CTE vs Auto Accidents

[Joseph Drake]

Is there a study of auto fatalities/injuries from 40 years ago compared to today (I'm sure there is)? Many people on this board remember our parents putting us in the front seat of the family sedan that got eight miles to the gallon, with no seatbelt, no airbags, smoking while they listened to some CCR. Yes, Lol but 100% true.

My point is this...playing football today is like putting your child in the middle of the back seat of your Hybrid that has front and side door airbags, seatbelt fastened, clean air flowing with Bruno Mars playing on the radio. Like everything else, what we do becomes safer than yesterday....so does football, the technique, the equipment, and the awareness.

One exception...Bruno Mars may not be safer than CCR.

The CTE study is impossible to refute because there are no brains from current players to dissect. Why....they are still living. They study is valid, but can't be correlated with today's players and/or game. You can correlate the safety measures in the auto industry and their impacts on injury and/or death. You can't do the same with CTE because the samples/data to form the conclusions that the CTE issues do or do not exist in today's game are not available. I'm willing to bet that the game my sons play today falls under the Bruno Mars scenario.

Lay off our game haters!

 

[SiuCubFan8]

CTE is real and to deny is ignorant. We need to focus on anything and everything to lessen the impact it has.

 

[CCL65]

Well, what we need and will probably never get is the CTE effect on those that played two years of HS varsity football with no college level football after that and certainly not fifteen years in the NFL.

 

[GMAN81]

Comparing CTE to auto accidents is...well...not a very fair or real comparison. How many millions of cars are on the road in this country and how many millions of drivers are there? Several. Now, how many kids are playing high school football and college football? Far less. Nowhere near the total number of drivers out there. To compare one scenario to the other simply doesn't work.

How many people smoke? How many of those do we know will get some form of cancer which is related to the smoking? We know there is a certain percentage based on years of study and results.

CTE and the studies and results are in the infancy stage. There are a lot of CTE deniers out there or those who say it isn't as bad as advertised. I am not ready to jump on either bandwagon yet. I need more information and time. We also have to pay attention to who is giving us these results and see if they have an ulterior motive. I am all for independent studies and results if they are truly independent. Not all are.

There are those who want to ban football. I don't agree with that approach at all. Just give people the facts...independent facts, and let them make their own decisions.

If cigarettes are as horrible as football to these people...then ban them. If alcohol is as bad, then ban it.

Football isn't going anywhere. But with that said these people who want to ban the sport hope to choke it off at the youth and high school level because they know they can't just ban the whole game at once. Kill the lower levels and you may be able to get rid of it in time they think. That's how they operate. Such people are dangerous to freedom.

 

[JCHILLTOPPERS]

Well, what we need and will probably never get is the CTE effect on those that played two years of HS varsity football with no college level football after that and certainly not fifteen years in the NFL.

That's what i'm saying... 1:16 kids play in college; .08% of those play in the NFL; the average NFL career is 3 years...Of the kids that go to college, most are lucky to start a single year; the same is true for NFL players.

Does it surprise me that NFL players like junior seau had brain issues ... no. would it surprise me if John and 50 others like him who started four years in HS and two in college did...yes.

At some point, while CTE is 100% real, we need to remember perspective.

 

[lkhammer57]

While all of these points are valid, we have to remember that all of these brains had already shown signs of having symptoms such as depression, and there has yet to be seen what a symptom less football brain looks like, meaning there could be a correlation of people with depression (football or non football player) and CTE. I have read the study very closely, scary stuff, but the people conducting the study even say that they can't for sure say there's a direct correlation between football and CTE until they have a sample size that would be able to represent all football players, and not just one's with symptoms of neurological dysfunction. Like I said, this is concerning, but the doctors and researchers of the world are FAR from anywhere of being close to determining the direct cause and even they have admitted it! I urge everyone to go read the actual study and not just the articles in the media, the whole message isn't given in a great deal of these articles and we cannot forget that the media is all business and they need to get as many clicks and reads as possible, and scary sells. I say the game needs to continue using the precautionary principle, by continuing to improve in player safety and equipment technology, but people lets not forget we are still in a great deal of unknown.

 

[JCHILLTOPPERS]

And while my eyes have opened and I trust the doctors, you would think from espn's coverage, football = leprosy.

I hate espn