What percentage of people that play the game end up with severe brain damage?


At the each level you go up, the chance of injury increases. My observation is that about 5% of the people that play at Ohio end up having a severe injury that causes them to stop playing. This is just a guess, but I'd say another 15-20% or so have an injury that requires corrective surgery. The rest no doubt have other injuries somewhere along the line that are less serious.

Only a very small percentage of those that play football ever play professionally. Of those who do play professionally, a significant number never play regularly, and have a very short career. Several Bobcats have had careers of that type. The relatively few ones that do play professional football regularly, for a long time, almost all, no doubt, have a serious injury sooner or later. This small group contains the ones that I would expect to be at the most risk of serious brain injury.


I guess we're going to have to disagree, there. I'd rather let the market decide what has value than have some bureaucrat or legislator decide. I could go into depth here, but then we'd be in Siberia.....


Maybe he would have turned his life around anyway, or maybe not. We don't know. What we do know is that football provided him with an opportunity, and he took advantage of it.


I was not trying to misrepresent your point. In your prior post you said "The point is $100 million or whatever isn't worth the brain damage you sustain from playing the game." If $100 million isn't worth the chance of possible brain injury, it didn't sound like you acknowledged any kind of tradeoff between risk of injury and reward. My point is that most jobs have a risk of injury, and in accepting work, people agree to some pay in exchange for it. To me those that do choose to play professional football are indeed at high risk of injury, but they are also well compensated for it.

By the way, I have a sad memory that always reminds me that no job is entirely safe from injury. As an employer, I am still sickened when I think of a tragic accident over 20 years ago. A clerical worker who worked for me tripped over a phone cord. Rather than just falling, she tried to regain her balance, and in the process accelerated across the room. There she hit the wall so hard that she knocked the door frame loose, knocked herself unconscious, ripped her arm out of it's socket, and permanently damaged some vertebrae, resulting in permanent loss of use of her arm, permanent pain, and permanent disability.


or, would an economist tell you that if you give them enough reason, what was once a bad decision becomes a reasonable one?


I think you should always re-examine your assumptions. I have no desire to watch anyone get permanent brain injury. As a result I don't watch boxing, though I did when I was younger. I expect that all boxers, sooner or later, will have severe brain injury. My assumption has always been that only a very small minority of football players end up with that, and that those most at risk would be players with a long professional career. Actually, that's one reason I don't watch professional football. I have never thought that college players are likely to have that problem, provided that the staff is following normal procedures, such as not playing people who have a concussion, and causing people to end their career after some pre-determined number of concussions, say 3 or 4 (not sure what is reasonable, and safe). If research shows me otherwise, and that even high school/college players are having this problem in significant numbers, my opinion on this would change.

Gathers and Lewis both had pre-existing conditions and were mistakenly given a clean bill of health from their doctors. They were ticking timebombs. That would be like sending someone without a skull to play football.