Writers of Pro Football Prospectus 2008

printable version

Extra Points

Articles from around the Web



13 Oct 2009

This Is Your Brain On Football

Malcolm Gladwell contrasts and compares head injuries in the NFL with dogfighting in his latest piece for the New Yorker.

Posted by: Bill Barnwell on 13 Oct 2009

65 comments, Last at 17 Oct 2009, 11:16pm by Enigma

Comments

1
by Still Alive (not verified) :: Tue, 10/13/2009 - 11:22pm

Pretty good article and a strong central point. Sad so little writing is like this given how much of it there is and how many people claim it for a profession.

I particularly liked the analogy between fight attendees and team fanatics, which I think is not entirely unfair. One can appreciate football without needing to be mindless about it, and one could even appreciate it without the violence.

Segments like "jacked up" have always been a little off putting to me, and the game would be substantially unchanged with no hitting allowed (only tackling). Though admittedly it would be less entertaining many.

Well, we are very violent apes and it will take a long time to slowly wean ourselves away from our natural inclinations.

51
by John Doe (not verified) :: Thu, 10/15/2009 - 7:34pm

No hitting would substantially change the game.

I'm not sure how you could even remove it while still allowing tackling. Would the offense be allowed to block? Would the defense be allowed to toss them around? How would you define tackling the ball carrier vs. hitting the ball carrier? Extend the QB no touch areas to everyone? Require the tackler to slow down to an acceptable speed before beginning the tackle?

I've seen football without violence, it's called the Pro Bowl. The Pro Bowl sucks. Like it or not a lot of football is about intimidation. Hitting the quarterback makes him less effective, hitting wide receivers over the middle makes them drop balls and hear footsteps, you can't bring down a RB without going full force.

If you take away the violence you irreparably change the game.

58
by Still Alive (not verified) :: Fri, 10/16/2009 - 2:30pm

You don't know the line between hitting and tackling? Go play some tackle football with no pads with a bunch of guys who played high school football. You figure out the line in about 10 plays, maybe less. You can block, tackle, etc. You can even push a reciever after he makes a catch over the middle trying to knock him down. You just can hit him in the chest with your shoulder/head. It is a really obviously line if you ever try to play.

And no it does not change the game much. People who think football is about violence haven't played much. Violence is one tool of many.

62
by John Doe (not verified) :: Fri, 10/16/2009 - 6:06pm

Just the chest? How about the legs? Head? Back? Side? Hitting someone in the chest is far less likely to cause injury then than any of those places. I'm going to assume you mean "don't hit the guy with your head or chest at all".

What that is, is an arm tackle. I would love to see a group of guys trying to arm tackle Brandon Jacobs. Arm tackles don't work in the NFL, you can't allow a running back to go full speed in armor and require the defense to arm tackle. You can't allow receivers to cut into the middle without fear, or the offense will shred the defense.

I played high school football, and I have played tackle football with no pads with other football players. You can not possibly compare that to football on the NFL level. Your subjective line of what is and is not hitting is only obvious to you. People who get paid good money to officiate NFL games can't even handle roughing the passer calls, I can't imagine how well they'd do on judging what was a hit and what was tackle.

Taking out the hitting would make Football completely unbalanced towards the offense and change fundamental parts of football strategy. That is changing the game, significantly.

2
by Will Allen (not verified) :: Tue, 10/13/2009 - 11:44pm

Pretty good article, even if the analogies are a bit of a stretch. I wish there was some sort of technological preventitive measure which could end these dangers, but only so much can be done with a bunch of soft neurons inside a hard skull. Certainly the force measuring devices should be widely deployed, so as to gain further insight into the dangers, and to allow men to be able to give more informed consent.

3
by Sunil (not verified) :: Tue, 10/13/2009 - 11:55pm

Wow - such powerful writing - unilateral but indepth. The gladiatorial aspect of football somehow gets submerged under all the lights and glory. I wonder how much damage has already happened to the linemen by the time they take their first snap in pro-football. Also, it's the players on the fringes who never make it that are trying harder and hitting harder. They have no pension, no safety net, just a hope of being selected and are always trying harder. It's painful to think of what they must endure silently without support or recognition.

