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Ohio Football Topic
Topic: OT -- Antwaan Randle El
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L.C.
1/22/2016 8:57 PM
OUs LONG Driver wrote:expand_more
...I love watching football but something has to change. I'm starting to think significantly less protective pads and helmets may be the way to go

Things are changing. They never stay the same. One change is the new helmet-to-helmet rule. Another change is that we see teams moving to rugby-style tackling. (I wonder if Ohio will make it a point of emphasis in the off-season). We're also seeing less scrimmages and full-speed practices, and more care for people who do actually get concussions. Will these be enough? I don't know.

Another change in recent years is the move away from the running game to more passing. On the one hand that eliminates some of the contact inside, but much of that contact is physical, but not high-speed. By contrast, some of the hits you see in the passing game are full-speed high-impact collisions.

I have no particular forecast for what football will look like in thirty years other than that it won't look like it does today.
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Mike Johnson
1/22/2016 9:42 PM
The Optimist wrote:expand_more
When I was in elementary school I was already a good soccer player but I had always dreamed of playing football. My parents never let me. I was mad about that for a very long time. I will always wonder what kind of football player I could have been but I think they made the wise choice. I'm glad I wasn't exposed to the brain trauma I would've had from football.

The silver lining I see is that a good deal (not all) of the injuries might be eliminated through better helmet technology. That said, wouldn't surprise me at all if football wasn't around in 30 years. And I freaking love football

Soccer isn't free of CTE concerns http://www.newyorker.com/news/sporting-scene/cost-header

Soccer certainly isn't free of these issues. In addition to concerns with heading the ball, I don't think many realize how physical the game gets at higher levels of play. It is one thing to watch your 5-year-old play soccer. It is another game entirely to watch some of the more elite teenage club or high school teams play. Let alone the college ranks.

My team in high school played at a high level. Our back-line on defense was 6-foot++ across and they could move. They looked like a line-backer core. I remember one game two of our big defenders had a full-speed collision that freed up an opposing forward to run down the field and score. That forward was a young Nick Kellogg... I think that can give many an idea how athletic the game can get at higher levels.
The biggest guy on our team was actually one of our forwards. He was 6-something and north of 200 pounds. And again he could move... He had countless concussions. 10+. He was already dealing with the effects of those in high school. He will face the same issues many of these football players face.

So yes, I agree. Soccer is FAR from risk-free.
For a decade I coached club soccer teams. The last 3 or 4 of those teams played in the high level Lake Erie League (teams from Buffalo to Toledo). We won an Under-16 state tournament title. The speed - and collisions - at that level are surprising - even shocking - to people who've only seen youngsters play or watched soccer on TV where, because of the distant camera shots, the sport looks genteel.

Injuries? One of my players suffered a broken arm. Another a cracked pelvis. Bumps,abrasions and bruises aplenty. And, yes, one wonders about the lasting effects of all those headers.
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Alan Swank
1/23/2016 11:24 AM
OUs LONG Driver wrote:expand_more
I went to HS at a very successful football crazy school at the lower levels of Ohio High School sports and was one of a very few who didn't play football (golf!). One good friend of mine had repeated concussion issues starting around his freshman year. He had multiple concussions every year in HS and he missed a couple games but not many. At one point his Senior year he was even wearing an additional protective cover on his helmet (I've never seen that anywhere before or since). We lost touch over the years but several years ago my Mom let me know he had committed suicide. With more and more data linking CTE with football and suicide there is no doubt in my mind this is what happened to my old friend. He had a wife and young child. Did the pressure to play through these issues cost him his life just 10 years later? Just very, very sad.

That was enough to push me over the edge on my future children and playing football. My brand new baby boy will not be playing football.

I love watching football but something has to change. I'm starting to think significantly less protective pads and helmets may be the way to go
Interesting story. Please don't take this personally but as a general comment - is it hypocritical to not let our own children play football yet we still watch it - you know, it's someone else's kid out there, not mine? Thoughts folks?
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Ohio69
1/23/2016 11:34 AM
Alan Swank wrote:expand_more
[QUOTE=OUs LONG Driver]

Interesting story. Please don't take this personally but as a general comment - is it hypocritical to not let our own children play football yet we still watch it - you know, it's someone else's kid out there, not mine? Thoughts folks?
I'm totally a hypocrite. Heck I just made sure my Patriots jersey is ready for tomorrow. Apparently I'm addicted and it will be a slow walk away from football....
Last Edited: 1/23/2016 11:36:06 AM by Ohio69
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Mike Johnson
1/23/2016 2:23 PM
Alan Swank wrote:expand_more
I went to HS at a very successful football crazy school at the lower levels of Ohio High School sports and was one of a very few who didn't play football (golf!). One good friend of mine had repeated concussion issues starting around his freshman year. He had multiple concussions every year in HS and he missed a couple games but not many. At one point his Senior year he was even wearing an additional protective cover on his helmet (I've never seen that anywhere before or since). We lost touch over the years but several years ago my Mom let me know he had committed suicide. With more and more data linking CTE with football and suicide there is no doubt in my mind this is what happened to my old friend. He had a wife and young child. Did the pressure to play through these issues cost him his life just 10 years later? Just very, very sad.

