Junior Seau Found Dead in Home

#101
#101
vols-1 said:
I think a lot of these guys are just dumber than they were 20 years ago and they blame it on football. The arrest record for NFL players is off the charts. Both Seau and Duerson have been arrested for domestic battery before. Then today I see where Cowboy Torrin Tucker was arrested for cocaine and marijuana possession. I dont know the stats but the arrest dont seem to be as prevalent in the Canadian football league and neither to the the head injuries.
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There's something to the notion that most successful football players (especially guys who do more than their fare share of hitting) have a screw loose, but it is an indisputable fact that we now know much, much more than we did 20 years ago about head injuries and how they affect people who suffer them physically and emotionally.

The pervasive attitude about a lot of this up until just a few years ago was "rub some dirt on it, stop being a pussy." I know this, I heard it on a weekly basis in high school because most of our coaches were old-school hardasses. I had a number of teammates with concussions who didn't get diagnosed until after the season because they didn't want to have to quit, but that was the case for one of them.
 
#102
#102
HSVol said:
So, other than Goodell stumping for converting two preseason games to regular season games, what else has he done that proves he's negligent or ignoring the medical research in the context of player safety?

Don't forget that Goodell works for the owners. The 18 game schedule probably wasn't his alone.

The guy is hated by the players because he's trying to change the culture of the sport. That means he's doing a good job in that context.
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I have already mention it previously.
 
#103
#103
Tragic. He was a great football player. One of the most dominant LBs in the NFL. Ever. Concussions and their undiagnosed after effects are the result of this alleged suicide.
 
#104
#104
His induction into the HOF is going to probably be a little difficult to witness. I wonder whom will give the speech on his behalf?
 
#105
#105
zjcvols said:
I have already mention it previously.
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You really didn't provide much substance to the allegation that the league did "nothing" after the 2007 report, so I didn't accept that as a legitimate argument. In 2007, you were 14 years old. I doubt you really had any idea what the league was/wasn't doing at the time.

Then again, I didn't get to watch much football that year, either.
 
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#106
#106
Did Seau have demons because he played a violent sport, or was part of his success in a violent sport due to the fact that he had demons?
 
#108
#108
I think at this point, it's pretty hard to argue against the idea that decades of playing football, especially at positions where head injuries are more likely (RB, LB, SS) can cause long term brain damage. And we know long term brain damage can lead to depression and suicidal tendencies.
 
#109
#109
milohimself said:
I think at this point, it's pretty hard to argue against the idea that decades of playing football, especially at positions where head injuries are more likely (RB, LB, SS) can cause long term brain damage. And we know long term brain damage can lead to depression and suicidal tendencies.
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The "suck it up and sign a waiver if you're a man" crowd is not a group that generally believes that physiological depression actually exists to begin with. They are never going to accept that getting hit in the head repeatedly in his 20s can make a man kill himself in his 40s.
 
#110
#110
Then that crowd just isn't dealing in the realm of facts and science. I love football, but at some point the physiological effects of the game just have to be accepted and dealt with.
 
#111
#111
Vercingetorix said:
The "suck it up and sign a waiver if you're a man" crowd is not a group that generally believes that physiological depression actually exists to begin with. They are never going to accept that getting hit in the head repeatedly in his 20s can make a man kill himself in his 40s.
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The thing that makes me question it is I haven't looked too deeply into the science, but there are about 900 defensive players on rosters every year. So how many guys played defense for 10 years, and how many of them committed suicide?

I'm not arguing that a long defensive career can't result in clinical depression. I'm really just wondering how impactful it is on a wide scale (is this a statistical fluke). When you only have a handful of suicides out of a large population, it can be indicative of a real problem, or a random result.

The rate is so low, it's still hard to establish significance without sample sizes that are in the hundreds of thousands.
 
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#112
#112
The figure I could find is that the suicide rate among former NFL players is six times that of the population at large.
 
#113
#113
milohimself said:
The figure I could find is that the suicide rate among former NFL players is six times that of the population at large.
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I was figuring something like that, considering the US is 12 per 100,000 (if there are 4 nfl suicides, there'd have to be 33,000 NFL players with long careers to match general US rate).

I wonder what is the suicide rate for people with high-profile high-paying entertainment jobs? Would it be less or more?
 
#115
#115
milohimself said:
I don't know how you'd go about quantifying that.
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Yeah, I think you'd have to compare them strictly to other pro athletes. Entertainers like musicians are a whole different breed (they'll kill themselves just to be remembered).
 
#116
#116
Besides...

- We have a pretty good idea about the links between brain damage and depression/suicide
- We are getting a better idea about brain damage suffered as a result of playing football

Similar trends are being seen among returning veterans who have suffered head trauma.
 
#117
#117
milohimself said:
Besides...

- We have a pretty good idea about the links between brain damage and depression/suicide
- We are getting a better idea about brain damage suffered as a result of playing football

Similar trends are being seen among returning veterans who have suffered head trauma.
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Yeah, that can't really be refuted.

I'm wondering if there is a desirable solution. What can they do? Economic analysis shows improvements in equipment technology result in more/harder collisions, so that doesn't make you any safer.

I'm a little worried that this could be the beginning of the end of football.
 
#118
#118
Rules changes. Things like effectively eliminating a huge portion of kickoffs this last season is a step in that direction.
 
#119
#119
milohimself said:
Rules changes. Things like effectively eliminating a huge portion of kickoffs this last season is a step in that direction.
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Yeah, but I'm not sure that makes any difference. Seau didn't play on kickoffs. There are no rule changes from an LB's perspective that limit the head trauma. I'm not sure how they do that without transforming the game into something unfamiliar.
 
#120
#120
The answer is they don't. The rules and the way the game is played is going to have to undergo a shift to the point where it will be almost unrecognizable. I don't see any way around it this point. Thousands of guys out there are undergoing the same physical effect of a car wreck hundreds of times a year over a course of time that can go on for decades. It can't go on.
 
#121
#121
milohimself said:
The answer is they don't. The rules and the way the game is played is going to have to undergo a shift to the point where it will be almost unrecognizable. I don't see any way around it this point. Thousands of guys out there are undergoing the same physical effect of a car wreck hundreds of times a year over a course of time that can go on for decades. It can't go on.
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:cray:
 
#123
#123
milohimself said:
The figure I could find is that the suicide rate among former NFL players is six times that of the population at large.
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I wonder why the rate is higher for NFL than for other pro football leagues like the Canadian, European, Areana, UFL?
 
#125
#125
milohimself said:
The answer is they don't. The rules and the way the game is played is going to have to undergo a shift to the point where it will be almost unrecognizable. I don't see any way around it this point. Thousands of guys out there are undergoing the same physical effect of a car wreck hundreds of times a year over a course of time that can go on for decades. It can't go on.
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Yep. Studies show that it's not even just games; it's practice too. Linemen under go car crash-level hits every day in practice, and that adds up just like the abuse you take in games does. How do you fix football when even practice damages the brain?

People get angry at Goodell for the pussification of football. What they don't really get is that the NFL completely understands that the writing is on the wall for their sport, and that they're preemptively trying to change it to the point where even a pass-happy low-hitting variation of the sport can survive.
 
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