The Origins of the Concussion Crisis | Patrick Kelly
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 31 май 2024
- If you follow American football, you’ve probably heard of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and the risk of concussions. It’s no surprise that football is dangerous, but I was curious as to how much of a “crisis” the concussion crisis is. When did it start? How did we learn about it?
0:00 Storytime
1:45 Antiquity
2:23 Part 1: Asylums and Mental Institution Research
5:23 Part 2: The World Wars and Boxing
11:07 Part 3: American Football's Original Concussion Crisis
16:08 Part 4: CTE and the Modern Crisis
19:35 Part 5: The Future
21:35 Part 6: Is Football Bad?
☠️NONE OF THE INFORMATION IN THIS VIDEO SHOULD BE USED AS MEDICAL ADVICE OR OPINION. IT IS FOR GENERAL EDUCATION AND ENTERTAINMENT☠️
🔗 L I N K S 🔗
📱Instagram: / patkellyteaches
🐦Twitter: / patkellyteaches
💰Patreon: / corporis
🔬Main channel: / corporis
📜 S O U R C E S 📜
A line-by-line, fact checked version of the script can be found here. You do not have to be a Patron to view:
/ vaccine-script-48256662
💻 C O N T A C T 💻
If you’d like to sponsor a video or have other business inquiries:
patkellyteaches [at] gmail.com
#historyofmedicine #medicalhistory
I'm a big baseball history fan, I've read 100's of books on baseball. When I was reading about 19th century players I noticed a lot of them had committed suicide, and in truly awful ways like drinking acid. After a while I realized that most of these players were catchers, and this was when they used no protective equipment at all. I haven't seen any specific studies or articles about it but I figured it must have been due to getting hit in the head so much.
That's interesting, -- I didn't know that about catchers. I mentioned it briefly in the video, but the motivation for studying head injuries has changed depending on the time frame (19th Century focused on asylum patients, then soldiers, then boxing, then football). I wonder if these baseball players didn't get the attention because other head injuries took priority in the research.
Excuse me sir, I'm a huge HOUSE MD fan (I have ADHD I'm sorry if this doesn't connect)
Tau and Dr Taub not a coincidence - he gets Alzheimer's for sure! But it's ok because both of his baby mamas left him with the same named kid- they are both named Sophie Sophia OMG
Dr Foreman being a mind F like the foreman magnum 🤷🏼♀️
I think House= Eric Clapton because of the false God complex and all of the addiction stuff.
Mahalo
@@ashleelarsen5002That took me a minute to decipher because it was posted as a reply to an unrelated comment haha. I also have ADHD, so I kinda get it though lol
@@ashleelarsen5002House, HOLMES.
I thought it was Doctor Amallu(mssp?) was the man who coined the term Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.
Having spent a lot of time around a D1 college football team I can say the most inhumane thing about football is the money and opportunities it can bring people. Students who would never have been admitted to a R1 research school through traditional pathways or pay to move to America to attend school could because of football scholarships. To see them get hurt, or concussed, while working so hard to make the opportunity “worth it” (while not getting paid) was difficult. The NFL has responsibility to protect its players, but the NCAA has an even greater responsibility to protect the young adults it turns into players. Unfortunately, without major change it will continue profiting off of them instead of protecting them.
What about HS?
Man who would have thought that damage to the primary organ that allows your body to function is bad. That shit is just unreal.
I have also wondered, in all honesty, if the fact that athletes are bigger and stronger now than they used to be has some effect on the frequency and severity of head injuries. When I was younger, it was rare to find an NFL lineman who weighed much more than 250-260 lbs. Now, it's rare to find an offensive lineman or a defensive tackle who weighs less than 300 lbs. More size and strength = more hitting power, and yet I would bet that the ability of the human head to withstand impact has not increased accordingly.
I’ve only had one concussion, but it’s made my life harder. I got traumatic brain injury from it, and it can be hard for me to find common words, speech is slurred and I’m a lot more irritable 😞
Sorry brother
Intuitively I don’t think American football is likely to die off, but to be honest if it gains a similar reputation to something like boxing, the kind of sport where brain injury is more of a foregone conclusion than a potential risk, it could die not from public outcry or regulation, but just because not enough people are signing up to fill dozens of teams
In Cliff Stohl's book, "Why things bite back", he mentions the move to protect American football players head, starting with leather then to hard helmets, but resulted in more severe injuries due to the players using the protection as an offensive weapon.
That's a similar argument to padded gloves in boxing. If it was bare knuckle hitting someone In the head hurts and could break finger bones.
