the impact.

If the magnets make it through field tests, they could theoretically reduce the relative risk of concussions by up to 80 percent without changing the appearance or intensity of the game, Colello says.

 

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ABSOLUTELY ASININE. Magnets WILL NOT REDUCE JACK SCHIDT. The force of the impact will merely be transfered to the neck via torque, making it easier on the head, yeah, but horrible on the upper spinal column.

Fuktards. No need to test this stupidity.

[Orion]

48 minutes ago, Ghoolie said:

ABSOLUTELY ASININE. Magnets WILL NOT REDUCE JACK SCHIDT.

I should think that 'in theory' they WOULD reduce the stress of impact...to some small degree, as a repulsing magnetic field is not a static solid object.  There should be 'some' slow down and not a sudden stop.

[hoorta]

56 minutes ago, Orion said:

I should think that 'in theory' they WOULD reduce the stress of impact...to some small degree, as a repulsing magnetic field is not a static solid object.  There should be 'some' slow down and not a sudden stop.

Did a little research- Neodymium magnets (strongest available) are certainly small enough, but putting them in helmets- look out! Besides, anyone that's played with magnets knows they have both an attractive and repulsive force.  You couldn't put a helmet possessing enough magnetism to do any good anywhere near something made out of steel- um, like a locker? 

I will tell a story of our favorite fun with magnets game in college. One of my roommates was in Electrical Engineering Technology and managed to get hold of an extremely high Gauss magnet. Want to play some pinball? That silver ball is never going to drain.  Playing Time Tunnel, you could just keep shooting the ball into the magic tunnel, back to start, rack up millions of points & dozens of  free games- then take the magnet off and play all night on your quarter.  Problem was- we eventually magnetized the ball which made the game sort of interesting.   

[nickers]

Don't worry.. in 5 years GOD-del is gonna rename it the P.F.L...Pussy-Fied -League.

[calfoxwc]

I thought water-lined helmets were designed for somebody years ago as an experiment.

Larry Csonka?

anyways, they are working on a safer helmet.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-football-concussion/florida-researchers-developing-football-helmets-to-reduce-concussions-idUSBREA071IH20140108

magnets. I would think that if they did work, it would lead to serious neck injuries....

[jcam222]

I suspect that the CTE reports grossly exaggerate the rate of occurrence. More importantly the "symptoms" can be driven by a host of other issues as well. Rage, depression, drug addiction, alcohol abuse, many of those can also be driven by being predisposed and on top of that years of steroid and pain pill abuse. I'm not suggesting that CTE doesn't cause issues, simply saying there is no direct correlation. It would be interesting to see data comparing rates of those symptoms in a larger data set of players vs. the general population. Here's a good article. https://www.google.com/amp/amp.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/07/the_press_is_overhyping_the_latest_study_on_cte_in_the_nfl.html

[Tour2ma]

 

8 hours ago, hoorta said:

Besides, anyone that's played with magnets knows they have both an attractive and repulsive force. 

lol... could bring a whole new meaning to "drawing the defense offsides."

But seriously... if hits from one direction are repulsed, then...

36 minutes ago, calfoxwc said:

magnets. I would think that if they did work, it would lead to serious neck injuries....

Bingo... could rival some of the worst facemask grabs ever seen.