4
by Carlos :: Tue, 10/13/2009 - 11:58pm

I'd be curious to see similar research done on rugby players.

And I'll be the nth person to observe that more technology does not mean more safety. Rugby is safer than football. Auto fatalities/miles driven are fairly unchanged in decades (we drive faster and closer together, counting on superior cars to save our lives... and have netted out the same).

9
by TruFalcons (not verified) :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 5:30am

Rugby isn't a great comparison to football for many reasons. League (the other rugby) is a better comparison because it's been professional for over a hundred years (so the players are bigger) and unlike rugby, it doesn't require players to hit and wrap, so the collisions are bigger. There aren't a lot of reports of these kinds of problems with league players that I'm aware of. The use of PHDs is probably behind the NFL, even so I haven't heard of any of these kinds of mental illness or concussion problems, despite the fact that (unlike rugby's mandatory 3 week standdown)players can continue playing after concussion.

I believe the main reason league players don't have the same issues is because they don't wear helmets, so they're unable to initiate collisions head first. Football players will often throw blocks with no regard for their head because they're protected. The same applies to tacklers facing up to backs coming through the line of scrimmage or against receivers over the middle.
It's also notable that in both rugby codes the only time collisions are permitted are when carrying the ball or tackling the ballcarrier. In football linemen smack heads on every play.

13
by CandlestickPark :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 8:28am

I played and coached rugby union in America for a decade and I can say you could always tell who had played high school football, because they were the ones leading with the head on a tackle and getting a nasty headache as a result.

13
by CandlestickPark :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 8:28am

I played and coached rugby union in America for a decade and I can say you could always tell who had played high school football, because they were the ones leading with the head on a tackle and getting a nasty headache as a result.

15
by Sophandros :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 9:43am

I think that the best thing that American football can do is have a mandatory 3-4 week wait after a concussion. Michael Lewis just had his third concussion THIS SEASON. That's criminal, IMO.

-------------
Sports talk radio and sports message boards are the killing fields of intellectual discourse.

19
by Noah of Arkadia :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 10:09am

This is odd and yet it seems accurate: the use of a safety devise -the helmet- is the main reason the game is so violent.

39
by Jimmy in Oz :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 8:06pm

Hey I'm Aussie, i know Rugby League & Union.

The Hit and Wrap:
In Rugby Union the players must attempt to wrap up, there's no similar restrictions in league. Most of the time in League they'll make the safe wrap-up tackle, unless they can put the hit on without sacrificing the defensive line.

Bigger Players:
The nature of the games is different. The biggest Rugby players are bigger than the biggest league players.

Neither is a good comparison to football because we don't smack heads like linemen. Soccer defenders who are heading the ball are probably the better comparison.

56
by Art (not verified) :: Fri, 10/16/2009 - 6:54am

Actually, the different rules might make Rugby League & Union good sports to study. If former Rugby Union players don't show significant brain damage then that would point to some possible solutions for the NFL (requiring players to wrap up, not using as much equipment, etc.). However, if the rugby players also have significant brain damage then the problem is unlikely to be solved by a few rule and equipment changes (or at least the changes suggested in this discussion).

10
by Stereochemistry :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 7:39am

Re: Auto safety

I think you may appreciate this article, also written by Gladwell for the New Yorker on the history of US auto safety. I spent a few weeks going through his archive after reading his books and becoming a fan of his writing:

http://www.gladwell.com/2001/2001_06_11_a_crash.htm

And reinforcing the concept of "passive safety" and why it doesn't actually help is this article on SUVs:

http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_01_12_a_suv.html

12
by DGL :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 8:12am

"Auto fatalities/miles driven are fairly unchanged in decades..."

Uh, no.