People are also less careful when protected, they think they're safer when in actually for example the football helmet can't stop your brain from smacking into your skull, it can only protect the outside of the skull. I never really thought about that and it makes a lot of sense
Yeah but people actually died on the field before helmets. Long-term impacts aside people don't die on the field like ever anymore. Although rugby seems to do just fine without helmets though the game Flow is different
@@chicken29843 maybe it's better to die than to get so many TBIs you end up in a murder suicide plot involving your family.
@@chicken29843 rugby does not involve smashing the opponents head as hard as possible using your own head. They come down really hard on head injuries
This is the best lecture on CTE I have head. Unfortunately, the problem in football will get worse. Today”s players are markedly bigger ( I read about a 500 pound pro), faster, and hit much harder than even twenty years ago. The number of regular as well as micro concussions will go up simply because of the marked increase of concussive impact from these larger, stronger, faster athletes.
Well, lots of football players have very thick skulls.
@@brucealanwilson4121 your skull wont protect you from a concussion
@@karlvalteroja4675 It depends on how hard & thick it is. Most football players I know have heads VERY hard & VERY thick.
Giving my 2 cents from Brazil:
Football is definitely hanging on over the next two decades, but it will change a bunch and (hopefully) become safer for players, especially as more research gets done on the harmful effects of cumulative subconcussive damage.
Still, as they've done in the past, NFL will do their best to discredit any research that threatens their business, so it'll take a lot longer than necessary for the necessary changes to happen.
A Brazilian calling America Football just "Football". I thought this was illegal outside of the states based on how many times we get corrected when talking about it by international soccer fans. 🤣
My problem is that how can you really be this mad about football when there's like boxing which would seem seemingly worse, now getting rid of youth tackle football I'm totally for.
@@chicken29843I would say that as people live longer (and so the harms of repeated head injuries in their youth years becomes more evident in their later years) and as we get better at actually seeing that these head injuries did, indeed (and not just theoretically), result in harms for these athletes, we should extend our safety regulations to protect football players.
Of course, as you point out, boxing is far worse, and I for one would be very reluctant to allow a child of mine to partake in boxing.
@@chicken29843a lot fewer people involved in boxing.
If you want tackle, switch to rugby. Rugby players don't get it nearly qs often as gridiron players.
I’ve had 1 concussion and it was a doozy (bounced my forehead off a concrete floor during a slip and fall). #1 is it knocked my so unconscious that I peed my pants. And #2 is it was and still is the weirdest feeling ever. The best analogy I can think of is when a lightbulb is on but it’s not getting anywhere near the correct voltage. So it just glows a dim red but doesn’t put off much useful light. That’s you brain on blunt force trauma🙃
I've taken quite a few hits to the head, both as a kid and a young adult - with the hardest I can remember being when I was about 7 or 8 during a very rough and competitive game of capture the flag. Split into boy/girl teams, with the boys occupying the rocky waterfall by the lake and girls occupying the small bamboo forest. One of the boys in defence was throwing rocks at the attacking girls. Most dodged in time or only got scathed limbs, but one about the size of my head managed to hit me directly on the front right side of my head. I just remember curling up in pain under one of the tables back at my friend's house nearby and my whole face pounding anytime I tried to move it too much (to smile, laugh, etc.).
It took so long for the pain to die down that I just got used to not smiling. What was weirder was that my whole personality and attitude just became a lot more serious and subdued. Though, it's hard to say how much of that would've been due to the concussion and how much was due to sociological factors (when I was more, spontaneous, bubbly and unusually friendly / open, i.e. didn't mask, other kids often disliked it and would make fun of me for it) and how I react to things as an autistic person.
This is also somewhat of a sidenote, but after taking a look into long term lead exposure and early childhood lead exposure, I am fairly certain that my step-dad suffered/suffers with it due to both the time period he was born, his hobby of lead toy repair and collection, along with his tendency to bite his nails and poor sanitary practices. It's actually quite unnerving to me when he cooks food, because I know for a fact he will have lead flecks on his hands and not have washed them thoroughly enough before cooking.
Thanks for sharing.
I’m glad you escaped that world
I don't understand. What is the point you're trying to raise? Psychosis related to long term Lead exposure or you getting bonked on the head w a rock?
@@topiasr628Embrace the power of “both”.
hearing a concussion as being dizzy makes me wonder if maybe that time I thought I had food poisoning from a local fair that maybe just maybe going on the spinny ride twice in a row had concussed me.
