TROLL WARNING: FOOTBALL MORE DANGEROUS THAN CYCLING?

[Andre Jute]

TROLL WARNING FOR THE HABITUAL MOUTH-FOAMERS AND OTHER DEMOCRATS ON RBT: The reference article is not only from NATIONAL REVIEW but it MENTIONS TRICYCLE HELMETS:

As Brain Injuries Increase, National Enthusiasm for Football Fades
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/451034/nfl-concussions-cast-doubt-footballs-future

Actually, the article concludes quite the opposite to the headline. The tagline gives a fairer summary: "The head-injury epidemic in the NFL has changed what was once a beloved pastime into a spectacle that degrades its viewers."

Maybe we should send Krygowski over to the NFL to hector people on how safe football is.

Andre Jute
Reformed jokkel

[DougC]

Semi-related:
the game of US-style football is very popular with US schools, all the
way down to the high-school level (ages 14 to 18). In any typical
school, the football program is typically the most expensive athletic
team the schools have.

Even at my own high school, football is the most funded program. The
football field has lighting for night games, bleachers complete with
heated & air-conditioned press boxes, and its own storage sheds for the
equipment used to maintain the turf. There is an asphalt jogging track
around the football field, but nothing else gets played on it and no PE
classes are allowed to use it. Even the marching band isn't usually
allowed to practice on it.

Yet roughly ten years ago, the school board decided to remove soda
vending machines because there was studies out that said that "drinking
too much sugary soft drinks might be bad for children".

I can't help but wonder what discussions the school board has had about
continuing a sport that occasionally leads to concussions (even in high
school players) and that seems to be a pretty reliable path to CTE and
suicide roughly 1/3 of the way through a normal life. --Even if it might
get you a really good scholarship into a college when you graduate.

I suspect it's going to take a few high-dollar liability lawsuits from
student parents to kill high-school football in the US. Just from a
financial aspect, the most-expensive-per-player athletic program is the
one that makes the most sense to end when a school suddenly doesn't have
nearly as much money as they did before.

US high schools will look odd when football finally dies.
It won't bother me however.
And it's not like there wasn't a good reason for ending it.

[Doug Landau]

BMX tracks? skateramps