The auto fatality rate has fallen from 18 per 100 million vehicle-miles in 1925, to about 7 per 100M vehicle miles in 1955, to about 3 per 100M vehicle miles in 1985, to 1.73 per 100M vehicle miles in 1995, to 1.36 per 100M vehicle miles in 2007.

35
by D Jones :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 6:08pm

I knew that comment was wrong but I was too lazy to do anything about it. Thanks for your research.

I always cringe when people say "they don't make 'em like they used to..." In the case of cars, thank God that they don't.

5
by Key19 :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 12:23am

Incredible piece.

ESPN surely has the power to do an incredible study on concussions and things, but I've never seen them do anything like that. Seems like they could really help out in researching things like this. But I guess there's no money in that.

6
by tuluse :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 1:36am

Am I the only person who thinks this article would have been better had he just talked about the dangers of Football, and not tried to equate it to dog fighting?

Seems like a tactic used just to spark controversy, not meaningful discussion.

7
by bubqr :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 3:20am

I do agree.

8
by David :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 4:50am

No, I absolutely agree

In fact, I think it weakens the article, in both ways. An article on the dangers of football would have been very good. Equally, an article exploring why dogfighting is viewed as an abomination (after five hundred years in the spotlight) would also have been interesting.

Conflating the two in order to create a 'current affairs' hook to hang a single article on weakened both. However, such is the lot of a columnist.

17
by J.D. (not verified) :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 9:55am

I don't agree. When Gladwell explores the trauma caused by these repeated collisions, the question naturally arises: why do people do this? He attempts to answer that question through the analogy of dogfighting - football players do this to "be game" and please their master/coach.

16
by elhondo2 (not verified) :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 9:53am

I disagree. I think the point of the article is that these men are only being damaged in this manner due to our own inhumanity.

It's an effective piece. I remember thinking that Vick at some level, may have empathized with his dogs, since at some level, he was put out to fight every week with substantial risk of injury.

You can argue that it's not at all similar due to free will, etc., but I think that you can at least draw parallels. Vick may not have seen dog-fighting as evil as the majority of Americans because he felt something similar was being done to him.

18
by Carlos :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 10:08am

I didn't mind the dog fighting hook. For one, it sets up the sweet dig on goodell that had he spent as much time thinking about Kyle Turley as he did thinking about those poor dogs, he might actually start looking out for player safety in meaningful ways.

But the more important part of the dog fighting analogy is to undermine arguments based on tradition. Not too long ago, dog fighting was viewed as perfectly acceptable entertainment and now it's an abomination. Maybe that's the arc for football too?

63
by John Doe (not verified) :: Fri, 10/16/2009 - 6:23pm

Vick received millions of dollars of compensation, and chose to play football instead of taking another job. You have a chance of being hurt in a football game, in a dog fight both dogs will be injured and one will die. Plenty of people have jobs with a risk of injury, and most of them are less compensated and less able to switch professions than professional athletes.

I'd venture that Vick plays football because it's fun and lucrative, and he was involved in dog fighting because he enjoyed watching dogs tear each other up. I don't think football makes sociopaths out of people.

11
by GnomeChumpsky (not verified) :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 7:49am

Virtually all of our entertainment is created by monomaniacal individuals obsessed with their art, fame, and/or money. Musicians, actors, authors, and sports stars give up pieces of their life by doing horrible things to their bodies (drugs, injuries, etc.) and putting normal human activity (families and friends) on the back burner. There is a price for excellence or even an attempt at excellence no matter what the field.
To blame football fans for the suicides, injuries, and concussions is to blame listeners for Kurt Cobain's death or readers for John Kennedy Toole's. To ban football like dogfighting would be so paternalistic and arbitrarily moral as to lose all regard for self determination.

Not to mention that the comparison to dogfighting is demeaning because dogs are incapable of consent. The implication is that football players are too stupid or weak-minded to be considered capable of making the choice to play football.

21
by Soulless Mercha... :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 11:33am

The implication is that the choice to play football is not as simple as you want it to be.