How how how does this video have only 840 views! It's such an interesting and important piece of medical and sport history! Keep up the amazing work!
It got better
I think it would be a good idea to try rugby, which minimizes the direct force contact using the head. Barring that, Football should be discontinued. Too damn much emphasis is made of macho head to head or body in football blocking and tackling. It really is unavoidable under any of the present versions of the game. I.e. football can'd be sanitized. It is a blood sport.
Agreed. Any sport that basically requires the players to get hurt over and over again is not worth it! Especially so when players sometimes start as young as elementary school. Eek!
@@DarkChibiShadowYTAnd so many players, coaches, and fathers glory in it to make the boys show they're "real little men "
Modern gladiators.
I cannot believe your channel is this small with how well researched and presented your videos are. Keep up the great work!
At 18:40 you say “then, in 2002”, which makes sense given the context of the study going until 2001, but it’s crazy that the NFL still published what they did in 2006, 4 years after the famous death
My boss recently found out she has CTE from a car accident when she was a child. She only went to get it checked out under suspicion that she had long covid (which was another factor).
I thought it can only be diagnosed after death?
@@James-fw5ew you may only be able to test for it post-morbid, but doctors can suspect it and provide treatment based on patient history and symptoms.
We had to do those baseline tests for deployments during the War on Terror. We would do one prior to leaving, and then another when we returned.
Your videos have been so incredible for so long, and RUclips is NOT promoting them and it's A CRIME! Absolutely fascinating!
I can't understand why we still encourage young people to do boxing and other risky martial sports. There's nothing worse than deliberately trying to damage an opponent.
Cricketers are prone to concussion more as bowlers would bowl at 85-95 mph and they can hit you. Although cricketers wear helmets concussion wasn't considered until the tragic death of Phil Hughes
If football exists in 20 years, it will be radically different. At some point, schools and youth leagues simply won't be able to get insurance coverage even if state legislatures don't outlaw it below a certain age.
If CTE is to cause a decline in football, this is how it will happen - choking it off at the youth and school level. Fewer players and less skilled and committed players feeding into the higher levels of competition will hurt the overall quality of play and, consequently, fan interest.
@@douglassun8456I’d agree but only in part. I don’t think i could let my (hypothetical) child play football in good conscience. But theres a lot of lower class kids for whom football and a college scholarship is seen as one of the few ways to escape poverty, which throws a wrench in starving the sport of new players.
@@lamidene8139that was the most American dystopian thing I plan on reading today.
Just woke up but already had enough
@@lamidene8139There are other sports. Basketball, soccer, etc.
From what I understand when it comes to concussion in boxing, a lot of it gets to the fact that boxing gloves enable you to smack a lot harder without hurting your hand, which makes your opponents brain rattle around in his head.
True. Karate has a lot fewer, even fewer such, even full contact.
There is a woman here on YT who passed away due to CTE and CRPS, which lead to a massive cerebral hemorrhage (her channel is ServiceDog Vlog). She was a high school field hockey player and suffered many concussions, which lead to neurological damage, needing a wheelchair, needing oxygen constantly, stroke like symptoms, dementia symptoms, and eventually death due to the chronic swelling. She was in her late 20s I believe. CTE is a scary thing. RIP Tatyana Schneider.
How the hell does this video only have 600 views??? Great video!
Glad you liked it! I guested on a podcast last year and presented this topic. After doing all that research, I figured I'd turn it into a video
Your videos definitely deserve more likes than they are getting. Kudos for the good work.
In my experience, a lot of football teams are located in areas with good infrastructure but with economics that are bad enough for enough people that it would be disastrous for a city should they move away. Not sure if this part is on purpose or if it's just that these cities offer the best incentives, but it remains true...I'm thinking of Philadelphia and Jacksonville in particular since those are the only football cities I've lived in. I think it disincentivizes sports regulation at the state and local levels to some extent.
Chicago? Minneapolis?
