Movies like Concussion do not help
Lots of injuries
Less kids playing
What does this mean?
Lots of injuries
Less kids playing
What does this mean?
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Means the CFL will take over in 5 years
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We all grew up playing sports and we all are perfectly fine. This country has grown to overreact to everything. Do sports have risk of injury, yes, but kids get hurt playing with their friends and siblings everyday. If you took away everything your kid could hurt themselves with they wouldn't have much of a life now would they? I am all for trying to find ways to make sports as safe as possible but it's getting alittle much. Let's just all shelter our kids so they spend all their time sitting indoors playing playstation getting fat while learning nothing about teamwork and setting goals. I am glad I am not a 9 year old in this day and age because it's a joke. A parent that grew up playing football telling their kid they can't play because it is too dangerous is like an alcoholic parent who tells their kid they shouldn't drink.Comment -
If the players are worse all around, then won't really notice much of a difference. May get a few more dominant players, and older guys may be able to play longer as the younger guys aren't as good.Comment -
Interesting, could be the economy?
From a personal point of view, why would anyone want to play sports at a professional level knowing that you have to be a drug cheat to be successful?Comment -
The NFL will be obsolete within 20 years.
Everyone's brain is turning to mush. You'd have to be insane to want to play.
Only a matter of time until someone dies on the field. In the meantime, everyone else will just lose their memory and drink out of sippy cups.Comment -
Exactly.Comment -
No
All the ghetto kids have no other way outComment -
Simply weeding out the ones who shouldn't be there to begin with. It's also a result of the parenting going on these days. Telling kids they have gluten allergies or allergic to grass or picking them up and rubbing their legs if they trip and fall.Comment -
Grandkid is a superstar looking forward to playing for mich st,Comment -
Arizona Cardinals coach Bruce Arians again made it clear that he believes parents should allow their kids to play college football, telling a group of high school coaches that football is being attacked my moms.
Making an appearance as the keynote speaker at a coaching clinic Friday, Arians said that it is the job of people involved in football to let moms know that football can be played in a way that head injuries can be minimized.
“We feel like this is our sport. It's being attacked, and we got to stop it at the grass roots,” he said via NBC 12. “It's the best game that's ever been f------ invented, and we got to make sure that moms get the message, because that's who's afraid of our game right now. It's not dads, it's moms.
“Our job is to make sure the game is safe, at all levels. The head really has no business being in the game. There's a lot of different teachers, but when I was taught how to tackle, and how to block, it was on a two-man sled. You did it with your shoulder pads. That's still the best way to do it.”
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Arians' embarrassing himself.Comment -
If I was a 7th or 8th grade teacher, I would show the movie Concussion every year.Comment -
Less white Americans or less black Americans?
That is the real question.Comment -
Will Smith the real winner hereComment -
300 lb fat dudes love the sport because they can pulverize people, no sense in
playing football for free, and grants are free, sports scholarships are dumb anyways
because its a school, not a franchise.
I was bored with the sport last year.
ANd these teams seem to lose on purpose
Like the Cleveland Browns signing rg3 and of course they will go 4-12 next year
And teams signing Mark Sanchez,
and Tebow not playing qb in the chip kelly offense, which makes more sense.
ANd Phillip Rivers at qb in sd for a decade and gates at te, a weak offensive line
and secondary, same stuff for 10 years.
And the dramatics, and political agendas, and on and on
The rules are so stupid now, extra point rule is dumb, overtime rules are dumb,
they kick off w a small ball and moved up 5 yards so no one would get tackled on a return.
The media castigation of AP was a bad thing to witness.
Its a dumb game, because you can tear your acl on any given day, then surgery,
than rehab for a year.Comment -
kids from the hoods will always play a chance at getting out
Some whites will fade away from itComment -
It will help baseball in 10 years. I see a lot of black kids at the batting cages and after talking to parents they told me they don't want their kids playing football because of concussions.Comment -
this may be the most ridiculous comment ever. We are not all perfectly fine. Guys are killing themselves and going crazy. Randle-el can't walk straight up a staircase. He has to walk sideways. Guys are going crazy and beating their wives. Get your head out of your ass pal. As much as we are entertained by football the truth is that it is incredibly unhealthy and not meant for humans as we see it today. They are now trying to legislate hard hits out of the game but it is impossible to do. Guys are dying and this jerkoff gets on here spouting we are all fine lol. And an alcoholic parent would have every right to tell his child not to drink as said alcoholic parent has probably seen the perils of that life and would be a great authority to warn against it.Comment -
It has to impact certain field positions right? Its something we should see the effects of 20 years from now. There is definitely a movement happening. They are starting to attribute depression and even murders to head injuries. Some scientists predict the number of concussions will dictate the likelihood you develop Alzheimers.