For free choice, isn't it absolutely imperative that the downsides of the choice be widely known? They aren't. Also, football players start very young. Expecting rational choice from children is foolishness. If you're brought up in a culture that worships athletes, and particularly football players, and you know there are great rewards for it, and you're a kid, and you don't know the risks involved because nobody talks about them, how free and rational is your choice, really?

There is free choice, yes, but it's not in a vacuum. External pressures and forces shape desires and understandings, and it's not difficult to frame someone's worldview in such a way that he or she makes a "free" choice that's hardly "free" at all.

28
by MCS :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 2:35pm

Under the age of 18, the care and well being of the child is entrusted to the parents. Expecting a rational choice from adults with regards to the safety of their children is NOT foolishness.

30
by apocalipstick (not verified) :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 3:00pm

Then you haven't lived in the South or Midwest.

24
by apocalipstick (not verified) :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 12:44pm

False analogy. Musicians do not have to take drugs; it's not endemic to the profession. Brain injury is pretty much guaranteed in football.

Does the technology exist to create a soft-shell helmet that would provide protection while being unsuitable as a weapon? That would deprive coaches of their erection-inducing "crash," but would be better for players.

44
by Jimmy in Oz :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 10:34pm

You mean a helmet made out of some kind of rubber foam like what amatuer boxers, some rugby players, and Chelsea goalkeeper Petr Cech wear? No we don't have that technology anymore. We had it, then lost it. sorry.

47
by Will Carroll :: Thu, 10/15/2009 - 11:02am

Cech's headgear is not foam. It's a superdense, highly engineered helmet using an advanced polymer that adjusts to tension. When it gets hit, it gets harder. Studies done on his helmet before approval showed it was as effective against hits as an "American football" helmet while being lighter. It lacks a facemask, but it has extra protection in the area of his skull fracture.

50
by Jimmy in Oz :: Thu, 10/15/2009 - 6:32pm

"When it gets hit, it gets harder." You mean the rubber foam* compresses?

* I've used the phrase "rubber foam" because "superdense, highly engineered helmet using an advanced polymer" makes me sound like a wanker. i don't know what superdense means and when ordinary dense becomes superdense. i don't know how a helmet becomes highly engineered and not just ordinary engineered or even just plain old designed. Having worked as a maintenance engineer in a plastic mouldings factory, i know what "advanced polymer" means - It means its not wood or metal. I'd also like to read the these "Studies" you mention but fail to reference. If you could post them and not be so Easterbrook, i'd really appreciate it.

thanks.

52
by Jimmy :: Thu, 10/15/2009 - 8:38pm

OK that seems a little uneccessary.

When he says advanced polymer he doesn't simply mean 'not wood or metal' he is probably referring to something like D30 which will actually stiffen (not compress) in response to impact. Think about how cornflour reacts to pressure, acting to inherently impede the force placed against it. Anyway it acts to redistribute the force of the impact over the whole structure reducing the impact to the area initially hit.

As for highly engineered I suspect it means that it is designed specifically to prevent stresses to the areas at extra risk due to Czech's previous fratured skull.

I asked an engineer friend of mine if he knew about such materials and when they night be available for sporting activities in general and his reply was that basically research into the uses of these materials is so expensive that it is only currently being trialed for military purposes (ie body armour) and it will be a while before these kind of substances become available for mainstream uses.

53
by Jimmy in Oz :: Thu, 10/15/2009 - 9:59pm

Yeah, its completely uneccessary for anyone to step in and complain about my use of the term "rubber foam" as a generalisation in the context it was presented in a manner that belittles my contribution and contains inaccuracies.

The foam is meant to compress so that the impact forces occur over a longer timespan. This means less acceleration. This means less brain bouncing around the skull.

54
by Jimmy in Oz :: Thu, 10/15/2009 - 10:00pm

Also Canterbury's website calls it foam. So its foam. So telling me i'm wrong for calling it foam is also uneccessary.