That was enough to push me over the edge on my future children and playing football. My brand new baby boy will not be playing football.

I love watching football but something has to change. I'm starting to think significantly less protective pads and helmets may be the way to go
Interesting story. Please don't take this personally but as a general comment - is it hypocritical to not let our own children play football yet we still watch it - you know, it's someone else's kid out there, not mine? Thoughts folks?
Neither of my sons played football, but not because I dissuaded them. Rather, they were devoted to playing soccer which they did the year around. Combining their 3-month high school schedules with their 9-month club schedules, they played upward of 90 games during every 12 months. Both regarded football as boring.

What if they were youngsters today and wanted to play football? I tend to think I'd support their choice. Why? Well, I'm a product of my dad who let me make choices regarding both sports and military service. When I was 14 and playing Pony League, a hard-throwing righthander beaned me with the result a concussion. I clearly remember a kitchen table conversation a week later. Mom was opposed to my resuming playing that summer. Dad calmly said, "Let's let Mike decide." I chose to resume playing. He was equally supportive of my choices to play football and volunteer Army. Himself? He was a WWI Marine.
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Alan Swank
1/23/2016 2:38 PM
Intersting reading:

http://www.salon.com/2015/01/28/we_are_all_amoral_footbal... /
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BillyTheCat
1/23/2016 3:01 PM
Alan Swank wrote:expand_more

I couldn't agree more, as we are with other aspects of our society? We cannot throw our children in a bubble, or only be concerned about "perceived" threats. More teenagers will die in other accidents each year than football. And to sit there and type that your kids will never play a sport that you sit around going crazy over, spending hours obsessed with on some chat board is very hypocritical.

Instead, allow the kid to make their own decisions, with proper guidance and support. Because for ever Randall El, there are thousands who have great experiences and learn valuable life lessons from the sport.

I also stated this awhile back on the thread with the movie concussion, the elephant in the room is the drugs that many of these players effected have put into their bodies with known psychological effects.
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Robert Fox
1/23/2016 3:45 PM
Alan Swank wrote:expand_more
Honestly, I don't know how you can read that stuff. The writer and the commenters work overtime to impress you with their brimming intelligence. I don't know how these people tolerate a life where they are forced to share the planet with armies of dunderheads. Oh! The suffering they must endure!

"Indefensible Super Bowl parties"? What's that? The audacity to have friends over to your house and watch this "heathenistic" game? Que up the Gladiator soundtrack, for that is what we are: immoral legions of Rome in a feeding frenzy watching the slaves kill themselves. Pass the cheese and beer!

Salon's description of the game is right out of a Soho coffee house: "...women bounce like sexual ornaments on the sidelines. Or social justice activists to back a sport whose players are harvested from poor neighborhoods, valued almost exclusively for their physical prowess, and trained to suppress their empathy." Que up the Roots soundtrack, for that is what we do: Find the next Kunta Kinte, train him, use him, and spit him out. We'll make our selections while we eat ham hocks and wipe the grease from our chins!

And what Salon article would be complete without a Tea Party reference? Not this one! The Tea Partiers are responsible for the NFL stadiums! Hypocrites!

"Simmons, in his cri de couer..." Uh, what the hell is that?

The writer finishes with this poetry: "Not every drawn line is immediately visible." Oh, but it is to you, Steve Almond! For you are a guiding post! A shining beacon sent by humanity to save the human race from itself!

And the legions of commenters can't wait to weigh in, quick to nod in unison:
"deeznuggets":
It's not a national religion, it's our national core. Violent and brain damaged succinctly describes our country."

But not you, deeznuggets, not you. You're a member of the intellectual elite. You have the rare ability to understand what the masses simply cannot.

Ha!
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Brian Smith (No, not that one)
1/23/2016 3:54 PM
You could've looked up cri de coeur faster than it took for you to complain you don't know what it means.

And learned something.

