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NY Times Article

Might as well go ahead and get rid of women's soccer and basketball as well. In my program, concussions in those two sports dwarf the numbers suffered by football players 3 to 1.
Politics aside, the NYT has become garbage journalism! Unfortunately politics and most interactions outside of those that are one on one, have become garbage too.
This is not true. See Pulitzer’s. Hyperbole.
 
Things have changed a lot to make football much safer, primarily within the last 10 years. CTE is usually the result of repeated trauma over time that has an additive effect. In addition, it can take decades for the damage to present itself. The doom and gloom data we are seeing now largely reflects how football was played, and the equipment that was used, decades ago. I am an old fart that luckily still has a semi-functional brain, but when I was playing, the concussion protocol involved smelling salts and going back in the game or practice the next play. It was not unusual to take 2 or 3 hits to the head each game hard enough to "see stars". I suspect the incidence of CTE in ex-football players is going to go way down, but it is going to take 20-30 years before we have solid data to prove it.
Is CTE related to concussions? Or the accumulation of micro-concussions from repeated hits? This is the next frontier of evidence. The game hangs in the balance.
 
Is CTE related to concussions? Or the accumulation of micro-concussions from repeated hits? This is the next frontier of evidence. The game hangs in the balance.

https://www.bu.edu/cte/about/frequently-asked-questions/

We believe CTE is caused by repetitive brain trauma. This trauma includes both concussions that cause symptoms and subconcussive hits to the head that cause no symptoms. At this time the number or type of hits to the head needed to trigger degenerative changes of the brain is unknown. In addition, it is likely that other factors, such as genetics, may play a role in the development of CTE, as not everyone with a history of repeated brain trauma develops this disease. However, these other factors are not yet understood.
 
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Might as well go ahead and get rid of women's soccer and basketball as well. In my program, concussions in those two sports dwarf the numbers suffered by football players 3 to 1.

What do you mean by Program?

There is a big difference between a sport where incidental head contact occurs, such as soccer and basketball, and a sport where a helmet is needed to play the game.

Is CTE related to concussions? Or the accumulation of micro-concussions from repeated hits? This is the next frontier of evidence. The game hangs in the balance.

I dont know that anyone has academically made that conclusion that its an accumulation of blows. But the evidence points to a lifetime of blows contributing....

The sample included 246 tackle football players who donated their brains for neuropathological examination. Two hundred eleven (85.7%) were diagnosed with CTE (126 of 211 were without comorbid neurodegenerative diseases), and 35 were without CTE. Informant interviews ascertained age of first exposure and age of cognitive and behavioral/mood symptom onset.

In the 211 participants with CTE, every 1 year younger participants began to play tackle football predicted earlier reported cognitive symptom onset by 2.44 years (p < 0.0001) and behavioral/mood symptoms by 2.50 years (p < 0.0001). Age of exposure before 12 predicted earlier cognitive (p < 0.0001) and behavioral/mood (p < 0.0001) symptom onset by 13.39 and 13.28 years, respectively.


https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ana.25245
 
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Is there any other program in the country where multiple regents are actively trying to sabotage the football program?
 
Two articles in two days from the NYTimes about CU Football? It looks like they are trying to paint CU in this horrible light and that we don't take player safety seriously? CU seems to be one of the more proactive programs with concussion prevention and protection. Annoying to see this guy taking shots at CU and not pointing out that this is an issue across the country and not at one university.

This was part 2 of the same article. The author specifically states that Colorado is among the best at spotting and dealing with concussions. In fact, it appeared to me in reading the articles that the author explicitly was NOT going after CU. In fact, almost complimentary of the university.

In general, I think the author was framing two questions: (1) is football safe?, and if not, (2) should universities be involved in a game that potentially debilitates minds?

Personally, I think football has negative health impacts, much more so than other sports, and not just from CTE. The calorie intake for linemen isn’t healthy, stresses the body on a cellular level. These are my opinions, based on reading some research over the years. They are not fact.

However, I love watching the game, and as long as there is informed consent, let players play.
 
This was part 2 of the same article. The author specifically states that Colorado is among the best at spotting and dealing with concussions. In fact, it appeared to me in reading the articles that the author explicitly was NOT going after CU. In fact, almost complimentary of the university.

In general, I think the author was framing two questions: (1) is football safe?, and if not, (2) should universities be involved in a game that potentially debilitates minds?

Personally, I think football has negative health impacts, much more so than other sports, and not just from CTE. The calorie intake for linemen isn’t healthy, stresses the body on a cellular level. These are my opinions, based on reading some research over the years. They are not fact.

However, I love watching the game, and as long as there is informed consent, let players play.
What about the mention of Rashaan Salaam's death?
If I remember correctly his family didn't allow his brain to be tested for CTE
 
If I didn't know any better I would guess this Ass got his degree from CSU or crapbraska . CU should def sue the crap out of this him and the NY Times.
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/sports/cte-football-hairston-super-bowl.html

DIXON, Calif. — The blast from upstairs shattered the quiet of a small-town weeknight. It was all so sudden. Or had it been coming for years?

Jason Hairston had just been downstairs with his young son and daughter, who could not understand why their father was acting so strange. His wife, on the phone from across the country, was desperately trying to get her husband to say something, anything.

He ended the call without a word, walked upstairs and closed the bedroom door. He lay down on his wife’s side of the bed, lifted a gun under his chin and pulled the trigger.

The son, Cash, was 10, old enough to have previously Googled “C.T.E.”, wise enough to know what had just happened, poised enough to block his 9-year-old sister, Coco, from instinctively running upstairs toward the sound. He pulled her outside. The police and family members were on the way.

If there is such a thing as the American dream, Hairston, at 47, gave every indication that he was living it. He was a former college football star who played briefly with two N.F.L. teams, and he was the founder of KUIU, a top-end outfitter of hunting gear and apparel. He had legions of faithful customers and good friends who aspired to be like him.


A test after the autopsy proved he had it.
 
Soft helmets would help a lot.
When I played in the late '70s, we would (when play got particularly dirty), hold our face masks and brace our arms against our chests as we speared players because it stabilized your head and neck better when you made contact. When you are 17 and 18 you think you are invincible, and getting and playing "dinged" was part of the game. We weren't half the athletes these kids are today and the collisions then, while violent, weren't nearly as violent as what these kids are capable of today.
Soft helmets would have never allowed that idiotic move on our part.
 
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