20
by Joseph :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 11:27am

Read the article yesterday--great piece of writing. I love writing that makes me THINK (part of the reason I love THIS site).
Regarding the dogfighting analogy--I took from it this aspect: The dog will put it all on the line to please his master, even to his own hurt. This is mainly because of how he has been trained. In football, everyone knows that if you don't play, another player will take your place--even if you're pretty good (Bledsoe/Brady). So from the high-school level onward, players know that they must soldier on, even disregarding their health. Now maybe at some smaller colleges/high-schools they won't, because they don't have aspirations of playing at the next level, whatever that may be for them.
But having played in high school myself, I know that there is still the desire to be there for the team and help them win. Your pride/self-confidence tells you that you can still do it, even when your body physically cannot. It is part of the athletic "survival of the fittest" that trains us "I can still do it/I will make the next shot/I will get a hit next time etc.--EVEN when a neutral outside observer can logically say "no/not likely". Athletes without this mental self-confidence usually find themselves on the bench, and within a couple of seasons (at most) aren't playing that particular sport anymore.
On a personal note, since I had the mental self-confidence, but not the athletic ability, I have learned to apply these traits to my job/hobbies--which have basically NO long-term physical risks.

22
by MJK :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 11:58am

I've only had time to skim the article...I'll read it in depth tonight. But it's a very interesting topic. There was just a special on 60 Minutes about this as well. I actually study a very closely related topic as part of my research, so I know a little bit about repetitive trauma and brain injury.

The problem, as I see it, is that technology can only do so much. Better helmets, better pads, etc., can reduce a portion of the loads that a given impact causes (specifically, they can absorb some energy and reduce total linear accelerations), and they can reinforce certain joints or structures and, say, prevent some bone breakages, skull fractures, joint tearing, etc, but this doesn't solve the whole problem. First, there are some mechanical loads that no amount of padding will ever help...rotations of the head during a collision, for example (which are believed to be even more damaging than linear accelerations). Second, the amount of energy they can absorb is limited by how thick they are...and since I don't expect to see football players wearing three-feet thick pads any time soon, I think we're close to the limits there. Finally, as some other folks have alluded, even if we get better protective systems, it could just cause players to play rougher, hit harder, and play more recklessly, negating much of the benefit.

The only two alternatives that I can think of though would destroy the modern game of football that we all love. One would be to actually take away nearly all of the protective equipment football players have. Then concern for injury and personal safety would cause them to slow up and play more carefully. Of course, there would still be some inevitable accidental injuries, which would likely be worse than they needed to be, and that raises an interesting ethical question...would it be better to have the occasional crippling injury or even fatality if the overall number of chronic, later-life-affecting injuries dropped dramatically? I.e. is it better for the game to stay as is and, say, 40-50% of players have problems later in life, or would it be better if 1-2% of players were killed or had severe injuries but the chronic problem rate dropped to 10%?

The other option would be to dramatically change the rules to reduce these kind of hits. Like some folks have suggested, making "hitting" illegal and forcing people to tackle. And maybe even moving more to "touch" football, at least when it comes to downing the ballcarrier. It would destroy the game, but it would be a lot safer.

23
by Jimmy :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 12:05pm

Would the game be safer if they took the pads away? With rules surrounding blood injury in place leading with your head would very likely result in having to go off the field to get stitched up. Other than intimidation (by trying to hurt people) is there ever a reason why someone needs to be hit in the head in football? I am not talking about accidental hitting more the stuff that goes on every down.

26
by Still Alive (not verified) :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 1:24pm

It certainly seemed to me that we played fairly high intensity tackle football in high school and college with no pads but no "hitting". You had to take people down, but you couldn't do it with your shoulder/head. There was one broken arm and someone lost a tooth once. but i do not recall many injuries at all.

These days I also play in a pretty physical men's hockey league where there are no pads on the upper half of the body and no "checking". There is still a lot of contact, just not to the extent where you are knocking other people over or concussing them.

