The politics of brain injuries

This piece on Steve Largent and the concussion debate is profoundly saddening.  Largent spent some time as a Republican congressman, so it should come as no surprise that he’s a little Randian on the matter:

“If studies come out and show that playing football is detrimental to your health for the long term, even for the short term, I think that’s up to the players then to make the decision about whether they’re going to play or not play,” Largent said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Peter Cook for “Capitol Gains,” which airs Feb. 2.

“They should be armed with all of the latest statistics and information and research,” added Largent, who now represents the nation’s wireless industry as president of CTIA- The Wireless Association. “We don’t need the government telling people what they can and can’t do.”

Some of that is no doubt a knee-jerk reaction to Obama’s recent comments on the matter and some of it’s a downright naive assessment of the NFL’s readiness to take charge and make things right.   (Does anybody think Goodell would give a rat’s ass about the problem if it wasn’t for the threat of multiple lawsuits?  And last time I checked, Steve, a court ruling is the government telling people what they can and can’t do.)

But that’s not the depressing part.  This is.

Largent said he had multiple concussions throughout college and his NFL career, including one during his next-to-last season in which he was knocked unconscious before hitting the ground.

Largent said he’s “really curious” about the impact of concussions on NFL players and is currently participating in a study at the University of North Carolina. Largent also had a stroke at the age of 50 that he says the experts he’s consulted believe isn’t connected to his NFL career.

Largent considers himself fortunate to still be in relatively good health, running five or six miles every other day and playing tennis two to three times a week. Largent also said he remains the NFL’s “biggest fan,” despite lingering concerns about the head injuries he suffered as a player.

“The more studies that come out that talk about concussions and so forth, it makes me wonder,” Largent said. “I wonder, more importantly than the stroke, the impact that concussions have had on my life, particularly as I get older.”

Wow.  Does Largent think he was armed with all the latest research to make an informed decision at the time?  Of course he wasn’t, because it wasn’t an area of major concern then.  But now he trusts the NFL to make an honest effort to do so?  If that’s right, it’s only because it’s been pushed from outside.

Obama wasn’t threatening to seek legislation if the NCAA didn’t move forward on the issue.  But he was expressing a concern that enough wasn’t being done to provide player safety and that the NCAA needed to get off its ass and take charge or risk having others take control of the issue away from it.  If that’s government telling people what to do, maybe the NCAA needs to hear more of it.

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“I’m a big football fan, but I have to tell you if I had a son…”

Something tells me that Mark Emmert doesn’t have time for the shit President Obama is laying down in this interview:

… if I had a son, I’d have to think long and hard before I let him play football. And I think that those of us who love the sport are going to have to wrestle with the fact that it will probably change gradually to try to reduce some of the violence. In some cases, that may make it a little bit less exciting, but it will be a whole lot better for the players, and those of us who are fans maybe won’t have to examine our consciences quite as much.

I tend to be more worried about college players than NFL players in the sense that the NFL players have a union, they’re grown men, they can make some of these decisions on their own, and most of them are well-compensated for the violence they do to their bodies. You read some of these stories about college players who undergo some of these same problems with concussions and so forth and then have nothing to fall back on. That’s something that I’d like to see the NCAA think about.  [Emphasis added.]

And that’s probably a mistake.  You may disagree with the man’s politics, but it’s hard to deny that Obama’s good at reading public sentiment.  This concussion thing is moving fast – or at least faster than people like Emmert are. You ignore subtle warnings like that at your own risk.  And the risk the NCAA and the colleges run is that they may be one big tragedy away (like, say, a death on the field) from having control of player safety taken away from them.

Unfortunately, if there’s one thing the NCAA isn’t good at, it’s being proactive.

“You have CTE.”

Obviously, we’re a long way from a five-subject study to a definitive diagnosis, but I do wonder if Ta-Nehisi Coates is accurately seeing football’s future:

… There’s something more; presumably, if they really learn how to diagnose this, they will be able to say exactly how common it is for football players–and maybe athletes at large–to develop CTE.  This is when you start thinking about football and an existential crisis. I don’t know what the adults will do. But you tell a parent that their kid has a five percent chance of developing crippling brain damage through playing a sport, and you will see the end of Pop Warner and probably the end of high school football. Colleges would likely follow.

There’s a part of me that’s skeptical.  But that part will never sit in a doctor’s office with my child being told that a risk of serious brain injury has been diagnosed.  Nor has that part ever been a member of a family that sees a college football career as a means – maybe the only one – to a child getting a degree at least and perhaps to going on to a NFL paycheck.

If this study bears fruit, I suspect that before you’d see football’s death, you’d see an attempt made to take concrete steps to improve player safety, both with equipment changes and with rules changes.  Whether those would work would depend on how good technology would get, how serious the NCAA would be about enforcement – and how fan support would be affected by the changes.  Tough calls all around.

