Bernard Pollard: Thirty years from now, I don’t think the NFL will be in existence

[Vercingetorix]

It's my opinion that football can be played safely if players care about safety. But they don't. They care about the big hit, or getting the penalty, or whatever. For instance, take Pollard's hit on Wayne that might have brought this on. Here is his quote about it:



I agree with him. Reggie lowered his head. I'm not saying it was intentional, but if I was Reggie Wayne, and if I didn't care as much about future brain damage as a crucial first down, I would lower my head there and get the 15 yards.

Brain damage isn't an issue if you don't lower your helmet leading with the area around the crown. I think there could still be concussions from just big hits causing whiplash, but I think the long term issues would subside if they just looked out for their own safety.

The big hits that draw penalties and earn suspensions and cause concussions aren't even the biggest problem. The biggest problem is the repetitive pounding in the trenches that happens on every play. There was a study a few years ago where they hooked sensors up to college players' helmets during practice and determined that, for the linemen, even one practice was the equivalent of taking several car crashes' worth of pounding. And there's evidence that all that repeated subconcussive pounding causes CTE too.

That's the part where the whole idea of changing football to make it safer starts to break down. You can change the rules to try to make it safer for the skill players. But what can they do to take hitting along the line of scrimmage out of the game?

 

[VolsNSkinsFan]

Hockey is way more violent and that sport isnt going anywhere. Its not like there are millions of kids in grade/HS playing it either and I can barely count the amount of NCAA D1 schools that play hockey on one hand. NHL is doing just fine without all "the feeder schools"

 

[golfballs]

Hockey is way more violent and that sport isnt going anywhere. Its not like there are millions of kids in grade/HS playing it either and I can barely count the amount of NCAA D1 schools that play hockey on one hand. NHL is doing just fine without all "the feeder schools"

they don't need feeder schools when they have feeder countries......

 

[milohimself]

Football will still be around, but 30 years is a long time frame. I could see something else taking over as the most popular sport in the country. At the least, the game will look very different from what it does now, but even then, the game now looks very different from 50 years ago.

 

[golfballs]

Football will still be around, but 30 years is a long time frame. I could see something else taking over as the most popular sport in the country. At the least, the game will look very different from what it does now, but even then, the game now looks very different from 50 years ago.

On a long enough timeline it's bound to happen

 

[Vercingetorix]

Hockey is way more violent and that sport isnt going anywhere. Its not like there are millions of kids in grade/HS playing it either and I can barely count the amount of NCAA D1 schools that play hockey on one hand. NHL is doing just fine without all "the feeder schools"

European and international hockey has very little hitting and no fighting. North American hockey has far more hitting, of course, but it's easy to imagine what hockey would look like if you purged the violence from it because we already see it in international play. Whereas it's almost impossible to imagine what American football would look like if you purged the violence from the line of scrimmage.

The primary feeders into the NHL are Canadian and European junior leagues. NCAA schools are a tiny slice of it.

 

[VolBadger]

Grownups playing for money can sign a waiver and do what they want. What about minors playing for free? In a few years, somebody's going to develop an MRI-type scanner that will identify head trauma in living patients. At that point, liability's going to cause high school and college football as we know it to wither up and die. How can pro football as we know it exist without high school and college?

get something set up like basketball. they have high school teams and AAU teams in bball...maybe that's the answer

 

[VolsSportsFan]

Hockey is way more violent and that sport isnt going anywhere. Its not like there are millions of kids in grade/HS playing it either and I can barely count the amount of NCAA D1 schools that play hockey on one hand. NHL is doing just fine without all "the feeder schools"

The NHL also has a fraction of the popularity of the NFL.

 

[Vercingetorix]

Missed this a couple of weeks ago. This is pretty big news -- first time they've been able to detect evidence of CTE in living players' brains. The next shoe has dropped.

Study reveals elusive brain damage in retired NFL players, could lead to disease diagnosis before death | The Verge

 

[zjcvols]

Missed this a couple of weeks ago. This is pretty big news -- first time they've been able to detect evidence of CTE in living players' brains. The next shoe has dropped.

Study reveals elusive brain damage in retired NFL players, could lead to disease diagnosis before death | The Verge

Yup.

Just wait till they start doing it on NFL players.