I don't see why you couldn't change the rules to involve contact and tackling but no hitting and have 95% the same game (and in fact football appears to be slowly moving in this way, especially regarding QBs).

33
by Jimmy :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 3:42pm

Were the games worth watching? If so and if half the NFL style of play wouldn't disappear then why not?

Broken arms and lost teeth can happen in almost any sport. David Bust nearly lost his foot playing soccer in one particularly bizarre tackle. I go to cricket nets with a guy who lost all of the cartilage in his ear when it got ripped out when he was playing cricket keeping wicket to a slow bowler and in the league I my club plays in a young player was actually killed (or so I have heard) when he got hit in the chest by a quick and his heart stopped. Then again cricket is a bit more vicious than is generally perceived from folk who haven't ever faced a decent quick bowler. Soccer isn't though and the David Bust break would sicken the biggest 'jacked up' fan. Accidents happen, getting hit in the head 30 times like the article says isn't accidental it has been designed into the process and should probably be designed out again (or at least try).

25
by Sophandros :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 1:05pm

How different is taking the dog out back and shooting it and neglecting to contribute to the players' pension fund? At least the dog gets out of its misery quickly, I guess...

-------------
Sports talk radio and sports message boards are the killing fields of intellectual discourse.

27
by MJK :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 2:13pm

I would like to see them make "hitting" less legal.

This past weekends had a couple of prime examples of a receiver either in the process of catching a ball or running with a ball he had caught and having a safety come blazing in at high speed and using his body like a missile. Happily, several such instances got called.

Injuries could probably go down if they got rid of the "jacked up" culture. There's absolutely no reason why a safety should fly in on a guy that has the ball and ram him...other than to try to get on Sports Center highlights. From a pure tactical sense, it's probably better to wrap the guy up and be sure of the tackle than to fly into him, because if he sidesteps at all you get taken out of the play and he runs for a TD. Granted, you have the strategic advantage of maybe "shaking him up" so he has to come out for a few plays/the rest of the game, but this is exactly the sort of advantage that we ought to be trying to prevent players from seeking.

If the receiver is in the process of catching the ball, there is a tactical reason for hitting hard...you could prevent him from catching an otherwise catchable ball and thus prevent the completion. However, if you're in the area, you can get just as much an advantage by jumping up and trying to tip the ball away or intercept it, or pull the receivers' arms as he's trying to secure the ball...and it's a lot safer. That would put a lot of current safeties out of a job and maybe move the safety position to have skills more like a CB or a WR...but it wouldn't destroy the game. If "hitting" was more frowned upon and penalized more often, then maybe the game would move in this direction.

29
by tuluse :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 2:44pm

It's fun to hit. That is biggest reason why people do it. Not to get on Sportscenter.

32
by Jimmy :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 3:30pm

I don't neccesarily disagree with what you have said, it all makes some sense. The only problem with your proposals is that the article implies that the biggest risk is to linemen who are taking smaller but very frequent hits to the head.

I remember when researching some (admittedly superficial) information on boxing that a lot of the professional opinion on boxing beleived that the use of gloves was a large part of the problem in causing brain injury in boxing. The theory went that without gloves the force of the blows to the head that would cause dangerous injuries to the brain would cause the boxer's hands to break way before brain injury was caused (ie hands are much less strong than craniums). Obviously the biggest problem with bare fist boxing would be the massive amount of cutting. Which leads me to why taking helmets off linemen could solve alot of the problems. The scouting reports on college players who routinely lead with their heads would run along the lines of; Positives: great intensity, not afraid to mix it up and lead with his head. Negatives: spends most of the game bleeding on the sidelines getting stitched up, needs to engage better with his hands and then flatten out. I suspect you would get offensive linemen who were a bit smaller and focused on technique and position. It would probably reduce the amount of head first cut blocking as you would be far less likely to dive at a defender's knees with your head if it wasn't encased in protective armour.