Excellent piece and thank you. At the moment our status in being able to protect the brains of football players is IMHO so poor as to make the game unacceptable. However, I am reminded of the response of the NASCAR and the F1 auto racing communities to the in race deaths of champions in the sport. This led to very real improvements to protective equipment in the vehicles and the tracks the competitions occurred on. This has had real effects in increasing safety and substantially reducing the risk of injury. Auto racing is even more dangerous than football and a combination of drivers, medical professionals and management were able to keep their sport active reducing the risk of injuries basically through out their sports. I think saving football will require the same sort of wide acceptance of the necessity of dealing with the problems. Changes to the equipment used, treatment of injuries that do occur and draconian penalties for intentional blows to the head, necks and spines of other players (these penalities could even be accessed by post game study of films). Better equipment to protect the heads, necks and spines of the players are required. There is need for a technical advance in head protection for these sports. Auto racing was able to improve their situation by reducing the rate and severity of occasional highly traumatic episodes, now football will need to learn how to protect from much more frequent but generally more minor incidents which lead to cumulative injury. The current generation of auto driver protection equipment is not of the nature required for protecting football players and a new approach will be required. Immediately gathering better information should be started (today not tomorrow) to effectively build a large database about how football players heads are impacted with an aim of reducing the possibility of any head injury. We have the equipment available to instrument players and that can be started immediately. Then work on the neck and spine issues needs implemented. This sounds difficult and expensive but the funding is there in college and pro sports and those advancements can be moved down through the ranks. Either that or ban organized football to those below 21 years of age and forcibly retired any player the moment a lasting injury is observed. This would basically cripple the sport as now played. If that threat were a serious possibility I have no doubt that the huge amount of money in pro and college sport could solve the problem in very short order.
My dad grew up working class in Swissvale, PA. Dad worked at Union Switch and Signal. Got a "full ride" scholarship to (then) Carnegie Tech and left with an MBA.
Without football, he never, ever would have been able to attend. Football literally opened doors to him that otherwise would have been shut. He most likely would have taken a job at USS or US Steel that may have actually been more physically hazardous than football itself.
And, of course I, indirectly, benefit from all that.
Something to think about...
This reads as a pitch for college being free or near free not a pitch for football. It just means anyone not good at sports but interested in higher education and poor is stuck.
I guess he should have joined the army... if you are dumb then someone needs to lead your life.
We could also just make college _affordable_ so people don't have to pay for it by getting "scholarships" to slam their heads playing a dangerous sport and risk ruining their future potential and wasting the education they're getting.
Something to think about...
There are other sports.
Why doesn't this have more views?
Thanks so much for these excellent videos!! I just found your channel and am binge watching it haha
I love the high-quality content of your channel! Keep up the great work:)
You answered in a clear way many questions that I have had. Thank you, good job 👏
Woah what, I’ve just started being recommended your videos and it’s the perfect mix between history and science!! love
The "community" aspect could also be said of online group game playing
Underrated channel! Love your vids :)
Love your videos. Thank you
No one gets a life-threatening injury from playing e-sports, and you can still get most of the positives of sports from e-sports competitions too.
moderate to vigorous physical activity has left the chat
You are the man Pat !
You are AMAZING, sir! Really hope this joins the million club soon.
Please continue making such videos, I absolutely love this series! :)
Love from India!
That's awfully kind of you. Thank you, I'll keep it up!
We have to worry about MMA and soccer players who use their head too! Not just football and boxing. I think that ALL head strikes or strikes aimed at the head should be an instant fine AND the player is done playing for that day AND they must issue an apology.
I watch none of the sports I just mentioned cause I fear seeing my favorties players die from suicide eventually due to CTE. CTE is becoming increasingly common in soccer surprisingly...
Soccer balls are relatively soft. And because MMA don't pad their hands as much as boxers do they don't hit as hard as bocers.
Fantastic video.
I'm sharing your videos until you hit 1MM subs.
We need more eyes on this information.
21:45 made me think you're a Bears fan, cuz that hit way too close to home, lol
This is pretty interesting. About 14 years ago, I hit my head HARD. I was dizzy and everything after. It was awful. My vision went black. And my head just felt wrong for a while. Of course, I was too poor in my 20's to afford health care. And I only went to the er if there was no other option. And I had so little money from working 39.5 hours a week (if we were kept under 40, the job didn't have to offer insurance.) So I avoided medical professionald in general. About 10 years down the road, I developed a serious mental health disorder.
As the hard shell helmet protects from fracture but not concussion, i wonder if a different type of helmet design for concussion minimizing is possible. maybe something squishy that absorbs impact, similar to a boxing glove for your head. has there been any research done on this?
There has! There are some wacky designs out there, including an instant-inflatable cervical collar that's designed to prevent coup-counter coup injuries. As far as I know, nothing is ready for production yet
Very good
any "community" that relies on young men injuring themselves for life, over and over again, isn't worth having, sorry!!! we can find better ways to connect with each other
Well done, Dr Kelly
Ahh, not a doctor! I've only got a masters degree
thorough
Got concussed badly enough to notice once playing 5 a side indoor football (soccer), ball hit me in the face I went over and cracked my head on the concrete floor. Out for around a minute, couldn't walk straight for a couple of hours. As far as I know no lasting damage...but would I know?
