https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/aug/29/high-school-football-deaths-public-health-crisis
6 kids have died in
recentless than 3 weeks.Also, far be it for me to defend tackle football's safety however the article goes on to say 4 of these 6 kid's deaths are heat related.
Then goes on to mention 11 other children dying between 2018-2022... Again of heat stroke.
Then theres this anecdote:
“I personally had an experience where I was at an SEC football camp and asked a trainer for heat guard – something my Alabama high school coaches and eventually my college program stressed when playing in hot or humid conditions. I was denied the salt tablets even after telling them I was cramping and didn’t feel good. Within the hour, I had blacked out and fallen on concrete.”
This isnt really a story about CTE or football at all, it's a story about rampant criminal negligence by deliriously ignorant teachers and schools (and perhaps a soupçon of climate change).
So why doesn't the author blame the schools in charge even once? They were responsibile for these children at the time! This piece bothers me...
If it was CTEs, I'd be more on board with this, but you're 100 right. Who the fuck denies someone salt tablets?
There have a been a few college coaches who have killed players via heat exhaustion including behavior like denying water to the players and they are all still coaching AFAIK
Parents can’t sue “football.” The article is to keep things the way they are, specifically to keep money and power where it is.
Read that one. Its the most recent one. " After colliding with other players, Cohen got back up, took a few steps, then lost consciousness. He was rushed to the hospital suffering from brain bleeding and swelling. His oxygen level was low while he was in the ambulance, his father said.
The next day, Cohen died, just three days after the first day of school."
In America, children are encouraged to fight to the death in gladiatorial games while their parents look on and cheer.while their parents look on and cheer.
And scream at the refs, coaches, opposing players.
I'm going to say that isn't the full story. It's most likely 'second impact syndrome', and the crowd was not observant enough to notice the kid would've already had a big collision before that one.
The brain can take a hard football sized knock, it'll just swell a little and you'll have a concussion. If you get hit once it's already swelled, pop, that's a bleed.
If proper safety was being taught he would've been pulled from the pitch after the first hit.
Proper safety would be not having kids put in situations (like a sport where they get tackled by other 200 pound children) where their brain could start swelling as a result.
Agreed, the mental gymnastics required to defend American football is wild.
Well, I suppose so, yeah. Some people just like contact sports, and I think they should be allowed to play it if they're made aware of the risks. Same goes for any other risky activity.
"But what if the child consents tho?" is not the defense you think it is lmao
Ah yes, contact sport is totally the same as pedophilia.
What's your point? You want the adult to consent on their behalf for them to play the game? Sure. That's probably already a reality, in that if a parent tells their kid they aren't allowed to play or says it's too dangerous then a lot of kids would obey their parent. Mine wouldn't allow me to play rugby without a scrumcap when I was a kid.
If you ban the sport wholesale, people are just going to play it in unsafe deregulated environments. I think that even happened to rugby in Greece at one point.
My point is kids shouldn't be playing full contact football, regardless of whether or not their parents approve. The long term ramifications are not something they can consent to. It's like giving kids alcohol after "explaining the risks," except alcohol is safer than multiple concussions. Even if you explain to a teen that they can develop lifelong alcohol addiction and damage their liver, they still do not have the ability to make an informed decision. "My parents told me about the risks and gave me permission to binge drink if I want to" is not a policy I'd trust.
I do not understand why we continue to allow full contact football when it so it's so dangerous to the players, especially children.
"After colliding with other players, Cohen got back up, took a few steps, then lost consciousness. He was rushed to the hospital suffering from brain bleeding and swelling. His oxygen level was low while he was in the ambulance, his father said.
The next day, Cohen died, just three days after the first day of school."
The first four of these recent deaths were due to apparently heat-related causes and the latest two due to head trauma. Five of the athletes were high schoolers, the eldest only 16, and one was a 13-year-old eighth-grade student.
Congratulations, this is almost any sport now! And its only going to get worse with climate change. The only sport I can think of that wouldnt be as effected is swimming
Passing out from heat exhaustion incurs a 40% chance of death for children, those who survive had almost immediate professional help
Hockey is also safe from heat exhaustion, at least until the power grid starts failing.
I was going to ask why, but I assume you mean ice hockey?
Yeah, I didn't think to add the qualifier because around where I am it's assumed to be the default.
It will be harder to ignore climate change like so many desperately want to when treats are affected
WSJ: Climate Change Makes New Cooling Technologies Market Warm Up
Oh, I don't doubt it. I was actually thinking of the stuff the reflective cooling YouTube guy is working on.
This could be a real article today except that it acknowledged climate change lol
We'll see. I think we're getting pretty close to the 'it exists but nothing can be done about it phase'.
wait i got it, Cap friendly and ready to hit the presses! Climate Change Fear Makes New Cooling Technologies Market Warm Up
Colleges are doing what they can to speed this process up. For example, UCLA and USC are now part of a “Midwest” football conference that now extends all the way to the east coast.
like soccer is fairly dangerous, you can easily fuck up your legs both short and long term but the only deaths associated with it really are due to heart problems which can happen in any sport
the heat thing is curious, they have ad breaks, don't they have water breaks?
No, drinking water makes you soft.
This is not a joke, this is a strongly held belief in the football coach community.