Quelle horreur.
Last Edited: 1/23/2016 3:56:13 PM by Brian Smith (No, not that one)
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Robert Fox
1/23/2016 4:02 PM
Quite fitting, Brian!
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OUs LONG Driver
1/23/2016 4:04 PM
I'm perfectly happy to be a hypocrite in this instance. The long term safety of my son is paramount to anything else.

It's not the accidental deaths on the field or the traumatic spinal injuries that primarily concern me, although they are obviously tragic (I witnessed a man paralyzed in a baseball game as a child and will never forget it). It's the long term affects of undiagnosed or diagnosed brain injuries that are the biggest issue in my opinion.

5 years ago I wouldn't have come to the same conclusion but the more I read about it the more comfortable I feel with the decision. I do not consider it putting our children in a bubble. They will make lots of their own decisions but this just won't be one of them for mine. I will continue to support our football team but for me football has always been a distraction between basketball seasons.
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Alan Swank
1/23/2016 4:21 PM
OUs LONG Driver wrote:expand_more
I'm perfectly happy to be a hypocrite in this instance. The long term safety of my son is paramount to anything else.

It's not the accidental deaths on the field or the traumatic spinal injuries that primarily concern me, although they are obviously tragic (I witnessed a man paralyzed in a baseball game as a child and will never forget it). It's the long term affects of undiagnosed or diagnosed brain injuries that are the biggest issue in my opinion.

5 years ago I wouldn't have come to the same conclusion but the more I read about it the more comfortable I feel with the decision. I do not consider it putting our children in a bubble. They will make lots of their own decisions but this just won't be one of them for mine. I will continue to support our football team but for me football has always been a distraction between basketball seasons.
I appreciate your honesty and candor in this post. I haven't come to a final decision. On one hand I already have a room reserved for the UT game next year with dinner plans at Ye Olde Steak House and on the other does that make me like one of the folks described in the Salon article? I do know this, you'll be hard pressed to find another sports board in the world that has this sort of discussion taking place.
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Tim Burke
1/23/2016 11:43 PM
Are we hypocrites for watching football? Sure. We're also hypocrites for continuing to pay our taxes to fund illegal wars we don't support, but we've decided that the inconvenience of discomfort at bombing children is less than the inconvenience of going to jail for tax evasions.

We engage in hypocritical behavior every day.
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Robert Fox
1/24/2016 8:06 AM
Tim Burke wrote:expand_more
Are we hypocrites for watching football? Sure. We're also hypocrites for continuing to pay our taxes to fund illegal wars we don't support, but we've decided that the inconvenience of discomfort at bombing children is less than the inconvenience of going to jail for tax evasions.

We engage in hypocritical behavior every day.
If we're actively and deliberately bombing children, I'll step up and withhold taxes. Will you join me?
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bornacatfan
1/24/2016 10:25 AM
Enthralling discussion and staying fairly civil.

To this day as I read these discussions I remember my time in football in jr high. Had some sort of funky helmets and in one drill we were taught to lead with the head. I will never forget the sound and feel of that helmet cracking and at the dome like an eggshell and needing to be replaced. A very successful career in cross country with multiple trips to state ensued. Still get a little yucky feeling in my stomach when I remember that helmet cracking. Tommy had a broken arm from football in 6th grade as a team from Carmel IN was taught to lead with their helmet and put it on the ball as he was carrying back a ball he intercepted. He spent his entire adolescence with his orthopedist and other coaches telling him his money sport was hoops whenever he would talk about going back out for FB

I remember my pops with his dual degrees returned from an OHSAA rules seminar proclaiming in the early 70's that by the "next century football will be replaced by soccer" the biggest part in his estimation was not the injury situation though that was part of it....he felt the cost savings to schools would drive the change.

Good discussion. I wonder how many folks like Alan, will form a protest and withhold their season tix renewals over the ensuing years. We will still watch Brady and Manning today in this house even though CBS Sunday Morning had a segment on Dorsett, the Mannings and the brain controversy.
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Alan Swank
1/24/2016 12:17 PM
As a point of clarification, I didn't say I would not renew my tickets - I'm considering doing it and before someone jumps on my case, it has nothing to do with OU. Watched the movie Selma last night. Full disclosure - I've always been for the underdog and have had no problem speaking my mind and standing up for a cause. As Tom so often relates, I was just doing what I had seen my parents do. From a selfish standpoint I could say - "well it's just me and that's not going to make a difference" - as a way of still participating in an event I thoroughly enjoy. I am truly looking forward to the UT game but more the things surrounding it than the game itself. What do the trained ethicists on the board say about this?

