AHC: health-conscious 1970s phase out football in the United States?

In a sense, it's just basic microscopy, although Dr. Omalu did a solid job throughout, including finding the occasional colleague who wanted to join with him, and this last part is important.

Like antibiotics, like a lot of other things, advancements in medicine can potentially come decades earlier.

So, what if the whole discovery of CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy) had occurred during the more health-conscious '70s and before football became so huge?
 
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It would need to happen much sooner. By the sixties, television and instant replays made football America's most popular sport.

Baseball was king when it became married to radio in the twenties. Each player assumed a "standard" position. Each play could be described in a series of one-dimensional moves, easily envisioned by any fan familiar with the game.

To cut the popularity of football, you would need to bring out CTE in the fifties, and allow a faster expansion of baseball at the time, since jet air travel made play on the west coast practical.

You still need a sport for fans in autumn. Is it soccer (called football outside of North America), or does football de-volve back to rugby or something else less traumatic.
 
I agree that the '70s are a long shot. Maybe one out of five, but I'm interested in what might bring that one in five home.

I do like your idea that baseball is a great radio sport, whereas football is a great TV sport. I think basketball is also a great TV sport.
 
Since the 1970s, Soccer has become far more popular in Canada .... almost rivalling hockey.
Canadian parents steer their children towards soccer because they fear injuries in American-rules football. AFL/CFL is seen as a macho sport primarily for young men. AFL/CFL requires almost as much (expensive) armour as hockey.

Meanwhile kids barely need a decent pair of shoes to play soccer
Another plus is that soccer is seen as a respectable game for girls. In comparison, girls' CFL or rugby teams are rare in Canada.
 
So, what if the whole discovery of CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy) had occurred during the more health-conscious '70s and before football became so huge?

The 70s were more health-conscious? Compared to when?

I could tell you some stories about just how much people in the 70s cared about health and especially safety. And that would be "not much at all".

Where I come from, seat belts didn't become mandatory until the mid-80s, and even then, there were angry holdouts. And when we got some literature about bike-safety in junior high school(early 80s), the teacher joined us in chuckling at the idea that we needed to wear helmets.

It really wasn't until the late 80s/early 90s that we entered the era of what I call The Safety Revolution. The 70s were health-conscious, in that superficial, "eat better and jog more" sort of way, but that was about it.
 
I remember when I was 14, me and the guys built some bike ramps which we used right out on the concrete street on the cul-de-sac in front of my house. It was scarier later, even just a couple of years later.

I think people draw a distinction between something dangerous but you know you're safe immediately afterwards and something where you just don't know. CTE falls in this second category. People seem okay, but then start having real problems in their forties and fifties. Not everyone of course, but a fair number of former professional players do.
 
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Too much money and ingrained tradition to phase it out by the 70s, IMHO. If you want to do that, WWII is probably the last chance.

You would need something to pick up the fall slack. Association or rugby codes aren't likely replacements. Lacrosse might work for a fall replacement, if you can get it out of the northeast early enough. Some form of handball might work.
 
I idolize the 1970s!

I was born in 1963 but that means my boyhood and adolescence and many of my most vivid memories occurred during the '70s. The '70s including a big running craze, big amateur tennis craze, health food stores popping up, pills with bee pollen, pills with a seaweed called (?)spiragellim, biofeedback, pyramid power (yes, I know), all manner of meditation, a lot of truth in these, encounter groups, all manner of pop psychology, patchy truth in these.

Now, not everything worked out of course. Jim Fixx, the author of The Complete Book of Running which was a huge best seller, well, in 1984 he was found dead on the side of road from a heart attack while running. It's both tragic and comedic. I'm sorry but it is. Obviously, the guy had heart problems, whether or not he ran. Maybe running extended his health from what would have been more problems and an earlier death. Or, maybe not. I'm not a cardiologist.

And there were a lot of hype and frauds, including the above mentioned pyramid power where people wanted to believe. But that one just had a relatively short season.

But didn't every age have its health crazes? I mean, if you pick the '40s just to pick a random decade, didn't it have its preferred supplements and health foods and exercise programs? I'm sure it did. But I kind of think the 70s had more. But that's the one that's hard for me to judge, for as a boy, things in the world were new and fresh.
 
The real health challenge with football is youth football where several million boys well below high school age play.

Perhaps in 1974, no one below high school sophomores play football. And budgetary constants with junior high schools could be one motivating factor.
 
This is almost ASB but some random thoughts:

The World League of 1974-75 isn't around to goose players' salaries, hence you see more top athletes shying away from football.

Soccer becomes more than a fad in the 1970s and establishes itself as a lasting part of the American sports landscape, drawing off fans.

As a result of Vietnam (maybe the war lasts longer?) football becomes really, really politicized. African-American kids decide they're not going to play in a league with almost no black coaches or quarterbacks, while it becomes uncool to be on the varsity in lots of high schools.

The Jets lose Superbowl 3, reinforcing the image of football as that of late 50s era Unitas instead of Broadway Joe.

And finally, while technology might not have caught up with the insight, most people somehow realize that repeatedly being clobbered in the head might not be good for you.
 
It wouldn't be easy unless something takes the big money out of the sport. Football overtakes baseball as the most popular sport in the sixties. Suppose some major concussions and other injuries make the news, disabling key players. Then the rules change to lower the impact of the hits, making the sport more rugby-like. Then the Vietnam War, civil rights movement takes some of the steam out of the sport. I'm not sure of the details, though. Perhaps on the college scene, the politically powerful northeast has fewer powerhouse football schools per capita than the SEC, SWC and Big 8 states. Maybe the sport gets more identified with a history of Jim Crow segregation and becomes more politically incorrect. So, high schools drop the program in favor of soccer and basketball.

Then, maybe the AFL does not win any Super Bowls, lessening the chance the NFL will merge with them. Unlike baseball with two evenly-matched leagues, football remains divided with leagues regarded with different levels of respect, and as a result, attendance.

It is not an easy challenge, but you need to get public opinion to become much more concerned over injuries in general.
 
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