I remember when I was at my first Uni (Oxford, which has a top notch college rugby union side, half of them were aleady in minor national teams eg USA, Canada, Argentina and some are now playing Six Nations and World Cup level) I had a mate who was on the second or third blues team which all sometimes trained with the first team. He told me once of a warm up game that was coming up for his team where they played the first team whist they (the third team or so) wore large pads not totally disimilar to those used in the NFL. He was complaining because the pads were going to slow them down and make the game difficult. I asked why they didn't put the fisrt team in the pads then and he looked at me as though I were mad and said that if they had tried the game that way half of the junior team would have gotten killed. I think part of the problem is putting guys in armour in the first place.

64
by John Doe (not verified) :: Fri, 10/16/2009 - 9:35pm

The idea is to inspire fear of pain in the WR, not to injure them. If they fear going over the middle they drop balls later in the game, or better yet the coach doesn't call that route again. A safety/cornerback who is behind the receiver in zone coverage when the ball comes has little chance of tipping it without getting a PI call, he can hit the guy and make him drop it though.

There is a tactical reason for hitting the ball carrier hard, fumbles. Taking the violence out of Football is akin to taking it out of Boxing or MMA.

31
by Bowl Game Anomaly :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 3:26pm

I love how almost every commenter is missing the point. This isn't about getting jacked up or de-cleated or whatever. If you actually read the article, you'd know that the real danger comes from the impacts suffered by linemen on routine impacts which occur on almost every play (and during practice), and from the impacts suffered by special teamers (not necessarily just the ball-carrier) on almost every kickoff.

You can try to legislate head-hunting out of the game, and you can force players who suffer a "concussion" (definition subject to interpretation) to the sidelines, but that will not address the real brain trauma problem.

45
by DeltaWhiskey :: Thu, 10/15/2009 - 2:31am

Thank you.

59
by Still Alive (not verified) :: Fri, 10/16/2009 - 2:42pm

Lineman without helmets or pads are not going to do a lot of damage to each others heads...

61
by Bowl Game Anomaly :: Fri, 10/16/2009 - 4:48pm

That is an interesting hypothesis, but I'd like to see some evidence to back it up.

34
by andy (not verified) :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 5:21pm

I have loved football with a passion since I was young. Though I am a 49ers fan, I take a conscious policy of "loving the player over the team," since I think that helps to avoid dehumanizing athletes into "bad guys" on the "other team."
That conscious choice in how I watch football already takes some of the blind, irrational, emotional passion out of the sport, which can be good and bad. However, now, I don't know if I can watch the sport and be entertained by it in good conscience.

If we denounce gratuitous violence against animals in things like dog fighting and excessively cruel butchering practices, then we should be principled enough to protest violent acts committed between athletes who are often poor black or white people.

36
by D Jones :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 6:27pm

Great article. As a football fan, I am now morally torn about my love of the NFL.

1) Would linemen impacts be reduced if they didn't wear helmets? I've never played organized football, so I don't know. Are linemen impacts just due to the force of two big dudes banging into each other from a crouch a few feet apart? Or are they due to swinging arms, elbows, etc. hitting helmets?

2) Is the hard outer shell of the helmets actually increasing the shock of such impacts?

I imagine that while they are quoting G's (acceleration) in the article, that Jerk (or the rate of change of Acceleration) may be more correlated to long-term brain damage. Softer shells or pliable helmets would help reduce these impact shocks, while also providing somewhat less feeling of invulnerability.

3) This could be a huge liability issue for the NFL. Once peer-reviewed papers are published, watch the lawsuits or legal maneuvering begin.

4) Flag football could be fun to watch, right? More pitches, everybody is eligible? It was fun to play, at least, and I don't think I damaged my brain doing it...

37
by tuluse :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 6:41pm

No the hard helmet doesn't increase the shock. It spreads the shock to the whole head instead of concentrated at one point.

38
by D Jones :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 7:46pm

I don't know, I'm dubious.

Imagine an impact test with two football helmets: one regular one, and one covered in an exterior layer of foam. Hit each helmet with a hammer. Which impact has a larger shock?