And Robert, if we are indeed intentionally bombing kids, I'll join you in the tax withholding line.
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Recovering Journalist
1/27/2016 9:11 AM
The evidence keeps piling up. Something has to change or this sport will slip into the fringes of entertainment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/27/sports/football/former-...
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C Money
1/27/2016 10:45 AM
bornacatfan wrote:expand_more
Tommy had a broken arm from football in 6th grade as a team from Carmel IN was taught to lead with their helmet and put it on the ball as he was carrying back a ball he intercepted.


That's somewhat disturbing that the coaches were teaching the kids to lead with the helmet. My dad coached youth football (anywhere from age 7 through junior high) for 20+ years, and it was ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS stressed to the kids, no matter what age, that you DO NOT INTENTIONALLY LEAD WITH THE HELMET under any circumstances. And always make sure you have a proper fitting mouthpiece, which is an under-appreciated contributor to concussion risk reduction.
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OhioCatFan
1/27/2016 10:50 AM
Interesting and disturbing article, RJ.

Has anyone done a study looking back at football players over the last century to see if they have a disproportionate number of mental problems after their playing days and are more prone to early death? I'm talking about a detailed scientific study comparing various comparable cohorts over a span of time. It would be interesting to gather these facts, if it hasn't been done already, and then place the results on a chart by year and by decade. One person on this board speculated that the violence of football actually increased as helmets got better because players had a false sense of protection. Such a study would show whether or not this hypothesis has any support. Anecdotally, it does seem to me that we see more jarring tackles and more use of the helmet as a weapon than you used to see, in spite of the fact that it is talked more about now and is a refereeing point of emphasis. It seems to me in the past there was more "rugby style" tackling and less "tackle slamming" in games.

Just a few thoughts to stimulate discussion. I have more questions than answers at this point.
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Robert Fox
1/27/2016 12:45 PM
C Money wrote:expand_more
Tommy had a broken arm from football in 6th grade as a team from Carmel IN was taught to lead with their helmet and put it on the ball as he was carrying back a ball he intercepted.


That's somewhat disturbing that the coaches were teaching the kids to lead with the helmet. My dad coached youth football (anywhere from age 7 through junior high) for 20+ years, and it was ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS stressed to the kids, no matter what age, that you DO NOT INTENTIONALLY LEAD WITH THE HELMET under any circumstances. And always make sure you have a proper fitting mouthpiece, which is an under-appreciated contributor to concussion risk reduction.
Agree. In all my years I heard only "keep your head up."

To follow onto OCF's comment, I would theorize that TV and specifically "Sports Center" and its ilk has something to do with a potential increase in leading with the helmet, which is really another way of defining a "big hit."

It's the big hit that gets you on Sports Center, and it's the big hit that gets the high school, middle school and youth football crowds on their feet.

The fans LOVE that stuff. And as a result, the players aim to deliver. The whole concept is partly justified by the idea that you can cause your opponent to get scared and lose their composure, lose their focus, and lose their edge. So is there a possible contradiction between:
"Don't lead with your helmet," and
"Make 'em regret they came to play you."
Last Edited: 1/27/2016 12:45:36 PM by Robert Fox
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OhioStunter
1/27/2016 2:35 PM
Robert Fox wrote:expand_more
Tommy had a broken arm from football in 6th grade as a team from Carmel IN was taught to lead with their helmet and put it on the ball as he was carrying back a ball he intercepted.


That's somewhat disturbing that the coaches were teaching the kids to lead with the helmet. My dad coached youth football (anywhere from age 7 through junior high) for 20+ years, and it was ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS stressed to the kids, no matter what age, that you DO NOT INTENTIONALLY LEAD WITH THE HELMET under any circumstances. And always make sure you have a proper fitting mouthpiece, which is an under-appreciated contributor to concussion risk reduction.
Agree. In all my years I heard only "keep your head up."

To follow onto OCF's comment, I would theorize that TV and specifically "Sports Center" and its ilk has something to do with a potential increase in leading with the helmet, which is really another way of defining a "big hit."

It's the big hit that gets you on Sports Center, and it's the big hit that gets the high school, middle school and youth football crowds on their feet.

The fans LOVE that stuff. And as a result, the players aim to deliver. The whole concept is partly justified by the idea that you can cause your opponent to get scared and lose their composure, lose their focus, and lose their edge. So is there a possible contradiction between:
"Don't lead with your helmet," and
"Make 'em regret they came to play you."
How interesting would it be if SportsCenter announced that they would NO LONGER show any of those hits? Maybe it wouldn't eliminate the hits, but it would send a resounding message.

Although, I don't think that tactic works for fans that run onto the field (since most stations don't show them, yet it still happens).
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