They will literally do multiple practices per day, multiple hours per practice, no water allowed, every single day during peak summer heat. This is NOT an exaggeration. Sports coaches in the US are BROKEN
Sports in America is mostly just a way of letting dudes blow off steam by emotionally abusing helpless children, one of our favorite pastimes.
I love this clip from King of the Hill portraying it accurately
It should also be noted that now that some coaches have realized they have to let kids drink water or they might get sued, they're just forcing kids into water intoxication instead, since the torture and deaths are the point
High school football doesn't have 'ad breaks', what are you on about? Also, I would bet most of that is during practice, because most highschool coaches are unqualified good ol' boy morons that don't really give a shit about your health. Football as a sport is fucking cool as hell, but the amateur and minor league are just rife with exploitation and dumbfuckery because it is seen as a 'meathead sport'.
american football has a more serious issue because of all the helmets and gear they wear, overheating is more common. water breaks and so on help but ultimately kids are kids and will forget to do stuff in the moment, theyre also more likely to take a game way too seriously because their parents are excited
i used to go to summer camps as a kid and every year a kid would pass out from heat exhaustion while hiking or something, one died
Mmm. I actually think there is a long way to go with mitigation before the game should be abolished. I think that hypothetically there would be a way to play it with rigorous safety standards, and probably some changed rules, while maintaining a level of contact. I think it's worth testing.
That said, American Football is a uniquely violent and idiotic sport. It's got some similarity to Rugby League, in that it's rules have been made in order to maximise entertainment value (and ads). There's a collision, a reset, and then two teams sprint into collision with a run-up.
The difference between even Rugby League and AF is that in Rugby League, a player will spend 60-80 minutes in play, jogging and sprinting, attacking and defending. This limits the size of players. You've got to be big but you've also got to be fit and mobile. In American Football, each play is essentially a full sprint speed collision, with everyone putting in 120% effort for less than a minute. As a result, player mass and collision speed is just ridiculous.
There's also direct head collisions that are completely within the rules of the game. Big plastic helmets don't do anything but stop your skin from splitting. Most of the energy is in collision is still transferred through to your skull. You're probably getting a micro concussion with almost every single hit.
I think that hypothetically there would be a way to play it with rigorous safety standards, and probably some changed rules, while maintaining a level of contact.
Last I heard studies were starting to show that even the relatively static line contact, not even high speed tackling or the like, was causing measurable brain damage just because it's a lot of repeated hits and a lot of force.
And of course the effect is much worse on teens because the damage actively fucks up their neurological development in ways that cause impulse control problems, increased aggression, etc similar to lead poisoning. Kind of puts into context all the stereotypes about former high school football players, if it's just been generation after generation of "for at least a sizeable chunk of them this is as bad as lead poisoning" brain damage.
Yup, repeated 'sub-concussive' hits are shown to be dangerous and a possible contributor to CTE. In Rugby they've tried to mitigate that with rules on hours of contact in training per week, among other new safety systems. The problem is in the meantime you've got to potentially sacrifice a few generations to see the data, especially since CTE often presents in later life. The other complicating factor is that players are all so much bigger and faster these days, due to over-professionalisation and elite sport science, so safety that might've been applicable to guys in the 90's might not even be effective now.
Yeah. If you think of the actual collision zone too - the front of the skull. The frontal lobe regulates a lot of impulsivity and aggression. That said though, I think it's more cultural than biological in teen behaviour. The macho and drinking culture of the sports combines very badly.
In rugby the tackling technique doesnt seem as wreckless. In american football guys are straight up throwing themselves at you. Imagine if even with pads rugby players threw themselves at each other like that for 80 minutes with the nonstop nature of the sport. You're asking for horrible injuries.
Rugby league is pretty reckless but there's no head collision and a rule against high tackles.
Rugby Union is a lot stricter with tackle technique and head injury - they're trialling collision recorders, where if a player is recorded colliding too hard, they're automatically sent off for a head check. It's come leaps and bounds recently. The 90's and early 2000's were a terrible time to be a professional rugby player.
I guess that's the other thing though - rugby's non stop nature means a lot more total collisions per game, and therefore per career. With science coming out emphasising the role of 'sub-concussive' hits in CTE, who knows what's in store for this generation of players, especially considering their increased size and speed compared to pre super professionalism.
One suggestion I've heard is legalizing many forward passes. This would spread out the field and the game would be less about colliding and more about blocking passing lanes. It would end up playing like fast paced ultimate Frisbee more than anything else.
Hmmm. It would be a hard one to push through, because it would make the game so similar to American Football or Aussie Rules. I feel like there'd be a lot more 'hospital passes' that way... I mean, I would not play Aussie Rules even if someone paid me.
I don't even think boxing, MMA, or martial arts with weapons (HEMA, kendo) has as many deaths as football. Quick glance at Wikipedia says boxing had around 25 deaths...worldwide. Over the last decade. For adults.
Like people deliberately trying to hurt one another as the main purpose has less fatalities than the sport with a ball.
I think MMA has about 20 deaths since its inception. some were related to weight cutting.
Biden made it so we can't afford bread and now the damn libruls wanna take our circuses! /S
This is horrible, and I feel horrible for the families. I also can’t help but acknowledge how stupid football is. From the sport perspective and the safety perspective.
Not only a danger to the kids, it's also extremely boring to watch.