At least you’ve got your health.

After reading this…

Jones’ situation is much more serious because not only could spinal stenosis cut short his NFL career, it could potentially leave him in a wheelchair.

If his stenosis is a serious concern, I just hope medical doctors can talk Jones into walking away from the NFL and going back to Georgia to continue his education.

… I’d have to say that on a suckitude scale of 1-10 (ten being ultimate suckitude), the scenario of doctors talking Jones into walking away from the NFL after he’s already given up his college eligibility to pursue his dream would come in at about an eight.

Hey, who let that guy in the room?

If I can offer a brief word of advice to those brave souls in charge of college football, letting Rogers Redding have input into player safety issues is probably as good a way as I know of to make sure everyone is unhappy with whatever rules changes are made.

“I don’t know if there’s a lot more we can do with the rules without fundamentally changing the game, and it may be necessary to do that,” said Redding, the national coordinator of officiating and secretary-rules editor of the NCAA football rules committee. “I’m not suggesting this at all. But it may be at the point where we take a look at taking away any contact above the neck at all.”

Yeah, I can’t wait to see how they enforce that consistently.

As a general rule of thumb, any time Redding starts off by saying “I don’t know”, it’s best to heed that.

“Only the really dumb ones are getting caught.”

Regardless of whether you think this is a sensationalized story about steroid abuse, you can’t help but shake your head over this passage:

On paper, college football has a strong drug policy. The NCAA conducts random, unannounced drug testing and the penalties for failure are severe. Players lose an entire year of eligibility after a first positive test. A second offense means permanent ineligibility from sports.

In practice, though, the NCAA’s roughly 11,000 annual tests amount to just a fraction of all athletes in Division I and II schools. Exactly how many tests are conducted each year on football players is unclear because the NCAA hasn’t published its data for two years. And when it did, it periodically changed the formats, making it impossible to compare one year of football to the next.

In case I haven’t said it clearly enough before, Mark Emmert is an asshat.

Kickoffs and depth

Mark Richt wouldn’t have a problem if kickoffs were abolished tomorrow.  But Kirk Olivadotti would.

“At the end of the day, shoot, it’s out of my pay grade, whatever they tell us to do we’ll do,” Olivadotti said. “But it’s an exciting play, it’s a play that I know there’s guys that started their playing career at Georgia. Or shoot, in the NFL, there’s guys that played for me for seven years making a million a year and they covered kickoffs and punts. That’s what they did. So guys make a living off doing that stuff too, so that might be where having a kickoff team is important.

“So that’s where I’d lean personally. I do understand the injury aspect. You’re never gonna eliminate injuries. But you want to limit them as much as you can.”

That is… interesting.  He’s got a point that there are plenty of student-athletes on a college roster who only see the field because of special teams play.  But safety concerns are legitimate.

When Georgia recruit Tramel Terry was tore his ACL in the Shrine Bowl on Saturday, the reaction in many quarters was to say it was another reason for these players not to participate in All-Star Games. That’s a valid debate to have, but here’s another part of it:

Terry was injured on the opening kickoff. The kickoff remains the play with the most instances of injury, which is why both the NFL and college football have taken steps to minimize the play.

So maybe you split the baby.  If you eliminate kickoffs, do you need 85 players on scholarship?  Maybe if some of those kids go elsewhere, they’ll have a better chance to play.  And play more safely.

The key to the day

A dedicated Porta Potty for our tailgate site.

Don’t leave home without it.

The best laid plans of mice and bureaucrats

I know you’ll be shocked, shocked to discover this.

Rogers Redding, NCAA ref boss, says rule requiring players to sit a play for helmet off has not cut number of helmets flying off in games.—
RAY GLIER (@RAYGLIER) September 26, 2012

I guess Rogers Redding will just have to go back to the drawing board.  Scary thought, no?

S & C, ftw?

There’s something interesting tucked into this piece about Marlon Brown.

… But his play against Missouri showed off the improvements Brown made during offseason work with Georgia’s new conditioning staff, particularly speed and flexibility coach Sherman Armstrong.

“Marlon is a big, physical receiver and he’s faster than he used to be,” Georgia coach Mark Richt said. “He’s trained, he’s trimmed his body down, he’s worked hard with our strength staff — Sherman Armstrong especially — with his speed. It’s paid off for him. He’s quicker, he’s more flexible and he’s always had real strong hands.”

That’s the first specific shout-out I’ve caught from Richt about the new strength and conditioning team.  It seemed to me that the team as a whole looked to be in better physical shape than Missouri in the fourth quarter Saturday night.  And there’s no question Brown seriously stepped up his game.  So I’m wondering:  are we seeing some real progress on this front?