I vividly remember my first concussion as well, at least i believe it was. When i was a kid, i put myself in a long cardboard box. I called it my "keep your hands to yourself-inator" and i thought it'd be fun to try tricks when i was inside. I fell, and without my arms to cover my head, i landed face first on the mosaic rocks of our patio.
I remember a second head injury as a child as well, a buddy and i were racing his older brother, and I'm a lot taller than my friend is. He weaved his four wheeler under a fallen tree right off the path to cut a corner, and it got me while i had no helmet. I don't remember much, but i remember getting back on the four wheeler, and i remember going home that day because i had brought my new DVD copy of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie.
I can't confirm if either was definitively a concussion, but for the first incident my mom said i was concussed, and the second incident shows a sign of that trauma amnesia that was brought up, so idunno.
As much as it would seem counter intuitive I think growing up playing tackle football with no equipment taught me how to play football with equipment. You learned not to lead with your head, and to lead with the shoulder. To many kids I think learn with equipment after playing flag or touch football and treat it like armor to be used both defensively and offensivly and never learned to protect the head before impact. I played fullback and linebacker, returned punts and catcher in baseball (when you could hit the catcher) and I really never had concussion issues.
Cool man
Sad to see how long significant change is taking given how long the research has been around! I feel it's like with cigarettes, in that the amount of vested economic interest megacorporations have in blocking change will continue to slow things significantly even when the science is clear?
Because football & other sports are often the only route out of poverty for minoritized communities, I suspect that fact also slows down necessary change too? The families involved have low political clout with which to push for change, & the paucity of other economic options can disincentivise investigating problems arising from ongoing TBI. (Given how American health system works they may also experience reduced access to expensive scans etc that can accurately assess the damage, esp. if issues arise after the individual's sports career ends?)
I lived around the corner from the funeral home where Aaron Hernandez's body was held. Only figured out what was valentine when I saw all these news cameras outside
floor is inside, ground is outside
What aboutvice hockey? I went to HS in MN & I remember some classmates who at 17/18 had
no natural teeth---surely they had concussions!
The officials lowered the age of body contact in ice hockey to age 11. Stupid.
Doctors said it was a terrible idea… media, hockey officials, team owners, and many parents who pushed their children strongly in hockey who disagreed. (Plus anyone else who would profit)
The problem with age 11, is each child is not yet in puberty so some are still smaller, and some 6 inches + taller and more muscular. Some are less mentally mature, so combining immaturity plus unnecessary aggression is not a good mix.
On top of that, children’s brains are underdeveloped in the ability to make decisions that could affect them or others longterm, so they would hit other, just to hit others, and not for the benefit of the game.
That decision to lower the age to 11x, caused many concussions.
The advances in diagnosis are good, because they mean fewer people are sent back to the field after serious injury, but it still doesn't prevent the injuries. Which is what we really need to do if we want to stop fucking up people's lives. And the only way to do that is to change the sport. But so many sports fans, ESPECIALLY American football fans, do not care about the athletes who bring them their entertainment nearly as much as they care about the entertainment itself. As long as that attitude prevails (and the NFL profits from it), this pattern of head trauma will continue, as both players and fans are warped by the same toxic culture that treats the players as commodities.
And to anyone who says 'they know what they're signing up for'... no, they don't. You can't possibly know what this will do to you. There's no way to anticipate how much repeated head trauma will change you, your life, your relationships. It will never be an acceptable thing to ask someone to do for the sake of entertainment - and that's leaving aside how many of the victims lacked informed consent beforehand, since the NFL covered this issue and lied to players for so long, or how many are children who can't consent at all.
Sport itself isn't just risk, is community. I imagine myself saying that in Roman coliseum and I wonder does my personal sense community justify my believe? Can I really justify my acquired sense community by willing to ignore the demonstrably nefarious effect that it has in someone else expendable well being?
I thought it was Doctor Amallu(mssp?) was the man who coined the term Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.
American Football isn't going anywhere as long as it's a cash printer like it currently is.
9:50 sounds an awful lot like Evander holyfield
It is only a matter of time before headers are removed from football/soccer.
Oh, I see now why a game played by carrying in your hands a "ball" someone of a weight of a small elephant sat on is called "football". It's just a medical condition!