Intuitively, the regular helmet - without the external foam covering - will have a larger shock, as the hammer contact time with the helmet is very small. The foam covered helmet will have a lesser shock, because the foam deforms to absorb the hammer impact, increasing the amount of time the hammer is in contact with the helmet, and thus decreasing the peak acceleration.

Now, if the helmet was made only of foam, then it wouldn't be all that good at protecting my noggin from a hammer strike. But perhaps it would make a better football helmet for everyone involved, if instead of your hard helmet hitting my hard helmet, it would be your giant soft helmet hitting my giant soft helmet....

And the players would look awesome. Like Teletubbies.

40
by tuluse :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 8:13pm

There is foam on the inside of helmets, it's not just a piece of metal resting on your head.

43
by Bowl Game Anomaly :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 8:25pm

If the outside was soft, there would be less recoil. The problem is that you would lose the glancing effect and the helmet would stay in contact with the impacting body longer. An ideal helmet would have a surface which which was flexible enough to not snap backward on a direct impact but also smooth enough to glance away from an indirect impact.

46
by Caw of the Seahawk :: Thu, 10/15/2009 - 8:10am

http://procaphelmet.com/

aka the "gazoo helmet".

I heard about it a few years ago but don't recall seeing it that much on television.

48
by Will Carroll :: Thu, 10/15/2009 - 11:04am

I was just thinking about that the other day. Thanks for the link!

49
by Jimmy :: Thu, 10/15/2009 - 1:46pm

Steve Wallace and Steve Young used to wear them (or something very similar) during the late Nineties. Just before Young's career was ended by the number of concussions he got. It might have helped, or maybe they didn't start using it until it was too late.

41
by Raiderjoe :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 8:17pm

Mark Kelso wore special foamy helmet with Bills in late 80s early 90s. maybe if all players go with foam less dmanage to heads

41
by Raiderjoe :: Wed, 10/14/2009 - 8:17pm

Mark Kelso wore special foamy helmet with Bills in late 80s early 90s. maybe if all players go with foam less dmanage to heads

55
by NickL (not verified) :: Fri, 10/16/2009 - 4:30am

I think you could simply make leading with the head illegal and change helmet style; yeah, the game would be hugely different--but...a version of football that minimized head trauma would be a version that deemphasized line play--perhaps skilled players would again become more important than linemen. Everything about the job of playing line in the NFL is destructive to the human body....

60
by tuluse :: Fri, 10/16/2009 - 3:03pm

I'm pretty sure leading with the head is already illegal.

57
by socctty :: Fri, 10/16/2009 - 10:51am

I should probably refrain from commenting on this before reading, but I'm sure Gladwell does a good job as I'm a fan of his writing and will read this in due time.

However, there was a GQ article, about thirteen pages long, concerning a Nigerian-American mortician in Pittsburgh who saw a lot of Steelers with concussion-related injuries, that was published not too long ago as well. It was certainly worth the read as well. I wouldn't be surprised if Gladwell references it. But that was just another in series of articles and reports on research showing that this is a persistent problem.

I'll echo the comments of others that my fandom of football is shaken by this. Kudos to football outsiders for pointing it out; obviously, the viability of FO completely depends on the popularity of the NFL. ESPN isn't as exposed but their biggest meal ticket surely is college and NFL football, and there's a lot more money, and stockholders, at stake. They won't dedicate more than 1 minute a week to this. They'll cover Tim Tebow's concussion alright, but in the context of whether he will start, not whether he should start.

65
by Enigma (not verified) :: Sat, 10/17/2009 - 11:16pm

re: 57

ESPN has done a number of articles and Sportscenter pieces on concussions and the NFL over the years. Granted, it hasn't been the kind of in-depth research that a powerhouse like ESPN could produce if it wanted to, but some of the work has been notable (most stuff by Peter Keating).

Some of the work can be found by searching Elliot Pellman or Peter Keating at ESPN.com:

http://search.espn.go.com/elliot-pellman/

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA
To skip this, please log in.