In youth soccer, they started banning headers for kids under 11 and some clubs are going up to 13. Thats a pretty big deal. Something like 20% of goals are headed in at pro level.Comment -
I have coached youth football for 15 years in Texas and I can honestly say the game is changing. We are definitely seeing a decrease in the number of kids that come out. My oldest son plays college ball and they recently did away with their annual Spring game. Many colleges are doing the same. I love football but things are changing fast. I am scared for the game I love but happy that they are trying to make it safer.Comment -
No. As long as millions are offered people will play. End of threadComment -
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Its already happened! Remember Jack Tatum's vicious hit on Darryl Stingley. Mike Utley an offensive lineman for the lions was permanently paralyzed while playing the Rams in 1991. Quite a few others have been temporarily paralyzed and ended up in a wheelchairs like Bryd of the Jets. Nothing will stop football as long as money is involved. Boxers have died, did it stop that sport? Come on man, MONEY!!Comment -
"Football is on trial. Because I believe in the game, I want to do all I can to save it." -- President Theodore Roosevelt, 1905"We will get our house in order." -- NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, 2014
Football in America has been on the brink of extinction for a century — or so we've been told.
In the early 1900s, fans worried that the fledgling sport's violence — 19 college players died in 1905, leading then-President Theodore Roosevelt to convene a football summit — would destroy the game. And in recent decades, we've been told once again how violence, this time in the form of concussions, would kill the game.
The "football is doomed" prognostications reached their zenith this past fall as the National Football League stepped on one rake after another, bungling a handful of domestic violence cases and appearing woefully incompetent, corrupt, and evil. Appalled, football fans and writers talked of an NFL boycott, or insisted they would swear off the league for good. In a September Sports Illustrated survey, only 28.5 percent of respondents said Goodell should keep his job. Just weeks into the 2014 season, a popular bar stool topic was not whether the NFL could survive, but when it would die.
And yet, the NFL did not melt into a puddle of testosterone and Bud Light.
Viewership this season was nearly identical to last year's record numbers, with an average of 21.3 million people tuning in to watch Sunday Night Football. The league's five most-watched seasons have now all come in the last five years. And underscoring the NFL's absolute dominance over sports television, 37 of the 50 most-viewed sporting events last year were NFL games, including 19 of the top 20.
Still, the NFL's would-be undertakers warn that the NFL is untenable going forward for two main reasons: increased awareness of football's health risks, and the league's gross mismanagement.
On the surface, there is indeed some evidence to suggest football will struggle as concerned parents steer their children toward other sports. A host of current and former NFL stars have said they won't let their children play. So, too, have other famous faces like LeBron James and Mark Cuban.
Of course, anecdotal evidence is no indicator of national consensus. So what about statistical proof?
In a Bloomberg survey from December, half of all respondents said they wouldn't let their kids play football; only 22 percent believed the sport would be more popular in two decades than it is now. Moreover, the number of children between the ages of six and 18 playing football fell by 5.4 percent from 2008 to 2012, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.
However, the decline in football participation was actually smaller than those for soccer (7.1 percent), baseball (7.2 percent), and basketball (8.3 percent). It's also dubious that concussions are the reason for football's downturn, given that hockey participation exploded by an astounding 64 percent over the same period. More likely, the decline could be the result of increased specialization among young athletes, as Fortune's Bob Cook explained, with kids nowadays focusing on one sport they're good at instead of several.
As for the NFL's image problem, the latest viewership numbers shred that theory. That's particularly salient when you consider that women are the NFL's fastest-growing viewership group, and that ratings continued to soaramong that demographic this year. "If You Care About Women and Still Support the NFL, You Are a Hypocrite," Jezebel proclaimed last September. Millions of women, it seems, would disagree with that assessment.
Time and again, football fans have been quick to forgive — or at least forget — the NFL's failings. Remember Bountygate, or the vile homophobia and racism of the Miami Dolphins' hazing scandal? Both prompted musings about the demise of football, though neither in the end nudged the NFL toward the graveyard.
ESPN's Bill Simmons exemplified this tendency toward absolution last year at the height of the NFL's firestorm.
"This league sucks. I don't even want it in my life," he said. But, he went on, "It'll be one good Patriots game [and] I'll be back in."
The Patriots have had many good games since then.
A common error among those asserting the NFL is on the wane is the conflation of elite discontent for popular revolt. Though journalists and talking heads are often fairly critical of the NFL, they're hardly representative of the general public.
In this light, former Commissioner Paul Tagliabue wasn't necessarily wrong in asserting, two decades ago, that concussions were merely a "pack journalism issue." Sure, he was covering the league's butt by dismissing a true epidemic. Yet ratings continued to soar, proving fans would tune in despite football's dangers — and the league's blatant refusal to admit it had a serious problem on its hands.
That disconnect also underscores why football is not about to run out of willing and able bodies. Returning to that Bloomberg poll, the college-educated and financially well-to-do were by far the most likely demographics to say they'd bar their kids from football. The opposite was true on the other end of the demographic spectrum, indicating that, as Will Leitch put it, "Just as the wealthy will always have people to fight their wars for them, they will always have people to play football for them."
The NFL is simply too big to fail. Despite bungling multiple domestic violence cases that revealed the league's callousness and ineptitude, the NFL had its best year ever in 2014, from a business standpoint. With only hollow paeans and some self-serving Band-Aids, Goodell resuscitated his image and that of the league, earning him fawning praise and a nomination for Time's person of the year. If he and the league can weather that mess, what can't they overcome?
The Super Bowl is primed to once again shatter ratings records next month. And despite all the predictions of doom, the NFL is poised to keep shrugging off tackles as it high-steps into the future.
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Wow, I didnt know about him. Its probably more common that we know yet. It seems like once they get to that level of messed up, suicide is most likely like Junior Seau.
We have a death in MMA today.Comment