I heard motorcycle helmets have made huge improvements over the years but football helmets have not.
I'm 67 and probably had 6 concussions thru the years. 2x unconscious. I'm ok so far. Fingers crossed.
Football is bad. There are lots of places that have community without killing players.
Wasn’t neurosyphilis the first known example of a physical cause of mental illness?
imho Brain injury is possibly a 'human condition' Being a part of us since time immemorial like many influences.
- I recall seeing a display in the Calcutta Museum of Polynesian skulls (yes I'm that old) where it showed different islands and their skulls, thicknesses were recorded. It was noted that those islands where clubs were used to show dominance etc were physically thicker. I'm wondering if the 'grey matter' was similarly robust, less prone to brain wobble etc in those environments & what effect it had on the consciousness & society going forward. The last 2 min of the video could be said about going for a pint sometimes here btw : )
why dont we just put shock indicator patches in helmets? that would provide a pretty objective diagnosis. They are like a dollar each
You're on to something there. When I was still working as an ATC, the helmet company Riddel was trying to sell a football helmet with a concussion detector inside it. As far as I know, they never really got popular ($400 helmet + an ongoing subscription), but it's been proposed!
You should read Peter Cummings book before you buy into the CTE narrative.
I think football will stay after 20 years, its a sport that is part of American's identity.
Identities shift, I think that American football is already on the way out.
Why have you had so many concussions?
Brain injury is a concussion and concussion is a brain injury
comment to attract people to the channel. :')
Much appreciated :)
comment comment
the algorithm must notice his videos ^^
Much love, thank you
If you guys want to do that, like the video.
Back in the cave dweller era, there must have been a lot of CTE since all people did back in those days was bonk each other on the head with clubs....or am I mixing up history with a Flintstones episode?
Seriously, it's hard to say if football will still be around in the future - probably, but with modifications - maybe sensitive tests will be able to tell the very beginning of CTE, or new technology will protect the players - new medications might be found that are prophylactic, even useful to protect against ischemic episodes (like stroke). Or perhaps development of recovery meds and therapy - perhaps CTE research will lead to effective treatment of Alzheimer's disease, and vice versa - all brain trauma leads to deleterious effects on consciousness, so research will be beneficial for many conditions....
Thank you kindly for the videos, cheers.
"traumatic hysteria" ah yes, when you hit your head so hard your uterus starts going haywire.
Electric times...going crosseyed and pissing yourself isn't much better than what I see many of these poor homeless shapes I see obviously badly addicted to a combination meth and fentanyl
Football could shoot god and Americans would still be playing it
Oh it will be around. USA isn't known for making good decisions in health.
This video should have millions of millions of views if not for the ailing American culture loosing its mind about how to stay alive. They don't know that sugar and football are dirty words.
Come on now. We have a law called assumption of risk for a reason. Football will cease to exist when hell freezes over. Boxing, Hockey, Soccer, Baseball, on and on would also have to go. Players gonna play. The players of 2day are informed. They know what can happen and they choose to play. Think they should get regular medical checks on the teams dime while they are on the team. I do feel bad when they get hurt and think we should do whatever we can to minimize the risks, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles. Maybe they should/could require every player set aside a percentage of their (in most cases) ridiculous earnings toward serious injury fund. Separately, or collectively. Income based. U get checked thoroughly on your way out and get back any unused portion. Can’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
And if u hit your head as regular Joe…go get checked
Are they though? Consider that this data only started to gain traction about a decade ago. Some players have been in the league longer than that, and even the new players were already playing at a school level. Further, your brain doesn't finish developing until your mid-20s, so the critical thinking and risk analysis abilities of the people starting in the NFL haven't fully formed yet. Now add in how many of them use football as a way to get themselves and their families out of poverty, and who may not see any other viable options to do so-if they struggle in school but excel at football, it can very much look like their only hope. Also consider that most football players actually don't earn millions per year, just the big name ones. They're still well paid, of course, at about $750k/year (not counting members of the practice squad), but most only play for a couple years, and if they incur lifelong brain damage, that may not make nearly as big of a dent as you'd think. At minimum, the NFL should probably have to provide them with lifelong insurance, at least for any injuries that can be traced back to their time on the field (though limiting it to that would just ensure the NFL throws everything they have at trying to cast doubt over every claim).
Just because the victims are informed doesn't make it ethical to hurt them.
We shouldn't be paying people to injure themselves for our amusement. Only monsters would do that.
sports: especially colligate; whole lotta fascist goin' on.